Everything With Intention

I decided to walk home a different way tonight and I glimpsed this garden, which I had never seen before. As I was taking the picture the gardener appeared, a women in love if ever there was one. The house built in 1903 suffered a terrible fire last year and they are not living there yet but she is working on the place.

This is the kind of encounter that is priceless to a poet. She brought me into the yard and just babbled at me nonstop for about twenty minutes about the Latvians who planted the pink Portland roses, almost wild and the blue ceramic pot that she broke and incorporated into the path, about the gypsies and serving vodka in tiny pine cups and the windows and the small pond and the electrician who killed her fish last week by feeding them too much…

She promised me a tour of the inside of the house someday and I would like that very much if I am to stay. Maybe if we move to Seattle, as we are planning, I may come back for it. My touchstone to this marvelous neighborhood I have loved so much.