As we were headed to Portland’s Chinese gardens yesterday morning, I started humming “China Grove,” by the Doobie Brothers. Even though we saw them perform the song a few months ago at the nearby Moda Center, I was still thinking “China Garden” and had trouble working it in to the melody, until my wife corrected me. “It’s China Grove, not China Garden….!” I’m not really sure how she ended this admonition, but this is not atypical of my memory for lyrics (or anything these days for that matter). On the other hand, she remembers every word of every song, but was just glad that I was willing to be her companion on this great outdoors adventure.

As I’ve made perfectly clear, I enjoy staying home, but she wants to be very active on her days off work and is always looking for something to do. We discussed the Coast since it was such a beautiful weekend, but were concerned about Fourth of July traffic. After we took the dogs on their walk/run and I got my 3-mile daily run in, we decided to go to the Lan Su Chinese Garden. It was on our shrinking list of Portland destinations and just a short drive from our house. She reasoned that if I took the time to visit the Lauritzen Botanical Gardens in Omaha during the rain breaks of the College World Series, then I could certainly handle one of our local gardens. She knows that I “hate nature,” but at least step outside to run for 35-40 minutes every day. It’s more than enough of the great outdoors as far as I am concerned, especially after 5 different outings every day for the dogs. I much prefer air-conditioned comfort, so it’s surprising to most people that I have a dark tan. I do put down the top on the convertible and sit on the back deck, so I’m not totally against fresh air and sunshine. We also travel at least one week every month and these adventures typically take me outside my comfort zone.

I spent several hours this morning outside on our back deck cleaning our grill and the white deck rails. My wife has done an outstanding job with her plants, trees and pots trying to provide us with a colorful garden of privacy. We lost all the tall pine trees around it last year, and it appeared naked and exposed before my wife went to work on it. I try not to take-on extra projects in my retirement, but after she served us a steak dinner out there last night I volunteered to improve the nasty look of our grimy, stainless-steel DCS. It’s easy to just put the cover over the top of it and leave the clean-up to the next time. There had been too many next-times, so it deserved my attention. As soon as I started, I began to regret that decision and slowly removed several years of grease and char. The railings surrounding it took another half-hour of me being exposed to the elements. I just wanted to sit down inside and write.

The Lan Su Chinese Garden turned out to be a nice compromise yesterday, because I got plenty of indoor time. It only took an hour-and-a-half with a slow-moving tour guide, who provided us with a lot of good information. About half-way through her enthusiastic efforts, we had to break-off on our own. We did learn that the garden is a joint effort between Portland and sister-city Suzhou, and that Chinese gardens, as opposed to Japanese, are built around homes. I could definitely relate to the fact that this design was planned for an owner who loved to stay home. He surrounded himself with elements of the forest, the mountains, and the water, so he didn’t have to travel to enjoy them. I liked his thinking! 

It was an active weekend that started with dinner with our dogs at Veggie Grill. We watched a movie at home, I Can Only Imagine, spent time with the dogs each morning, went to see Ant-Man and The Wasp at the theater, and enjoyed breakfast at Biscuits before our drive downtown to experience some Chinese philosophy as expressed in a home & garden incorporated as one. I also thought of one more song, “Garden Party,” by Ricky Nelson, but please don’t ask me to remember the words.