Swan Island Writing Excursion

I've taken several visual arts classes at the Multnomah Arts Center and wanted to take a writing course. Last summer, the creative writing excursion series caught my attention. The excursion leaders reflect Portland's avantgarde writing community and offer unique prose and poetry writing exercises at each place. It's great intellectual stimulation. My favorites include Kaia Sand's exploration of “Lost Neighborhoods- Nihonmachi and Vanport”, David Abel's walk through downtown “Portland Alphabetical” and Lisa Radon's gallery tour “In Response: Poems on Art”. Each term new writing places are added to the catalog. If you want to get a different perspective of the metro area, I highly recommend signing up for one or more.

Saturday, I took the "A Day on Swan Island" with Nate Orton and James Yeary. They write an ongoing My Day zine series and demonstrated their techniques as we toured Swan Island. We started at Skidmore Bluffs with a great view of Portland's industrial section on the Willamette River.

The path a long the river offered other views of Portland-
With 80° temperatures, it felt like the first day of summer. Sharing our sketches and writings makes me realize how different we all see the same place. What struck me is how nature and industry collide on Swan Island. Warnings flank the banks of the river to not eat the fish due to toxins or to not drink the water due to raw sewage dumps. The river looks beautiful but analysis shows that it still needs to be cleaned up.


On another note, the peonies are blooming at The Peony Place. They offer cut flowers and a you-pick cutting garden. With the warmer weather, new varieties open up each day. It's one of my favorite places. Here's a post I wrote a few years ago about the garden.

From Pansies to Peonies

With all the rain lately, our sketch group started a new routine. We meet at a coffee house and sketch for an hour. Cynthia brought some pansies for us to draw this week. After an hour, we do a weather check and if it's not pouring down rain, we head for an outdoor setting to sketch.
The Peony Place became our destination this week. About half the varieties were in bloom and the rest were full of buds ready to bloom any day.
Love these floppy, feathery blossoms and so do the bumble bees...

The single-petal beauties open up to show their gorgeous centers...
Time to sketch one flower with a fluffy red center the same color as its petals...

Then, it rained.

Photo Shop Online Course with DJ Pettitt

DJ Pettitt offers an online course using Photo Shop. I've wanted to update my skills and learn to use more techniques and program features. The program contains so many tools that I feel like I'm just skimming the tip of the iceberg. Here are the layers as I ordered them bottom to top. Each layer has an adjustment layer and/or filter.

Layer 1- crumpled paper-

Layer 2- view from Anne Amie Vineyard-
Layer 3- peony photo from The Peony Place

Layer 4- close-up peony photo-

End result with all layers and adjustments-

Peonies & Roses Bloom

We're having warm weather and the sunshine brought out the peonies and roses this week. The Peony Place is a a farm sitting on a hill over looking Mt St Helens southeast of Portland.

The varieties and colors of these peonies never cease to amaze me.

If it stays hot this weekend, they won't last too many more weeks.

In my garden, I love to grow roses and here are two of the first blossoms. "Double Delight" boasts beautiful variegated colors and a lovely fragrance.

"Dainty Bess" always remains so delicate.

For NW gardeners, the end of May and June is time to reap the bounty and beauty of the earth in these flowers.

The Peony Place

The week I made a wonderful discovery in my neighborhood. The Peony Place is where to go for cut flowers and Fall tubers. Located on a third generation farm in Milwaukie, the family has created this wonderful garden in only three years. Marian's grandfather loved peonies and passed on to her his appreciation and knowledge for their care. Visits are by appointment at peony.place@yahoo.com. With our late Spring, the peonies are still blooming so see them soon.