International Workers’ Day

SUNDAY May 1, 2011 – La Paz, Baja la Sur, Mexico

El Aura Restaurant 4th floor view

Exhausted from yesterday’s traveling, we sleep a bit late and awaken to a day of blue sky and sunshine; luxuriating in the sheets as only holiday-ers can, stretching and yawning, enjoying coffee in bed. “Ahhhhh, all we need is brunch and a Sunday New York Times,” I believe I must have at least thought if not said.  Sunday? Suddenly we remember:  our room comes with a Sunday brunch buffet!



May Day Parade



Sunday brunch buffet at the El Aura Restaurant on the 4^th floor of the Hotel 7 Crowns is divine. Even a vegan can find something under the lids of the stainless steel warming trays. The waiter sits us at a table in the sun on a balcony that seems to jut out over the Malecon below. Across the harbor are distant mountains and headlands and beyond the Sea of Cortez, or the Gulf of California. A stiff breeze keeps things cool while above the ever-present scissor tail birds soar silently above, never flapping a wing.

After coffee and fresh orange juice, we begin to register a grand cacophony of sounds rising up from below. A parade is just starting right below the hotel!



May Day Parade

Leaning out over the balcony, just below, teenage girls colorfully dressed in skirts and blouses are playing ratty-tat-tat on their snare drums as they sorta march down the street. (Hey, I was a baton twirler, so I know MARCHING when I see it!) Following behind, different groups, each dressed in their own color, take turns shuffling past, chanting and singing a union motto (I guess). Some wear yellow, some white, red, or black. A few groups are preceded by vehicles with entire stereo systems strapped to the top of the car broadcasting speeches (I guess) through ear-shattering speakers.  The parade stretches up and down the Malecon as far as the eye can see. 



May Day Parade





Today is International Workers Day, which is celebrated around the world except in the USA, which started the whole thing.

Back for seconds at the buffet table while below, the workers shout their slogans and wave to friends watching from the sidewalk. About an hour of people parading past down below our 4^th floor observation in the restaurant, and just when you think it can’t get any noisier, groups of green, then yellow, then red and white dump trucks and taxi cabs roll by, horns blaring, honking, amplified shouting.

May Day Parade

Finally it’s over and seems very quiet as I enjoyed a double espresso.



Rainbow Hawk



Much later that same day as evening turns into night we find ourselves in a short but wide alleyway with a few restaurants and some trees. This is home to a long-time gringo resident, Rainbow Hawk who sits at his white apple laptop and informs us that Osama Bin Laden has been ‘eliminated’ by US Navy Seals in Pakistan. At first we think he means President Obama!

La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico

 

no first class!





Saturday April 30, 2011 – Los Angeles International Airport aboard a small plane with propellers headed southeast down the California Baja.  

“We’d like to call your attention to our one and only well-equipped bathroom in the front of the plane," the flight attendant announces, "it's next to the cockpit door and it’s the only door with a handle.”

I've brought along a lot of snacks in my backpack - just in case. Beans and rice is what we're hankering to consume in Mexico. REAL beans and rice. I'm checking The Everything Spanish Phrase Book and think I can say it in Spanish: "Yo quiero los frijoles y arroz. Por favor."

Two hours later, we arrive in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico - leaving the dark cold 45th parallel for the Tropic of Cancer neighborhood. “Bark! Bark! Bark” comes from the baggage carousel slowly circling into the terminal and then back outside into the heat. The last piece of unclaimed luggage. Shiny black eyes peek and tasseled white hairs poke through white plastic animal carrier slots. All the gringos waiting to pass through customs are relieved when the mom and two small young girls finally show up to claim their family member.

Bright yellow warmth rushes into the rolled-down taxi windows for the seven mile ride from the airport to the Malecon. Zipping along past block after block of homes and stores made of block. The vibrant colors mix intensely with the warmth, and melt into movement, like a Jill Logan painting I will see a few days later in Todos Santos. Through the flashing light, my melting travel-bleary eyes try to take it all in at once.

After quickly checking in to the Hotel 7 Crowns – 5^th floor view of the harbor --  and a change from Portland clothing to La Paz attire. Time to stroll the Malecon a short distance to the nearest beach bar for the first of what will be over the next two weeks, mucho chips , salsa and beers. Devil sun tries to pink my face from under umbrella shade and wide brimmed hat.

Among the few other clients at this early hour, a woman introduces herself as Phil the Boat Builder from Canada. She’s there with a man who wears a sagging load of keys attached to the belt loop of his jeans. Peering at me through her bedraggled bleached blond bangs that nearly obscure her blurry bloodshot light blue eyes, her thin skin pink and peeling and wrinkled with various sun exposures, she confides, “I’m looking for love but that’s just my friend.”

No beans and rice on the menu here so we settle for what will be one of many fish tacos.

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The Malecon is a long pedestrian walkway (zona peatonal) running along the beach of the blue waters of the Bay of California (aka the Sea of Cortez). Next to it, a busy 2-way avenue runs parallel. Across is the bustling city, stretching inland for many blocks on such streets as 16 de Septiembre and 5 de Mayo.



Malecon, La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico



The Malecon is the living room of La Paz, a few miles paved with swirling tiles, designed with bronze sculptures, peppered with iron benches, and decorated with mass plantings of palms and bougainvillea. As the sun sets and the legendary evening breeze cools the temperatures, young, old, and everyone in between come out to the Malecon.



As darkness falls and the Malecon lights up, youths on their bicycles weave through throngs of strolling families pushing strollers and straggling children. Trick riders jump their bikes over yellow traffic cones.  Passing rollerbladers and skateboarders check each other out. Venders seem miniature under their loads of cotton candy and balloons. Everyone licks ice cream cones. Burger King is packed with families, tables strewn with party left-overs. Music pulses out of every establishment, every passing car.

Venturing a block in-land to what looks like a more Mexican restaurant, we peer at the menu trying to figure it out. There's a smoking b-b-q going on with lots of meat items grilling away. Once again it's the fish tacos. The resident skinny little cat got most of it.



Meanwhile, on the avenue, the youth of La Paz do what I did when I was young - ‘drag the strip.’ Each passing vehicle blares a different song, engines revved up, windows down, attitudes friendly. As the tardes passes into noches, distant rock bands vie for the loudest.

Nightcaps: that’s what vacations are for, right? Just out our hotel room and practically all to ourselves is the patio bar of C.I.P.S. Jacuzzi Bar, complete with a cold Jacuzzi, two big screen TVs, and the best bar in town. “How do you want your margarita?” asks Maurice, while checking to see how his favorite futbol team is doing on the TV.

The panoramic view of the Malecon affords us an eye-witness view as, suddenly just below, three police on foot attempt to pull a vehicle over on the crowded Malecon. Some shouting is heard. No comprendo. The driver makes a quick left turn into the oncoming slow-moving traffic, screeching tires and glass breaking as he smashes into the oncoming car’s headlight, then careens away up the side street, all the while the three policemen shouting and gesturing like they would shoot. But they don’t. 

Toto, we’re not in Portland anymore!

Seadonah's Tea Pot

This story doesn't have anything to do with gardens or vegan-ness.

One day last year I was fortunate to visit Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. It was my first time there and I liked it immediately. In the back of my mind, I remembered hearing that my relatives came from Nanaimo, so I was keeping my eyes and ears open. 

In the most excellent Nanaimo Museum I came upon this tea pot: The sign reads: "Tea Pot - Brought to Nanaimo in 1854 on the Princess Royal by Mrs. John Richardson." I thought: "hmmmmmm, Richardson. That name sounds familiar."

At the Museum, I learned that a bunch of coal miners and their families sailed from England to work in the coal mines of the Hudson Bay Company in Nanaimo.

When I got back home, I looked through some old paperwork my parents had left behind. The Nanaimo Daily Free Press of Friday, November 26, 1954 printed a large article on the passengers of the Princess Royal, which had landed 100 years before. The story and photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Abraham John Richardson was highlighted pink. Some other papers showed the family tree from me, to my father, to his mother, to her father, to his parents as being those same Mr. and Mrs. Richardson. So I'm pretty sure that tea pot belonged to my great-great grandmother, Seadonah Pearson Richardson, wife of Abraham John Richardson.

Last month I visited Nanaimo again. This time I studied up on my ancestors beforehand. I read that Seadonah was buried in the Pioneer Cemetery so I thought I would visit her grave; maybe take some flowers. Well, it was snowing heavily and about 8 inches covered everything when I set off for the cemetery after breakfast. Following the map, just a few blocks from the hotel, I still had to ask someone before I could make out a tiny unmarked park with maybe a dozen old headstones mounted into a small grassy mound. Most could still be read, but none were Seadonah's.

Visiting the Museum again, the General Manager Debbie Trueman and Curator David Hill-Turner gave me more information about the pioneers. I learned that every year the Princess Royal Day celebration is held at the Bastion on the waterfront on November 27 at 11:00 a.m, come rain or shine. It's only been cancelled once since the 1856, I guess.

And around the corner at the Nanaimo Archives, I learned that Seadonah was very likely still in the Pioneer Cemetery, but there was no way of knowing exactly where anymore as most headstones were long gone. So, Seadonah Pearson was born August 22, 1833, in Netherton, Straffordshire, England, and died April 5, 1969, in Nanaimo, BC, at the age of 35.

I don't think she was a vegan.

Portland Japanese Garden

Grey basalt slabs grouted with green fuzzy moss. Random patterns cleverly joined leading to great weathered wood pillars, edging into foundations supporting stark white walls, frosted with great thick tiles. A hint of sun lights up a steep shady slope carpeted with sword fern. Overhead tower slender doug firs.

Mysterious metal things, curved, embossed with dingbats, rounds with swirling centers, embedded here and there in flagstone and aggregate, the path edges black round river rock and curled up brown big leaf maple leaves from last fall. Short stocky stone walls, fringed in hairy moss, licorice ferns poking out of cracks, and topped with a little bamboo fence, round and flat pieces, each joint trussed up presents with weathered hemp bows fraying at the edges. Pea gravel, doug fir cones and needles, lush emerald green moss.

Wooden structures, joints neat and precise, repeating patterns, contrasting tones and shades of brown, red brown, yellow brown. Multi-trunked, scales shedding, twisted branched Pine in a sea of mondo grass and its own needles. The bare branches of weeping Japanese maples, tips yellow and red, twin buds still tightly embraced. Large graceful branches of western red cedars hang down hugging their trunks. Flat topped horizontal yews add a dark green backdrop to the vertical tiered pagoda. Thick ground hugging moss rolling sea swell beds with rock islands here and there.

Crunchy pea gravel path through quiet shady grove. Thick glossy rhododendrons wait spring with swelling flower buds. Down a hillside of irregular stone steps, through pieris and azalea branches, a pond reflects the grey sky above. Across the pond, moss covered rock-islands and high cliffs of a big bolder. The bridge arcs over the pond. Late January and the air smells of sarcocca and skimmia.

The pond empties, pausing here and there, down a small rock edged stream. Mounding shrubs in hues of green interspersed with bare branches in subtle shades of pink, mauve, peach, etc. The sky and tall conifers reflect in the creek water. A copper finial on the bridge, worn shiny by many hands, seems to be signaling like sentinels to the stone lantern down the stream.

Across the pond, a forest of pines, deeply etched furrows running up the trunk, each carefully shaped branch, each needle cluster in precisely the correct place. A small waterfall across the way sings life to the two metal egrets feeding in the low bamboo.

The teahouse contrasts sharply. Wood and rocks, stone and moss, tatami mats, neat edges blend back into nature, cement, gravel, metal guards, and seas of moss.

Massive weeping maples, each twist and turn of the branches reflecting a year of growth and pruning, reaching out like Halloween ghouls with long pointed fingernails, reaching out and down toward the carpet of moss below.

Captain William Clark Park at Cottonwood Beach - Washougal, Washington



Captain William Clark Park at Cottonwood Beach - Columbia River

 

A mild January day, sunbreaks and no rain for a change. This is the Washington side of the Columbia River at Washougal. Along the top of a dike, is the 3.1-mile Captain William Clark Park Trail with jutting-out metal observation platforms, benches and informational signage.

The west end of the trail begins at a pedestrian tunnel that leads to the city. Inside are seven carved basalt panels decorated with petroglyphs in the style of the native Columbia Gorge tribes. The east end of the trail is the Steigerwald Wildlife Refuge. Along the way are Steamboat Landing, interpretive canoes, and Captain William Clark Park. The scenery looking north, is not so nice, with industry and sewage treatment.

But looking south .... A jungle of bare cottonwood branches, robins call alarm, littler birds flitter by, as a nearby hawk watches. The sun breaks through momentarily, sparkling ripples in the river, and lighting up an emerald green pasture at the top of a hill way across in Oregon. A few ducks bob in the water and a few big birds (could they be Bald Eagles?) soar above.



Oregon across the Columbia River from Washougal, Washington



Washougal means 'rushing waters' because there used to be some here before the Army Corp of Engineers changed all that. Washougal was busy in 1792. Boston fur trader Captain Robert Gray 'discovered' the mouth of the Columbia River in May. In October George Vancouver sent young Lieutenant William Broughton upriver to investigate. It is believed he came as far as Washougal. It is here that he named Mt. Hood and Point Vancouver.



Monday, March 31, 1806, Captain William Clark camped at Cottonwood Beach for 6 days. The Corp of Discovery had discovered the Pacific Ocean, overwintered near Astoria, and were on their way home. The Chinook people said food was scarce east of the Cascades, so the Corp camped here, killing big game, drying meat, and sewing it into leather sacks.



A tunnel leading to Washougal city from the river has these carvings, inspired by images created over the eons by Indians of the Columbia Plateau.

 

 











Jefferson Street Artesian Well and Yashiro Japanese Garden

For years the Olympia Brewing Company's slogan, "It's the Water," attested to the pure taste of the artesian water used to brew their Olympia Beer. Today you can still access that water at a parking lot near the corner of Fourth and Jefferson Streets in the historic Theater District of the state of Washington's capitol city of Olympia.


There are a few "15 minute artesian water parking" spaces next to a simple pipe coming up out of the asphalt. Some large blocks of concrete protect it from bad backer-uppers and such type drivers. A seemingly endless stream spills out unimpeded and at a rate whereby the steady stream of people can quickly fill up their various size containers. The overflow drains away through a grate below.

Just down the street at McMenamins Spar Café there is a water fountain at the front entrance serving  the same artesian water they're using in the basement to brew their beer. It didn't taste as good at the parking lot water, which was colder and therefore more refreshing. Plus the old water fountain looks kinda disgusting....

...Like these old urinals still in use at McMenamins saloon and former brothel, the Olympic Club Hotel in Centralia, Washington pictured here. The lady's room has a blurry-eyed selection of faucets. Draw your own conclusions.

And on another topic: the Yashiro Japanese Garden in Olympia. On a cold rainy day, I had the place to myself.

healthy . energetic . dynamic . vigorous

Welcome to Lusty Gardens.

My goal is to report on my two passions: gardening and being a vegan. My mantra is: healthy energetic dynamic vigorous. Go ahead, repeat it with me: healthy energetic dynamic vigorous....

Healthy - Vigor of body, mind and spirit. A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. State of being free of physical, psycological disease, illness, or malfunction. The overall level of function of an organism from the cellular (micro) level to the social (macro) level.

Energetic - To be active; possessing, exerting, displaying energy.

Dynamic - Powerful; changeable; active, in motion, usually as a result of external force. Able to change and adapt.

Vigorous - Strong and active.