The Walk to Proctor District

As a change of pace, we'll leave Ruston Way and walk to the Proctor District to transact some business. I need to go to the post office to mail a couple of big envelopes that seem to require a tricky formula to determine the amount of postage. But that's ok, because this gives me an excuse to combine my walk with takin' care of bidness. I love being able to walk to the Proctor District! I love being able to multi-task!

Even close to my home I enjoy some quirky things like the mural on the side of a big apartment building on the corner a block away. Over the last three years I've watched that building change from a decrepit (there's really not a more polite description), abandoned or possibly flop-house with a faded wall mural reminder of one of its former lives as a corner store (Oh! remember those? I have very fond memories of wonderful penny candy...yes, really, one cent for wax lips and mustaches; pop-filled wax tubes; licorice records with a little pink dot in the middle; lik-m-ade) to a well-kept, new windowed, carefully painted apartment building.

And just down the block from that refurbished building is a modest house with a completely immodest garden! This guy's garden contains flowers, apples, raspberries, strawberries, peas, beans, shrubs, pears....oh the list goes on....and that's just the part that lines the sidewalk. I really like this garden. It uses space to grow food and it's attractive, at least to those who prefer an over-the-top style of gardening...and there's no lawn.

But speaking of lawn, I'm always amazed when I come to two average blocks with average homes (nice, but not outstanding) that have the greenest, most velvety lawns I've seen outside a golf green. Did they all sign a pact? Do they all use the same gardener? Today I was rewarded with actually seeing two guys tending to one of the lawns--two, count them, two--one for the lawn mower that must have been lopping off about 1/4 inch of grass, if that, and the other with the ubiquitous weed whacker whirring oh so delicately around the saplings. I thought about taking a picture, but a shot of a patch of green with my point-and-shoot would not make my case.

About now, you're thinking will she ever get her envelopes mailed? Well, a walk with a camera is a great time to actually see many things that are not central to the task at hand and to remind me of my community connections. But I confess that the entire walk took less time than posting this blog. That's just crazy! And maybe a signal to me that's it's time to sign off.

Oh, but first. A word about hubris. [Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance]. So, I think to myself "I'll plant a couple of orange mums on my parking strip; they'll look really cool." So I did, and I was right--they were rude and sassy and I was pretty self-satisfied.


About two days later, I glanced out my front window and beheld.....my comeuppance. Most of the beautiful, showy, sassy flowers on the top of one of my mums were gone. I believe some uppity deer came along and had my chrysanthemum flowers for appetizers!