Proctor District Redux

Since my last post about the Proctor District, I have probably gone there every day I've been in town. I would like to claim I walked there each time but, no, most of the trips were by car (laziness? no time? no excuse). One of my favorite places in the District is Metropolitan Market. Met Market regularly has samples like cooked-on-the-spot food, delicious cheese (my latest favorite is graskaas, a wonderful "fresh" cheese), fruit--particularly new varieties--and occasionally sweet treats from the bakery (today was a little key lime "bite"). Mmmm. Two items that I like that I can get only at Met Market (at least in Tacoma) are a very good version of cioppino (excellent with their herb rolls) and rebel crunch granola, which is made by Blue Heron bakery in Olympia.

I love the colors and quilt-like displays of the produce department so want to take a picture. However, I feel strangely guilty and furtive aiming my camera. Would someone think I was an industrial spy? No one questions me but my red-flag feeling is confirmed when I approach the table where an employee is wrapping and displaying the items shown in the next picture. (I've included the picture as a guessing game for all you three who read this blog. What are the objects displayed in the picture? The only prize for getting it right is your own self-satisfaction and that's worth plenty these days! What a clever way to get you to comment on my blog!)

To continue: the employee grimaces when I brandish my camera and then explains apologetically that I can't take pictures without permission. She suggests I speak to the manager who, when I explain my blog, is thrilled that I am including Met Market but hopes that I am not sending it to Whole Foods. I assure her that Whole Foods is not following my blog. Ha!


When I leave Met Market to go home, I find the main intersection at 26th and Proctor is under construction. The City is installing traffic-calming bulb-outs and lovely rose-colored pavers to prominently mark the crosswalks. Unfortunately, I've also hit it right when Mason Middle School students are getting out of school and parents are everywhere picking up their kids. The traffic is brutal. (Why are all those parents picking up their kids? I don't remember parents picking up students when I was in junior high school.)

I apparently need to watch my timing because on the day I walked to take the pictures, I also managed to get right in the middle of gaggles (giggles?) of  red tee shirt and sweatshirt-wearing Mason students. The snatches of overheard conversations were amusing and horrifying and probably not that different from when I was a teenager: "Aiden, Christian (or was it Kristen?) wants to beat you up" and ". . .she's only 13 and I don't usually . . .but before I touch her I'm gonna make her sign something . . ." (a budding lawyer? I wondered and worried about that one). Then there was the angelic-looking young woman/girl who turned around and shouted "Hey, homey!" surprising the hell out of me.

More on the rest of my walk home next post...

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!