Behind the Pink Door

Add caption

Independent Bikes

Another Fourth of July picnic in the Newport Hills neighborhood.

Barbie

Hats

Babies

Training wheels

Streamers

Trio

Pink

Bowtie

Out cold

Flags

Keeping it clean

Shade

Backstop

Pilings/\sgnilip

Shroud of Factoria

The local P-patch continues to grow (spring being what it is), but April weather is also what it is: notoriously fickle. So the young plants must be swathed in cloth to keep the frost off. A perfect example of the beauty of a bit of blankness. Again I took the liberty of punching these shots up with a little watercolor effect.

Add caption

Seven Plots

The local community garden is just about ready for the year's first planting. I love the elements of these spaces before they get populated by flowers and vegetables. I gave these a painterly treatment to emphasize the blocks of color, texture, and shape. Otherwise they run the danger of looking like a bunch of snapshots of plywood and dirt, bricks and plastic.

Something There Is...

...that does not love a fence, to paraphrase Robert Frost. Here are three paths (of varying upkeep) in my neighborhood that one must go to a certain length to access. The last one is so popular as to have engendered a full-blown "path of desire."

My Dear Watson

At last the sun came out on a weekend and I had some spare time to go shooting in the neighborhood. Here are three nearly monochromatic views of the grounds - literally - of the local elementary school where my wife Robin works. The playfield looks rather like a lunar landscape littered with mysterious hieroglyphics and artifacts.

Semi-festive hemi-bollards

The road to Espanol

The Western Hemisphere in danger of going down the drain

What would an alien Sherlock make of such a landscape?

Holiday Backstage

This weekend, the neighborhood's annual holiday bazaar materialized briefly in the vast space once occupied by the Red Apple grocery. I was there in the early hours before the throngs showed up to shop for jams, candles, scarves, greeting cards, jewelry, and other mostly locally produced gifts. As always, I was more entranced by what lay behind the scenes, in the bowels of the old store: vacancies within the larger vacancy, relics of commerce.

Palimpsest

Container, Tyee Ringdall Middle School, Bellevue WA

Growing the Garden

Shots from the Holy Cross Lutherans' community garden constructed this summer in our neighborhood. Design by Pomegranate.

Shangri-La

If it weren't for a couple of observant rugrats, I would have missed this tarnished gem in the forest.

In fact I have missed it, many a time; it's on the Shangri-La Trail, on Radar Peak, in the Cougar Mountain Wildland near my house, where periodically hike with Stella, our ChocoWeimaDor I (and other less furry members of the family).

This hunk o'steel is evidently a relic dating from the Cold War when there was an anti-aircraft base on the top of the mountain (really a high hill, overlooking Lake Washington toward Seattle).

I've Googled extensively trying to ascertain what kind of car this is/was, but the closest I can come is that cars around 19423 had the requisite amount and configuration of chrome. This one is missing all the identifying logos and insignia.

Elephants' Graveyard

Post-War Target Practice (since the Russians never made an appearance)

Frank Gehry's Dream (thanks to Robin for the idea)

Apres-Midi d'un Plymouth