Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm Pictures

Today I went out to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm with some friends... Tonight I taught a class at the glass school... I am very tired now, but I thought I'd share some pictures from the farm (I took 943 pictures!!)

Picture Taking Today

After a long weekend at the market working, today I played hookie with Tim and we ran errands and walked around different parts of town taking pictures. The cherry blossom trees on the waterfront were calling to my camera. They were saying "Leah come take pictures!!"
Look at all this gorgeousness! I love the design of this park.

Its the Portland Oregon version of the avenues of cherry blossom trees in Washington DC. Beautiful pink and white flower laden trees adorn the waterfront on the North side of Burnside in Waterfront Park. I love this picture with the benches. The park benches have beautiful scroll work with details of cast roses.

I took a lot of pictures as always. There are more on Flickr.

First Weekend at the Portland Saturday Market 2010

The trees were full bloom, the weather on Saturday was sunny and mid 60's. It was beautiful and everyone in Portland came down to the waterfront this weekend! The trees above are on Naito Parkway on the corner in front of the fire department. They are so beautiful. Check out that magnolia! Its already in full magnificent tulip-tea-cup-style bloom!

The Oregonian did a great article Sunday morning about the 2010 Grand Opening of the market - Judi (pictured above in her booth Curly Girl Jewelry) was featured in the article among many good friends and great market vendors! Check out the new glass display case that Judi built (pictured above encasing the bowls of lentils), its great: no one can set their coffee cups on it (they will slide off the top), she can reach in from behind to access jewels to show customers, and best of all no more little kids sticking their fingers into the lentils and happily burying the jewelry. Brilliant. Well done Judi!
Here is a picture from south of the market in Waterfront Park. I had forgotten to put my parking pass on the car (which was parked in the parking garage a few blocks away) so I had to run to the car mid-day and produce this parking pass (whew - no ticket! yeah for my swiss-cheese memory!) and on the way back I took this picture. The market was packed. We had a record breaking day. Between photographers coming out to take pictures of the cherry blossoms along the waterfront, college kids coming down to have lunch, tourists coming down to check out the local duds, and locals enjoying the beautiful weekend - the place was bopping! The food court has never been more popular, most vendors ran out of food (this is unheard of!) by mid-day. It was great to see so many people enjoying the Portland Saturday Market. Kudos to Reid Decker for doing a great job on the advertising!! Thanks Reid - well done!
I wish I took more pictures of the cherry blossoms. You can see them in the background here, with the Steel Bridge behind them. I think its supposed to start raining tomorrow, so I might have missed my chance to get a good picture. They are amazing (and blooming way early this year!)

Ode to Garden Mobile

I feel like summer is rounding out... kids are going back to school... my tomatoes are all ripening getting eaten, my beans are almost done for the season. Its been so hot that a lot of my flowers are sorta tortured by now... soon I'll have to start planting more bulbs for next spring (I forgot to do that last year- so I've got a big box of bulbs I've got to plant this year - when is the right time?)

Jan and I have created a flower mobile that I had to share here on my blog.

The colors are reflective and shiny, the mobile is a garden of many different flowers that Jan has carved over the years. We've done a garden mobile before (which is exquisite!) but this is the first time we've printed the flowers in colors (the other garden mobile is monochromatic)

I like how the red pops, and I colored the stems of the flowers green. I was inspired by the Orchid plate that we made recently.

In these last two pictures I tried to capture how the color is vibrant and metallic.

Orchid Plate

This orchid plate that Jan and I made is simply gorgeous, if I say so myself :)

It was difficult for me to capture on film... the plate is clear glass, the orchid within it has a deep red flower that sparkles in the sun, and the stem is a lovely chalky green. Jan really outdid herself with this carving (all our printed plates are made with Jan's hand illustrated carved linoleum blocks).
The story behind this carving (because everything has a story!)...

the story goes that a gal came down to the Portland Saturday Market and got to talking to Jan about doing an illustration of an orchid. She came back later that day with a small orchid in a glass Pom cup (you know the ones with the lids that the Pom company no longer bottles their tea in - I love those cups, I would buy the tea just to accumulate the cups, but I digress!) and she wrote down care instructions for Jan in her journal.

The market is full of fun little encounters like this, great stories behind every little piece of art...
Anyhow, this is the carving that she ended up creating from her illustrations. I love it. And it looks quite luscious trapped in glass, especially in this glossy metallic red.
I really struggled to get a good photograph though... so instead you get this whole smorgishboard! There are many aspects the camera simply refused to capture (especially with my lack of camera skillz)... the color of the flower, the delicious saturation of the stem and leaves... ah well, I tried. Come by the market to check it out in person if you'd like! :)

Sauvie Island Strawberry Picking

I went to Sauvie Island today to pick strawberries.

warm from the sun, delicious sweet strawberries... yummmmmm.most of them were green still, seems this year everything is 2 weeks late
but there were plenty to nibble and praiseKruger's Farm now has animals :)
there was a fat pregnant pig sleeping in a barnand chickens running aroundwhat a cute funny looking chick eh?!There were peonies blooming in a fieldI took lots of pictures of the round buds just ready to burstI find the round shape of the peony bud to be so amazingly gorgeous. I love the way it unfurls to become this sweet sultry perfumed huge flower. They are amazing. The bugs seemed to agree, in many of my pictures there were flies or ants or bees hanging out on the buds.

Spring Flowers Mobile

I want to share pictures of the various mobiles I have around my house - this particular one hangs right above my head as I sleep.

With all the trees blooming as spring warms up, I have been taking lots of pictures of flowering branches... so I thought it was too perfect to share a picture of this mobile I made years ago.

I was inspired to make some sort of cherry blossom type of mobile, so I made lots of different five petaled flower beads, all about the size of a nickle. Then I took some thin wire and fixed the beads to the ends and went about trying to make a mobile... it ended up different than I had intended (at first I was thinking some sort of chaotic chandelier of blossoms...) but that proved to make my head hurt trying to manifest. I wanted to use thin wire that was not too stiff to add some character, so the wire was pretty soft. In order to make the "branches" stiffer I wound the wires together making mini-clusters and then free-form branches out of a few clusters. Wound together like this the wire was stronger, but quickly the mobile grew and before long it was quite large and very simple. Not chaotic like I had intended, but very calm and beautiful none the less.

I was then left with a lot of extra flower beads, so one thing I made out them was this fun tree.

In the end I was happy with my creations, but sorta disappointed as well. Its not really something that I could ship or package, the wire is too pliable... but if I used a stiffer steel I wouldn't get the organic branch look that is possible with the thin stuff... I could do a really amazing installation in a gallery, but its not something I could really sell online and just put in a box and ship. Once hung it takes a bit of tweaking and standing back and staring at it, then playing with the branches a bit more, and then its just simple and perfect. And the tree was fun to make, I have always like the wire trees that are made from twisted up fine wires...

So long story short, its a one-of-a-kind sorta creation. And so it hangs in my bedroom, treasured by me. :)

More Tulip Pictures

I went and took a ka-zillion more pictures of tulips at the Wooden Tree Tulip Farm.

The farm was a-buzz with people and their fancy cameras and cute babies. I couldn't help myself from taking a few shots of all the other people taking pictures. The site of these millions of tulips all bloomed at once is just really fantastic. Rippling waves of bright colors. Nearly everything was full bloom (the black tulips seemed to be the last to burst, they still hadn't) and there were plenty of orange tulips for me to photo!Afterwards we drove out thru Silverton to Silver Springs Falls... such beautiful countryside, happy cows and many many farm fields. I think Silverton is one of the cutest little towns in Oregon, its just so darn quaint. Oh and the Falls are so incredible. We went for a short hike and I couldn't stop taking pictures of flowers, they were popping up everywhere! Its spring! My camera was not co-operating at the falls though, it simply did not want to focus properly on all the little bitty spring flowers. Frustrating. But I took some 200 pictures at the tulip farm, so it was all good. :)

I took a lot of pictures of the various orange tulips. yummy orange.There were a few frustration-with-the-camera moments... I am getting anxious to use my new camera (new TBA photography equipment... oooooh I can't wait to get a powerful camera in my hands!!! by the end of the week I might not be dreaming anymore!)
This yellow and purple shot was my favorite from the day. I like how silky the purple tulip looks against the fuzzy background of yellow. That farm (the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm) is simply amazing. Rolling fields of color. Made me feel like I was in Holland. Its the stuff dreams are made of!

If you are interested in seeing more pictures I took, check them out on flickr(click here)

Two of my favorite things...

My Fat Cat that is oh so hairy.

I spent 1/2hour brushing him out yesturday and the day before I took a pair of scissors to his dreads.

And my magnolia tree - it blooms right outside my bedroom window. Spring is my favorite time of year, and this magnolia tree always welcomes the season so brilliantly... just as my daffodils start to fade in the front yard, the magnolia springs to life with pink and white.

Tulip Festival

Today I wanted to take pictures of spring flowers. I love daffodils, they are one of my favorite flowers, and this year they were a little late to bloom here around Portland because of the cold winter. I found a daffodil farm not to far from home and called them up a few weeks ago, the website indicated visitors were welcome to come and pick flowers (or take pictures) but when I talked to them on the phone I was told that to wait till early April.
This morning I wrote down directions to the farm and Tim accompanied me out into the Oregon countryside to check out the flowers. It was a beautiful day and an incredible drive. I couldn't ask for better weather! And it was a great excuse to go out and soak up some sun.We were distracted by a sign on the road out in Hubbard that said "Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm"... the daffodil farm had turned out to be sorta quiet and didn't seem open to the public. So we turned around and went to down the road to the tulip farm. Suddenly we came upon a huge parking lot with a small fee to enter and a whole festival of tulips going on. Complete with a crafts show, sausages and curly fries, rides for kids and a couple of gift shops. And flowers - fields and fields of flowers. The tulips seemed to have begun to greet spring with all the sun that we got over the weekend. Some were open, although most of the fields were about to pop, looking green and ready. It would be neat to see this place in about a week, the rainbow of colors would be amazing I am sure! They are even having a photography contest with multiple categories to enter (macro shot, tractors and something else) so I just had a ball taking lots and lots of pictures. It was beautiful.
In the end I did get to see many daffodils as well - the tulip farm had quite a few, some on purpose and some seemed purely voluntary rebels, popping up in the meticulous rows of tulips, standing taller than the rest, saying "Hi Sun!"
In fact, in the fields that we drove past, many were wheat fields that looked like perfect grass fields, there were the occasional volunteer daffodils standing proud like little yellow flags. So cute.

I posted more pictures on my flickr account... I just had to share here on my blog as well. The farm (Wooden Shoe) is in Hubbard, Oregon. Not too far outta town and only $5/per car to enter the festival($10 on weekends). It was wonderful.