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We have had a very rainy spring. I haven’t had the energy nor the motivation to work in the yard and when we’ve had so many sporadic downpours, hiking has been at a minimum. So after two years in Portland, we finally made it to the science center, OMSI. We decided to join, so if you come visit us you can be our guests of honor. We only scratched the surface at our first visit but there was an extensive exhibit on prenatal growth and pregnancy, which was fascinating, especially to me. We saw some dinosaurs and played with some interactive displays and it was a good day. I look forward to seeing something at the OMNI max theater, as those science films are fun, interesting and on the big curved screen. I do have to say that the membership offer is not as amazing as the Seattle Science Center (we were members there for a year, once upon a time) but it’s still worthwhile if we go more than 3 times, which I think will be totally doable.

This past winter we signed up with Friends of Trees, a wonderful non-profit organization. They offer trees at a great price (subsidized if you plant them on sidewalk strips) and have a big planting party where you actually plant your trees alongside your neighbors and the FOT coordinators, who know what they are doing. We were able to meet some new neighbors, which is wonderful since we haven’t met too many people in our neighborhood. They all live pretty close to us so it’s fun to check on their trees when we are walking in the neighborhood. We decided upon two tri-color beeches for the front strip and along the side of the house we planted a strawberry marina tree (beautiful bark) and a Japanese snowbell (both wildlife/bird attractants). I look forward to watching these trees grow and provide a little shade. The next step when I have the energy (and when it stops raining) is to kill the grass on the strips around the trees and plant ground covers. I want to have a mat of vinca under the beech and the side strip is still in progress. Hooray for less mowing!