All, I mean ALL, about my going to the Portland Farmers Market at PSU yesterday and what I bought!

I don't know exactly how this will work for y'all. I may end up driving you completely crazy, but I feel compelled to try it. Five short videos here for y'all. I had to figure out how to edit the longer one into short enough segments that I could e-mail them to myself from my iPhone, then download them to the iMac, then upload them to Flickr, then post them into the blog at Blogger. Where in the world would I be without all of these nouns after AT? Sad, I'd simply be sad.

Following the videos, still shots of the items that I bought and videoed after I got home--I couldn't get those videos to go where I wanted them to go using my make-shift-process that I outlined above, so I took a screen shot of each item as it appeared in a video, then cropped until I liked how it turned out. I uploaded them to Flicker.

Lo and behold, the entire screen shot uploaded, so I had to crop them in Aviary, a Flickr edit thing-ey. I'm all into make-shift-processes on today's post. Enjoy!











Now for what I bought at the market. Thank goodness for my backpack! I stuffed it with the items in jars, the cherries inside a plastic container that I took with me, and the loaf of bread. I ended up having to buy two $1 reusable shopping bags from Unger Farms where I bought the Hood strawberries--they traveled as well as could be expected in another plastic container, most of them still inside the paper pint carton they came in. I used the two bags for the candy, the pate, and all of the veggies.



Carrots and zucchini. I plan to bake the carrots and put the zucchini in a pot along with lots of the other veggies.



Spinach, one bunch for the pot.



Cabbage, about the size of an orange, some for the pot, some to cook some other way.



Walla Walla Sweet Onion, some for the pot, some to eat raw on the occasional half sandwich.



Green onions, same as the Walla Walla.



Turnips, for the pot.



Broccoli, to be steamed and enjoyed immensely.



Hood strawberries, already eaten sliced in Cheerios and by hand, along with the occasional half sandwich.



Cherries, waiting to be counted out, measured into the proper serving and taken to work as part of lunch.



Scrumptious pate that I eat in small cubes as part of lunch. I've got to figure out how to count the carbs and calories.



Cherry Country delights, to be eaten now and then when I have space in my carb count. Rose City Pepperheads Mango Madness Pepper Jelly, to be enjoyed as measured in all sorts of ways. The stuff is pure gold. Unbound Pickling Bread and Butter Pickles, to be consumed by the slice on the occasional half sandwich.



The bread to use for the occasional half-sandwich and/or the occasional whole piece of toast. It's divine!

UPDATE - Sunshine and shadow at the Portland Farmers Market at the Portland State University in the South Park Blocks, downtown Portland, June 6, 2015.

UPDATE: Fell sleep during the 3rd quarter of the Seahawks' game. Woke up after it was over to find out they'd been beat by Denver. Shoot. I finally went back to sleep around 1:45 a.m. and woke up at 6 a.m. Better than no rest.

Yesterday after I had posted a video of some of the hair that came off my head when I washed it, my sweet friend and hairdresser Rosa and I texted back and forth about the next step in dealing with it. I realized I needed to take Rosa up on her offer to come cut my hair again, this time with clippers. She'll be here at 10 am. Portland time.

Once I saw some of it blowing off my head yesterday evening when the wind gusted, hairs catching the sunshine as they flew away from me--I had walked the 400 steps to the Blue Diamond's back door to pick up some food I had ordered because I needed a break from what I have here--I thought to myself, "Just in time!"



Lovely flowers.



Juicy berries.



Can't resist sharing this closeup of the flowers, y'all.



Man-made shade aids produce shoppers. How's that for a caption for this one?



Can't resist sharing this closeup of the peonies, y'all.

UPDATE and adorable faces seen here and there over the years

UPDATE: I had another good night's sleep! Hooray! When I ran my plastic-bristled brush across my head this morning, it felt so good. To be expected, more hairs ended up in it. Blueberries do not taste like they are supposed to, so they're out of my diet now. I imagine it will be long after chemo is finished that I'll try them again, sometime in 2016, y'all. Just because I have a box of them in the frig, I won't keep eating them now that they don't taste right because that could ruin them for me, long term. Next Tuesday, I go for blood to be drawn for pre-chemo tests. If all is well with those tests, Chemo Round Two will happen next Wednesday. I don't know what to expect exactly if there is a problem with one or more of those tests--I'll get a phone call or an e-mail, I imagine, with the news if changes are afoot.



It's a lot of fun to look through my thousands of photos and find one that inspires a post. This adorable little guy certainly did that for me! I took this photo in Sherwood, Oregon, when I went to Cruisin' Sherwood, June 13, 2011. I went looking for more adorable faces and easily found a few more to share with you.



Here's another adorable young man, with his dad I'd guess, at National Train Day festivities at Portland's Union Station, May 10, 2014.



I understand a lot of folks find clowns to be scary. I don't. But, it looks like this adorable little guy has yet to make up his mind. And I have to wonder how long that hot pink stick-on dot remained on his nose. This is another photo from May 10, 2014, at National Train Day.



At the risk of scaring folks, here's a photo that proves adorable faces come in all ages. One more National Train Day photo, y'all.



Scary? Maybe. Busy. For sure. The addition of the hot pink stick-on dot seems like overkill. Surely it was done to make unsuspecting little people accept a dot stuck to their own noses--she's the clown in the photo with the little boy sporting his own pink dot.



A little person off and running at the Portland Farmers Market in the South Park Blocks, downtown at Portland State University. I took this photo on June 6, 2015, when I had recovered enough from the April 24 hysterectomy, so that I had gone back to work for that entire week, then got myself by bus to the market for some shopping and people watching.



For my final photo of adorable faces, I give you my sweetheart friends, Milton and Kay, who came to Portland by train from Jackson, Mississippi, in August, 2011, to be here for the sprinkling of Mama and Duncan's ashes.

Vegetables and fruit from the Portland Farmers Market at Portland State University, in the South Park Blocks, downtown Portland

I rode the 12 bus to the farmers market--we had a detour due to street and bridge closures in preparation for the Grand Floral Parade which was scheduled to begin an hour and a half after I had arrived at the farmers market.



I bought zucchini from that bin at the back. Yummy.



I bought potatoes from the front yellow bin. Yummy.



I bought Hood strawberries. Yummy.



I bought Brooks cherries. Yummy.



I bought raspberries and blackberries. Yummy.

Sights I'll miss until I am about out and about again, No. 5 - no biopsy results yet, maybe later in the week

Portland's a city that communicates in all ways. Here we witness the written word, as in placing signs wherever they will stick. Love Your Farmer. Old Ragged-Time Music. This Is Your Land - Vote.



And here, on top of the instrument case, I can make out one that reads: Eat More Kale.The others are upside down and blurry.

Right now I've been up three hours after a good night's sleep. Ate a little oatmeal for breakfast. Drank some Twining's English Breakfast Tea--that stuff is doggone great! In a little while, I'll make a couple of L-shaped loops in the hallway of my apartment building, probably go down the few steps from my hallway into the vestibule and look out the front door. No pain medications needed--hooray! My sons will be back after work today. I am blessed. Thank you for your continued prayers, love and concern.

If you are worried that I'm about to get stir crazy, to tell you the truth, I don't feel it coming on.  Four great windows in my living room and sunshine outside help a whole lot. Knowing that in a few days I should be able to take my aluminum folding lawn chair outside and sit on the sidewalk in the sunshine is a goal I will achieve.

I took these photos at the Portland Farmers Market on the Portland State University campus on April 29, 2011. Not only live music, but lots of local foodstuffs and flowers. What special places, all of the farmers' markets in and around Portland.

Local Access Only. Daddy, bicycle. Daughters, bucket.

Click here for a trip to City Daily Photo, transporting you around the world every day.



September 2, 2010, there was some sort of street fair on NW Raleigh Street which had been closed as a thoroughfare--Local Access Only. Daddy's taking his daughters there in a bucket situated on a bicycle, a very smart way to avoid trying to find somewhere to park in that part of town, period, street fair closure or no street fair closure. As near as I can tell, that black cable dragging the ground beneath the bicycle and the bucket goes from the center of the back wheel up to the right side of the handlebars and then the brake lever. I guess that's what you call the part that you squeeze shut when you want to put on the brakes. I noticed these three Portlanders while I waited at the southbound 15 bus stop on NW 23rd Avenue, in my bag a bunch of fresh vegetables from the nearby Thursday evening Northwest Portland satellite of the Portland Farmers Market. I'd let Mama know that I was going to stay on the 15 and go shop there after work. (Please don't be confused, this photo was taken four months before she died. She was tickled about the prospect of fresh, home-cooked veggies.) Interesting that the farmers market in that area has now moved to the very street that Mama and I lived on, four blocks east of our apartment building.

Seen downtown, No. 5

Let me count a few of my daily life blessings for you.

First, from my employer I get a 24/7/365 mass transit pass. 

Second, I work in a building a single block from a bus stop where three bus lines that go west over the Willamette River stop at the beginning of my lunch hour. 

Third, those buses all stop a couple of blocks from the Wednesday downtown Portland Farmers Market, located at Shemanski Park in the South Park Blocks, behind the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. 

Fourth, while this particular version of the PFM is less than a square block, I prefer to think of it as being village-like, intimate and personable and filled to the brim with the bounty of folks who must have huge hearts because they're willing to grow all of these vegetables, fruits, and flowers--or to bake tarts and breads and cookies and quiches or make goat cheese--so that we can zoom over there on our lunch hour and shop among the trees. 

Fifth blessing, those founders of the city who donated the downtown blocks of land which have become home  of two versions of the Portland Farmers Market, this small one at the north end of the South Park Blocks and the huge Saturday PFM at the south end of the South Park Blocks.

So, this week on Wednesday I happily saw once again, up close and personal, why it is so ever-lovin' OK that it rains in Portland. These vegetables. Other fruits I didn't get a photo of because I was carrying too many vegetables back to work with me and couldn't manipulate the camera. And the flowers in the next photo, one that I took before I had all of the vegetables to lug.




Once I got home from work, I took everything out of the bags and washed it all and put it in these two colanders to drain.

Sixth blessing, knowing I'll soon cook and eat all of these beautiful vegetables. More on that next time.

• Seventh blessing, my friend Sarah of Portland Creamery sold me some mighty fine chevre and gave me a great big hug!