Neighborhood Walkabout

While the light was pretty terrible for taking photos, the afternoon finally warmed up and demanded a walkabout. I complied. Who wouldn't? In a neighborhood that is full of homes being spruced up before the cold settles in, hammers pounding, paint freshening, all on buildings that often make me pause while having a few homey lustful thoughts, it seemed to me, all in all, not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.

I'm not sure if this is an indoor Coney Island or not but the outside was good enough for me!

One of hundreds of flyer covered telephone poles. There are layers and layers of flyers - 

no doubt a sociology major could get a fine dissertation out of them

You can't help stop and gawk at this intersection on a back street here. The flower dominates, stretching beyond the boundaries, up each street, vibrant and complex. Huh?

The extremely colorful home - think Caribbean Victorian - was too big to really do justice to in a photo, but the surrounding wall was full of mosaics like this.

There was a man doing some work on the house so I asked him - was this an apartment building? A center of some sort? He told me it was owned by a scientist who was quite taken with the Fibonacci Sequence, which includes the Golden Ratio. It's all about math but all about nature's patterns as well. Since math is not my forte (I'm known to say that I am the reason god invented calculators) I'll just take the word of the experts for the truth. Whatever that means, the expression of it in this man's art is pretty wonderful!

Or to quote from the above link, put mathematically:
In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio between the sum of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller. (I don't get this at all and it hurts my head to try, but to others I know,
it makes perfect sense. I'd rather look at a snail - same thing, right?)

If I were a picket fence sort, and I admit, there is still that little 

squiggling part of me drawn to fireplaces and wood floors, big farm like 

kitchens and sturdy furniture, I could be pretty happy in a house like this...

I guess these people like bowling...

This sidewalk is outside of a two story Victorian that is painted a deep DEEP purple.
I run across purple houses and have often tried to take photos of them for Francie, whose love of the color purple is pretty well known. But it never comes out right. I don't know why. So here's the sidewalk instead, which is pretty cool, all by itself

Winter is coming, get out of my way!

In a sea of grape leaves, this lone rose came to the light. 

The yard behind the fence above holds an area with the most beautiful chickens! Every Portlander is legally allowed 3 chickens in the city, with a permit paid, more can be kept. Pretty neat! And, being from Culebra, pretty damn funny. There is even a store called the Urban Farm Store, which is about all things chicken keeping related, along with beekeeping, gardening, beer brewing and more. Part of the strange whimsy of Portland, and another reason that for a city, it ain't half bad.

This morning it is cold again, but the sun is working its way through and I think I'll strike out in the other direction later on. To see what I can see. And all of that. Along with keeping an eye on the wildly unpredictable once again a hurricane Katia...

Have a free range Friday! Do something not so friable.