Early Afternoon

There are just two people at the moment: a woman with gray hair, wearing glasses, a red blouse and gray slacks; and a man eating take-out under the laurel, wearing a derby hat, a yellowish-brown patterned shirt and dark blue slacks, drinking a beverage from a clear plastic container.

Clematis vines swirl around the bottom of the trunk of the old maple--the "Sentinel." Two red sports cars are parked, back to back, on the adjacent street. I look again, and one of the cars is gone. The street, with it's well-kept gardens, is a riot of color. There's a great variety of rockery plants, from traditional to exotic, along with a sign for a political candidate. The various colors all have a little yellow mixed in--even the blue of the sky--which I guess is because of the sunlight. It's past noon, but the sun is still near its zenith.

On Union Bay, near the shore that's closest to me, there's a motorboat moving westward.

A jogger--a tall, middle-aged guy in a white shirt and dark blue shorts, with red hair and pale skin--runs through the park.

A locust tree grows from below the trail--from a point maybe about 100 feet below the edge. (Is it a Black Locust?)

A woman in black shorts and a dusty fuchsia halter top, who has a brown, medium-sized short-haired dog on a leash, comes jogging by, then quickly disappears into the distance. And then another jogger--a guy in sunglasses and a gray T-shirt and dark blue running shorts--passes by.

I admire the red doors of the neighboring house that's almost black but not quite. (I think of this color as the color of licorice ice cream.) I've always admired this color combo on this house, which has been the same for years.

The guy under the laurel tree gets up to leave. He throws his garbage into the garbage can. He's holding a newspaper.

There are a few sailboats and motor boats on the lake, and now there's one light-green sailboat on the bay. I hear crows cawing as though it were the end of the world.

A seaplane flies over the bay and the stadium. I'm alone now in the park. A white cabbage moth flutters about. I tune out the sound of the cars passing back and forth behind me.

Two guys in black T-shirts swagger by on the other side of the hawthorns, which are just in from the sidewalk. Then a woman in a red shirt, with black hair and a pale green purse comes by.

A spray of scarlet flowers grows on the steep hillside under one of the neighboring houses to the east. Underneath the scarlet flowers are white ones, then more scarlet ones.

I hear a jet flying overhead. I notice cream-colored clematis blossoms along the edge. Each blossom has four petals, with many spikes in between each two petals. These blossoms grow in clusters of 3 x 3, if that makes any sense. There are nine blossoms per large cluster, and then these large clusters are divided into three sections with three blossoms per section. I'm not sure if this is always the case, but this is what I found in my limited sampling.

A light green aphid lands on my left arm. There's a vaguely sweet, aromatic plant smell in the air. I see one pink blackberry blossom and, in places, a few green berries.

Warm Night

It's a warm night. The Viewpoint looks like a theater set, even more so than in the daytime. The dry lawn and trees up top are illuminated by the modernistic lamps, which cast an orangish light. Their buzz makes me think of the cicadas I used to hear in Gobo--except that it's an even sound instead of being one that gets louder and louder. The stark silhouettes of the ferns and blackberries lining the edge are pale green. Beyond that, almost everything is black. Only in the distance, the bridge is delineated by the lights of the cars traveling across it. It always reminds me of a string of pearls and for some reason makes me feel wistful.

The Viewpoint

As beautiful as it is, the Viewpoint has a certain compositional awkwardness. That's one reason I keep going back to it. I always want to correct it in my mind's eye. I want it to be visually harmonious.

On a warm day like this, the distant space has a little haze in it, and that makes it sort of reverberate. I trace with my eye from Webster Point, in Laurelhurst, around the edge of Union Bay, towards Husky Stadium. I've always been intrigued by the alternation of green and straw-colored tones in this area. One color embraces the next in a series of semicircles, and then this is punctuated by the rounded, dark green forms of trees and bushes.

As I move my gaze backwards, towards myself, I see one layer of green followed by the next--each one a different shade. Today, white morning glories are in bloom on the hillside just underneath the Viewpoint. This is one of the surest signs of summer. And tangled vines and maple tree branches are intertwined. The white stucco house across the street, standing at an interesting angle to the park, reflects the bright sunlight. I like the contrast between the white walls and the red tile roof, complemented by the brown and beige striped awnings. A droll shrub in the front yard has intrigued me for years. I think it's a weeping spruce, if there is such a thing.

A man is asleep under the big old laurel tree. Well, it's a bush that's become a tree. His bike is leaned against the wood enclosure (or would you call it an "encasement"?) that surrounds the laurel, and he looks terribly tired. Blackberry bushes and sword ferns crowd together at the edge of the hillside. I've always loved the fluted curve of the edge and the abruptness of the drop-off.

The big old maple I call the "Sentinel" is already laden with seeds. A lone lupine plant survives on the street side of the slope. There were two or three others, if I remember right, but I think they've been lost to heat or cold, or crushed in mowing.