Cracked Window

Every spring I start filling up the front porch with potted plants. The porch extends the width of our 1920s Craftsman house, so there are long wide ledges begging for greenery. The back deck next to the small goldfish pond gets a few plants too.

I gravitate toward the tropical and cold-sensitive, mostly begonias because of their exotic-colored leaves and elephant ear varieties that remind me of a youth spent in Florida lakes and swamps.

If I left them outside much longer, the first freeze would write their obituary. So a sad annual ritual took up an hour this afternoon: the move inside.

An autopsy photo? A closeup of an alien’s skin? Or nature in all its bizarre beauty and symmetry?

Hint: I captured the image today at Hughes Water Garden south of Portland in Tualatin. Going there is my crack cocaine: the sound of running water and plants everywhere.

Big news about the definitive confirmation of water’s presence on Mars dispatches my mind not to the Red Planet but back in time. Back to a dark hole at the edge of a Florida orange grove.

When we were kids growing up in Maitland, my two brothers and I dug down five feet through the sandy soil. It was behind a hedge in back of our house. We put plywood over the hole, left a small opening beneath the hedge as a door, and covered the plywood with dirt. Instant underground fort.

Nothing stops more people along our precious corner of Northeast Portland than these towering July beauties. I sit on the porch, unseen by passersby, and eavesdrop on the oohing and ahhing.

Luckily, the flower thieves haven’t struck; some regal lily blooms were snipped last summer.

This morning at breakfast, my little boy Atticus freaked out when a big fly buzzed on a window near him. It seemed like an overreaction for someone who dug worms and fed them to the goldfish in our little pond before he could walk. (Easy for me to judge.) Maybe this stunning photo will make him less afraid. Or more:

I wish I could say I captured the image among our Portland rose bushes. Instead I’ll say “keep up the great work” to Robin Gage in Atlanta, a photographer friend of my daughter Erin. Robin proves once again that the world we typically perceive isn’t what it seems. Check out more of Robin’s rose gallery on her blog.

Summer stars greet the sun today — freshly opened blossoms in my Portland teardrop pond. I’ll wade in and reward my babies with fertilizer pellets. But I’ll be tempted to disappear beneath the lily pads into my past.

A little publicity goes a long way. In May, I wrote a story for The Oregonian about two Portland men starting a new business, City Garden Farms. Their idea: grow vegetables in the urban yards of people willing to participate in return for a weekly supply of the harvest.

Their entrepreneurial zeal impressed me. Their philosophy impressed me more: grow food on small plots within a few miles of consumers, minimizing the environmental effects of transportation.