Little Free Library at the corner of East ‘L’ Street and 68th Street and is part of the Boze Community Garden. It is a well constructed Little Free Library and has about a dozen books, mostly for children.
On the same parcel, there is the Boze Community Garden. More information about Tacoma’s Community Gardens can be found here.
Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Gardens has the Pecchenino Garden in Gig Harbor registered as a Horticultural Services Division Garden and today it was open to the public for a small donation which was contributed to a charity. The two acre garden surrounds a private house and is amazing. The garden features a stupendous view of Henderson Bay and Cutts Island, a waterfall, a vegetable garden and, of course, flowers.
While visiting dear daughter over Spring Break, I had a rare day to myself and decided to go find the historic Leonard barn. So I stopped at the WSU visitor center and they told me where it is (they were so nice). I drove a long ways on a kind of paved road and missed it, but ended up in Moscow, ID. While there I asked their visitor center where it was. They were really nice too. After spending some quality time in Moscow, I went back on the long, kind of paved road and this time I actually found the barn! I would have guess that it was in Pullman or unincorporated Whitman County, but documentation shows it in Colfax.
The Leonard Barn, is located on Old Moscow Road. It was built in 1917 and restored in 2001. Originally built to house cows, horses, hay and grain, and the owner was a farmer/educator. The restoration included replacing the cupola that was blown off during a windstorm. The barn isn’t actually round, but instead it is a twelve sided polygon. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and the nomination form is here.
I was trying to squeeze the last little bit of summer in today and thought to take the five mile loop through Point Defiance Park. On my way in I noticed the amazing display in the rose garden. So I looked around, parked and took a stroll. It is mostly roses, of course, but there were a fair number of dahlias in bloom and other plants as well.
Seeing a blue poppy has been on my life list and yesterday I finally saw one when I took dear daughter and her friend to the Weyerhaeuser Rhododendron Gardens in Federal Way. We actually went to see the Rhododendrons and while there were many still in bloom I feel like we missed the peak viewing by a couple of weeks. We were having a grandtime walking the trails and were admiring a small pond when a pleasant woman asked if we had seen the blue poppies. Ummm, no, guess we missed that section of trail. Thank you lady! The poppies are taller than I expected and there was some space between the stalks. They were just a little translucent and there was a bit of rain on some of the petals. The photos below feature the blue poppies, but include some other flowers and some Hilltop Artist glass work that is currently on display.
The Grotto, also known as is National Sanctuary of Our Sorrowful Mother, is a 62-acre Catholic shrine and botanical garden which is administered by the Order of Friars Servants of Mary.
The Grotto is lovely and peaceful. By far the most unique part is the elevator, which is built adjacent to the 110′ cliff and has only two stops. I got on at the bottom, the location of Our Lady’s Grotto, a gift store, and the largest of the churches. and got off at the top, the site of the gardens, other smaller churches and religious artwork. The grotto is a rock cave carved into the cliff and feature a life-size marble replica of Michelangelo’s Pieta.
The complex is free to visit, but there is a $5 charge to take the elevator. It’s well worth it. To learn more, look here.
When I told people that went to visit the Lan Su Chinese Gardens in Portland, Oregon they corrected me and explained that I meant Japanese Gardens. No, they are Chinese Gardens, the most authentic Chinese Gardens outside of China. My friends and I got to the gardens by hopping the light rail in the rain. A short walk from our stop took us to downtown Portland’s China Town/Old Town where the gardens occupy a city block. The cities of Portland and its sister city, Suzhou, China worked together to create this tranquil and lovely oasis. The gardens opened in September 2000. They feature 500 tons of rocks from China, but no plants because of import bans. Instead all of the plants were located in Oregon nurseries and gardens. The tea room featured a menu of teas making me wish I could have tried several.
There is a house near Lincoln High School that if full of red and yellow tulips, currently in full bloom. It is startling the number of tulips! What a labor of love that I appreciated seeing this fine Easter Day!
I needed a change of scenery and the Skagit Tulip Festival is in progress, so off I went. It was a little early for the full effect, but the daffodils are in full bloom. In search for actually tulips, I stopped at Tulip Town in Mt. Vernon. For $5 per person, there is easy parking, a wonderful display building with background paintings of Holland, a great outside display with a windmill and huge kites and tulip fields in bloom. There is also the possibility of a tractor pull.
I also snapped a photo of a field of daffodils which isn’t in Tulip Town.
I’ve been wanting to visit Kelsey Creek Farms Park at 13204 SE 8th in Bellevue for a while, so on Saturday after dropping off dear daughter for her ride back to college I stopped by. There was a birthday party going on and plenty of children in the under five crowd. The 150 acre original site had been a forest and was developed as the Twin Valley Dairy Farm in the 1920s. Despite pressure from real estate developers, in the 1960s 80 acres of the property was sold to the City of Bellevue for use as a park. It receives over 200,000 visits a year. ThePark’s website is here.
The log cabin is the Frasier House, built in 1888 and moved to Kelsey Creek Farms Park in 1974. It was built by two Norwegian woodsmen and lived in for a short time. Mostly it was used as storage.