The Magic Endures . . . part 1

Mother Nature — and a handful of two-legged production assistants — has not stopped and self-isolated at home during the pandemic.

As some of you know, I’ve gone on many long walks about the city — some with purposeful destinations and goals, some just to exercise and explore — and they've resulted in hundreds and hundreds of photos.

We’ve not just had surges and waves of virus. There have been surges and waves of blossoms, too — something that happens every year, I know, but I'm surely not the only one who has hardly noticed them in years past, for the most part.

In May and June, I saw roses. So I thought I’d share some of this year’s “crop” in Portland. . . . 

Here’s a pink one from the Brooklyn neighborhood in Southeast Portland, across the river from my place, on May 4.

This is a spray on South Miles Place, a cul-de-sac at the very southern reaches of the Johns Landing neighborhood, south of my place, just north of the Sellwood Bridge. I photographed it on May 15.

A more delicate pink blossom, this one off Milwaukie Boulevard across the river, on May 19.

The South Park Blocks is a block-wide green strip that’s a good dozen blocks in length, stretching from the heart of downtown (behind the Heathman Hotel, where I first set eyes on my future wife, Carole Barkley, more than 29 years ago) through the campus of Portland State University.

There are three large beds that fan out on a block between SW Main, SW Jefferson, and SW Park Avenue (which is actually two separate, parallel one-way streets on either side of the park, at that point). Across Park on the east side is the Oregon Historical Society (a major stop on my Portland Walking Tours), and on the west, the Portland Art Museum.

These rose beds fan out from a statue of Theodore Roosevelt mounted on a horse. (That’s him in the background.) When I was a tour guide (a part-time job I held for nearly eight years before Portland Walking Tours shuttered its doors last month due to the economic downturn), I regularly walked my guests between these beds and spoke about Teddy . . . as well as the roses when they were out, which was usually the case to some extent from late March until late October, even early November.

They never seemed so beautiful as they did this spring . . . and so underviewed and -appreciated, because partial “reopening” to Phase One didn’t happen in Multnomah County until June 19, so the downtown was largely deserted. I shot all these South Park Blocks roses on June 11.