Underwood Holiday Letter – December 2023

           

Greetings Friends,

Another year full of visitors and flowers, a few trips, a rich life. Here are a few tidbits in images as well as words.

During a February snow, we got to see the back yard in an unusual light.

U-wood back yard in February

Also in February, we spent time in Ashland, Oregon, almost but not quite defeated by the city’s hills. We stayed in a boutique hotel in a room with a bed so high that June needed a stepstool to climb in and out. We attended a silly play at the cabaret theatre and enjoyed being away from the Portland precipitation.

Boutique hotel in Ashland

In March, Mike and Kitty Oechler, June’s brother and sister-in-law, made the trek from their home in Pennsylvania to various parts of the west coast, starting with Portland and environs.

Mike and Kitty at the Barley Mill Pub

During their three-day visit, the Oechlers got to the Columbia Gorge with its waterfalls, snow, sleet, and rain, as well as to Pastini’s Restaurant, where Kitty introduced June to the pleasures of Riesling wines, and the Barley Mill Pub, where Mike got to taste further of Pacific Northwest brews. The easterners also left behind another critter for the U-wood collection; a stone cat joined the terra cotta slug, goat, pig, frog, and chicken that line our south walkway.

Stone Cat Lounges in the Sun

In early summer, June published her book about aging, Sculpting the Mist: Reports from Elderhood, 2019 – 2021. Groups of aging readers have used the book to discuss their own aging processes, and our friends may have learned more they wanted about how we navigated the pandemic. Sculpting the Mist is available in paperback on Amazon and in electronic form on multiple e-book sites, including Kindle. In November, a group of women made a pilgrimage to Monti’s Café (which is featured in the book), where June joined them for an spirited discussion about the book.

Sculpting the Mist: Reports from Elderhood 2019 – 2021

During the summer, we had a visit from Ruth Underwood Cannava and Marilyn Gottschall, Jerry’s cousin. Ruth, Jerry’s niece, took the photo below.

Jan, June, Jer, and Marilyn (on the right)

In August and again in October, we visited the Metolius River, on the east flank of the Cascade Range, staying at the Metolius River Lodges. Jan and Sam, our grandson, joined us there in October to help celebrate our 60^th wedding anniversary.

Jan and Sam biked and hiked while we watched large numbers of salmon and trout, including bullnose trout, swimming, leaping for insects, and, in some cases, heading for their spawning grounds.

Jer, Jan, and Sam on a bench along a trail near the Metolius headwaters

Also in August, we took a quick trip to Dayville, Oregon, to meet friends: Barbara Littlefield, who was RVing from New Mexico, as well as Lia Vella, Bo O’Connor, and Maya, their daughter. We met Lia not quite 20 years ago when she was a ranger at the John Day Fossil Beds and June had an artist’s residency there. 

Moon over “Davy’s Slide,” from the South John Day River near Dayville, Oregon

Our Christmas gift to one another this year was an art print, Let’s Make Our Own Clothes, by a new neighbor, Hibiki Miyazaki. You can see more of her work at http://www.hibikimiyazaki.com/. The print is now a focal point in our living room, talking nicely to prints by our long-time neighbor John Saling. His work can be seen at Twin Dragon Press http://www.twindragonpress.com/.

                 Let’s Make Our Own Clothes

The gardens used the rest of our time in 2023 (along with eating, drinking, sleeping, and reading).

Front yard: double daylily in June

Dogwood blossoms in May

Our front yard in September

We are remembering with great fondness many who are no longer with us, including as of this year June’s sister Mary, Jerry’s brother Mark, June’s favorite cousin Doris, and good friend for more than 60 years, Bette White.

John Saling’s The Moonlight Bear Christmas card from 2022 plus a persimmon from our persimmon tree

Happy holidays to one and all. – J & J

Underwood Holiday Letter – December 2022

Greetings Friends,

Gardens, gardening, gardeners – that filled up 2022, beautifully. Landscaping experts Kyla and Geraldo helped us plant bulbs (around 500 of them) as well as boxes of annuals and pots of perennials. The old ash tree out front was pruned by young arborists, and our favorite pot store, Little Baja, provided us with critter-pot sculptures. Along our gardens, front and back, the City of Portland cited the public sidewalks and those of our neighbors as pedestrian hazards; the resulting negotiations with concrete companies provided many neighborly bonding experiences.

“Jer’s Garden” — Plants off 85th Ave — blooming hellebore and primrose among lots of later blooming foliage.

The Pad, Mid-Spring, Beside the Studio

Frog from little Baja

We did little in the way of travel – walks around the neighborhood, greeting cats, dogs, tykes, parental units, and elders. Overnight in-state trips to Seaside, Ashland, the Oregon Gardens, and the Metolius River were our out-of-town respites from planting and pruning.

U-Wood’s 2021 Holiday Letter

Covid-19 upended any plans we might have had for out-of-state trips in 2021. We stayed home, mostly, though we visited Oregon friends and places, and a few visitors from afar made brief appearances.

And our close neighbors were constant companions.

Dinner with the Salings, two doors down and across the street, is always fun. Susan cooked regularly for us during June’s convalescence from knee-replacement surgery in October and also at many other times. We could never resist her invitations. John and Jer played Go on Friday afternoons throughout the year.

Susan, Jer, and John, sated.

Ice storms coated our house in February
and broke many limbs off our large ash
tree.

We had home-and-away visits with the Graves, members of our Proust reading group, who live close by. Like Susan Saling, Mary loves to cook, and we love her cooking. Dan and Mary adore music and books, and we do too.

Jer & June, Mary & Dan Graves

A rented cabin along the Metolius River, near Sisters, Oregon, offered a three-day August respite from the stay-at-home blahs. Earlier in the summer, June went on a writing retreat at the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, Oregon.

Evening light along the Metolius in August

In September, several of our long-time friends got together at Champoeg Park between Portland and Salem. Left to right: us, Jenny Orr (who organized the picnic), Hilary Hutchinson, Willa Campbell (from Iowa), and Denise Smith.

Good friends, good visit

Jer’s niece Ruth Cannava, from New Hampshire, visited us this summer. So did our Tucson, Arizona, friend Yvonna Roepke.

Niece Ruth: we are always startled when she addresses us as Aunt and Uncle. Some relationships don’t fall into the tidy titles.

Rick Craycraft and Jan Underwood wore masks when they visited us on Jer’s birthday in October. Jan was finishing work on a new novel, Fault Lines, which appeared on Amazon in December. Rick, a carpenter by trade, hikes, climbs mountains, and roots for the Oregon Ducks, as does Jer. Jan and Rick, who live three miles from us, try to visit us on Friday mornings so we can catch up on gossip and rail against the state of the world.

Jan was setting up the Zoom with Sam in California. She did it well, without much help from her friends.

Sam Underwood, our grandson, drove from San Mateo, California, to have Thanksgiving dinner with us. A chemist by training and profession, he enjoys hiking and camping.

The hiker, with gear

June is busy with art and writing projects, and Jer, who turned 80 this year, still occasionally edits Wikipedia.

Ink work on Japanese paper — laid out on plastic to dry.

Lilies in July

Swamp Sunflower in November

Day Lily in summer

Violas in April

Studio Garden in May

Marilyn, Jer’s cousin, visited with Jan and us in July as we were all vaxxed and relaxed.

Jan: “Are you sure of that, Mom?”

Deck Garden in February

Deck Garden in October

Happy holidays to one and all. – J & J

U-Wood Holiday Letter, 2020

The Squeaver

Hi Friends,

The preposterous decoration above was a present from Ron and Janet Lunde some years ago. We call it the Squeaver, part squirrel and part beaver. Illuminated at night by an internal light string, it is part of our Christmas cheer in the outdoor space, The Pad, that we created in the spring in response to Covid-19 limitations. The Pad, a flowerbox-dominated garden space on the driveway in front of June’s art studio, is where we meet friends and relatives, two at a time, masked and distanced.

On February 1, long before Covid-19 flourished in the U.S., we headed south to Arizona via Highway 101 along the Pacific Coast and then southeast and east via secondary roads and freeways to Tucson. We spent about a week there in a small house and then three weeks in a charming cottage in nearby Oro Valley before the escalating coronavirus threat sent us scampering home on March 10.

California Redwoods with Jer for scale

Sunset along I-5 in Woodlands, Calif.

Desert near Oro Valley, Ariz.

More desert near Oro Valley

Biosphere near Oracle, Ariz

FLowering Quince as it greeted us on our return to Portland

After returning to Portland, we revised our habits, stayed home, and focused on our gardens, including construction of The Pad.

The Pad before garden additions

The Pad after garden additions

Rick and Jan visiting The Pad

Autumn view of The Pad from the house

Our habits changed drastically after we returned from Arizona. Nobody except the two of us and two others (one time each) have been in our house since January. Our food comes mainly via Blue Apron and Instacart, delivered to the front porch by people in masks. We have not eaten in a restaurant since March, though we occasionally order take-out from Monti’s Cafe, a sandwich shop near our house, or Pastini’s, a chain with a larger menu than Monti’s.

Outdoor tables at Monti’s

Daylilies in our back yard

Our book group, the Prousties, no longer assembles monthly at our house but instead meets by Zoom. We also Zoom with friends from British Columbia and California as well as with family. We mask and distance for medical appointments and get our prescriptions delivered. Our cooking skills have expanded, and we have modified our exercise routines to suit the times.

Tulips in our front yard

Persimmon leaves on The Pad

Our closest relatives cope with the pandemic’s effects on work, maintenance, and shopping as best they can. Jan, our daughter, is teaching Spanish at Portland Community College via Zoom; Rick, our son-law, has arranged for low-risk freelance work; Sam, our grandson, visits his office when necessary but otherwise works from home.

Tulip from our spring display

Wire art by June

Jer still does a bit of editing for Wikipedia, and June is busy as ever with art and writing projects, of which the latest involved digitizing her award-winning 1980 documentary, Blessed Blessed Mama, and uploading it to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16pu9kvm3e8&feature=youtu.be  

Spiderwort, beside the hedge

For more Underwood news, visit  https://southeastmain.wordpress.com/

Happy holidays to one and all.

– J & J

The Pad, or How I Am Spending My Pandemic

Tulip Season from inside our living room, where we were marooned during the rains of March.

The post prior to this one was written on March 6, 2020, from the middle of a cactus forest near Tucson,  Arizona. It was about then that things for us changed.

We had been watching the new virus spread rapidly around the US. It was in Seattle, our territory. It had moved into northern California. It was ramping up in New York.

March 6, when we took our photos at Catalina State Park, was a Friday. On Saturday, we talked about heading north, getting home before things got worse — and decided that, nah, we had a week or so left on our rental, and we’d stick it out in our warm dry sunny cactus land.

Sunday morning we both woke up early, anxious, — and decided to go home.

And so, no posts about the biosphere in Oracle Valley, Arizona, or photos of our glimpses of the Colorado River and the teasel and ponderosa pines as we zoomed our way to Portland. We got into town on Thursday, the 12th; on Friday the 13th, Jer did a huge grocery shopping, and that was the last day either of us were free to move around in a non-pandemic world. We are officially old and officially vulnerable and unofficially cautious. So we are staying home.

Clearly, it was time for a project — a pandemic project, a project that would take on the challenge, as it were. No in-person shopping  possible, no lingering in plant nurseries and mooning over outdoor furniture. Nope, a project that could be carried out using on-line deliveries and websites — that was what we needed. But it also had to be something to get me (June) outside.

The paved space outside the studio.

So I returned to a problem I’d been circling for six years.

Outside my studio (on the left in the photo above and the right in the photo below) is a wide paved driveway. The driveway has a pleasant entry sitting between two stone walls and going up a gentle slope. But once on top the slope, the driveway turns into a wide, paved, hot, and unprepossessing space. We have seldom used the driveway; friends sometimes leave their cars in it when they fly out of town. But mostly it just sits there, empty and dirty gray, looking ugly.

Over the last six years I have surrounded it with potted plants and let the Japanese maple (top left in the above photo) flow down over the entryway. I grew vines up the garage doors. I had a wooden planter box built out from a triangular bit of soil which holds a persimmon tree. All this, and the concrete still reigned.

This is the driveway from 85th Ave. Our property sits between two streets. It fronts 86th with an old-fashioned narrow driveway and small garage. The big garage-turned-studio is in the back of the house, with a driveway that comes up the slope off 85th Ave.

The front of the studio as it faces the driveway and 85th Ave. The photo is looking out from the house. We managed to plant a lot wherever there was soil, but alas, the pavement remained stubbornly un-plantable.

After looking at that concrete out the back window for a month, I was itching to do something, anything, to relieve its ugliness. In early April we had a warm spell, and I pulled a couple of chairs from storage to sit in the warmer space of the driveway.

Ah, an idea begins to form.

And seeing those chairs and red umbrella on the concrete pad, I found my project. The photos below show how it developed — with lots of on-line searching for materials that would be lightweight, easily assembled, and able to be moved around after delivery. I like my potted plants to sit on rollers so I can “move the furniture” when the spirit moves me. And, the tipping point for me was to realize that the space might be just right for socializing while fulfilling the physical distancing requirements.

I found perfect planter boxes at Wayfair — plastic, meaning lightweight and easy to put together, and not likely to rot in Portland’s rain. They had trellises, which I didn’t think I would use, but which we liked after we saw them. And we ordered a bunch of new rolling pot stands so the boxes can be moved about as we spaced them correctly. We can also move them to the side if we ever need to use the driveway.

The planter boxes right after they were assembled. I was sooo proud.

These two photos look out toward 85th Avenue, which helped turn the ugly space into the feel of a circular room.

Kerri, next door, agreed to shop for annuals (mostly) to fill the boxes with flowers. The local nurseries were deemed essential services and were monitored for safe practices, but we are not yet ready to shop there. So Kerri, much younger, did the work for us, assuring us she shopped safely. Her plant picking skills are marvelous.

More to do, but it’s starting to look like a place to hang out in.

The new round table replaces an older folding table that was not exactly stable. The new table has a glass top which is a bit startlingly red, but will do anyway.

 

I added the smaller brass planters to make tiers and to hide the black space under the gray planters. I filled them with bits of ground cover from around our grounds. They are still a little ragged looking, but are starting to take hold.

 

Kerri’s plantings.

 

On the wall, along the steps leading to the studio door, I put a couple of brass pots that I bought without checking their sizes. I wanted ones at least a foot high; these are 4 inches. Never mind, they are fun sitting on the persimmon tree surround.

The last addition to the space was a couple of golden sword yuccas. Again, ordered online, with a whole set of interfaces between my notion (one golden sword yucca for on the back deck) and what we got (two enormous yuccas, with pots too big for the back deck). Never mind — the yuccas made the final end-stops, door-frames for the Pad, our physical distancing, socializing space.