Spring in the Neighborhood

The dogwood on the apartment building's side street is blooming! Here’s how the blossoms looked May 14, 2011.

Didn't get to take a photo of these this year.

Where I catch the bus for the first part of my morning work-day commute, these trees still stand on the corner where I cross NE Sandy on my way to the bus shelter, just to the right out of the photo. However, the building which belongs to this parking lot is being remodeled, and a fence surrounds everything on the triangle-shaped lot. Plus, there are construction trailers and vehicles in the way, too. No idea how long this will take to be completed nor do I know what the business there looked like inside prior to all of this work. And I'm wondering what, if anything, will be done to the exterior which is mundane, at best. I took this photo March 18, 2011.

Flower Study, No. 3

Do you think these white blossoms started at like those pink buds? I wish I could tell from looking at the flowers when I took the photos and/or when I look at the photos. But, I just don't know. If you do, please share your knowledge. Thanks!

Spring, in our future. BLT, in my past. Well, some time again in my future, to tell you the truth.

Spring really is on the way, despite the fact that I came home from the Sunday night Portland Trail Blazers' game an hour or so ago in a cool, moderately heavy rain. I took today's photo on Saturday at 12:52 p.m. while I walked from visiting Lamont and Leland at The Circuit Bouldering Gym to the Blue Diamond where I ate lunch and checked my lottery tickets--won $4.00. Lunch was fantastic, a BLT and fries, with an RC Cola.

While cold and blustery weather lingers, I'm dreaming and knowing this too will come, No. 8

Although this is in my old neighborhood, the Alphabet District in NW Portland, I have every hope that I shall find such pink-blossom-covered sidewalks, streets, and parked vehicles somewhere here in NE Portland, where I now live. I took this photo April 7, 2007, at 11:20 a.m. Notice the person approaching on the sidewalk, umbrella in hand? April showers sometimes bring April flowers! Mama and I lived in the beige brick building you can see through the flower-draped branches, there on the left side of the photo.

Seeing pink in Portland.

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One of several things that I miss about living in Northwest Portland's Alphabet District--seeing the color pink in the spring. Pink-petal-blanketed sidewalks, streets, and vehicles. Saw this nostalgic sight after the AHC Walking Tour NW Sacred Spaces on Sunday, April 21. I'm headed to West Burnside to catch a bus home to NE Portland. Those folks ahead are some who were on the walking tour. Looks like they are still walking, looking, and talking. We had a great time--thanks Architectural Heritage Center.

Seen around the corner, spring's bounty

A dose of cherry-flavored optimism

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.

A.E. Housman (1859–1936)

Spring, 2008, fallen cherry petals at the curb

Spring, 2008, cherry blossoms in the sky

Both, 2007

I'm already planning for spring, 2009.

Tulips, wide, from more than one direction

For me, photographing red is difficult. I can't explain the pinkish parts of these tulips. I wish I could have captured their true vivid beauty as I saw it.

Tulip, close

Come back tomorrow for the wide shot, please.

Beauty, wide and close

I have walked by this tall flowering shrub for two springtimes now, on my way to the morning bus or at the beginning of my walk to the second bus, a little over a mile away. I think it's a camellia, but I'm not certain. I do know for sure that it is beautiful and difficult to photograph because the flowers are so white and the leaves are so green.

The spring continues

Up NW Everett, and I say up because there's an incline, one comes to the corner at NW 23rd Avenue. On that corner, which is actually the southeast corner of the intersection, there stands the Portland Rose Apartments, set back so that it has a nice front yard complete with flower beds, shrubs, trees and two sidewalks, one that goes towards NW 23rd, the other that goes to NW Everett, at a right angle to each other as they leave the building's front door. This flower and several others like it are in a bed alongside the second sidewalk. Later on when leaves fill the trees and shade blankets the yard all day long, the blossoms will be gone, but the green plants will remain, filling in the bed quite nicely.

Blossom by blossom the spring begins ... Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)

This teensy flower, colorful, delicate, with hardy-looking leaves, is among a short row planted in a concrete-walled bed at Elephant's Delicatessen, half a block south of our apartment building. I like this bed because it's almost waist high which makes taking photos quite easy. I don't like this bed because they've left way too much naked dirt. And I don't think it's because they've left room for these little plants to become bigger since they've set them out close to each other.

What I'm hoping is that the naked dirt is destined for less hardy blooming things as soon as the temperature moderates into what spring really is in Portland, not these near freezing nights and 50 degrees or less days. Our average high in March is 56 degrees while the low averages 39 degrees--today we're predicted 47, 31, while Wednesday's predicted 56, 36 comes closer to the average for March and that will be April 2, of course. I'm not complaining one bit, just reporting. I love Portland!

Does anyone know the name of this beauty?

Spring is in the streets!

Forewarned is forearmed--is that how it goes? Anyway, what I'm trying to do is tell you that I know from past experience (last spring, summer and fall) that I cannot control myself when it comes to taking photos of Portland's flora.

Sunday afternoon I walked out of the apartment after watching the end of the NASCAR race in Atlanta where my favorite driver again finished third, crossed NW 22nd Avenue at Everett, and walked about 300 feet west. There I stopped and took this photo, one I've been wanting to get since last week when this huge camellia began to bloom in earnest. I wanted a blue sky for the background, to do honor to that tree. Besides that I got the tiny red leaves that color the top of that tree to the left, farther down the sidewalk. What a great time of the year!

Blossoms up close for you.

Next, I walked back to the corner on Everett and turned right onto NW 22nd, heading north to Glisan. Just before I reached that intersection, I saw this flowering tree, one that I remember well from last year.

It's amazing to me that so many gorgeous tiny flowers can appear from such a tiny spot on the trunk of the tree.

Do you know what kind of tree this is, please?

What signs of spring are you seeing again this year?