Brighton Playfield

Brighton Playfield/Playground in October 2013

Brighton Playfield is a fairly large park with more terrain & changes in elevation than you would expect from a playfield.  It covers more than 12 acres including a tennis court, basketball courts, restrooms, a playground & a large playfield.  It is attached to Aki Kurose Middle School.  This very pleasant space is often used by people in the Brighton neighborhood as a place to walk.   It is located at 6000 39th Avenue S in the Rainier Valley.  

English immigrants who purchased lots here in the 1880s named the neighborhood for a resort town in England.  The City of Seattle annexed the area in 1907. The Olmsted Brothers architectural firm recommended a park for the Brighton neighborhood in 1908.  In 1911, the residents of Brighton petitioned the Parks Board for a playfield. A series of bond issues resulted in the purchase of the Brighton Playfield in 1913. For 20 years, the playfield site was used as a construction camp for street graders, for gardens, and as a garbage dump. Development of the park began in 1930. In 1948, the Seattle School Board selected a site south of the Brighton Playfield for a junior high school. Part of the Olmsted Plan was for schools to be sited next to playfields to provide recreation for students. This information comes from Seattle Neighborhoods: Brighton Beach at HistoryLink.org.
 

Dishman Hills Natural Area

Amelanchier alnifolia (Sarvisberry)


Pinus ponderosa (Ponderosa Pine) in the Dishman Hills Natural Area October 2012


Dishman Hills Natural Area October 2012


Pinus ponderosa (Ponderosa Pine) in the Dishman Hills Natural Area October 2012


Mahonia aquifolium (Oregon Grape)  All photos taken in October 2012.

Click here for more photos of Dishman Hills Natural Area.

The Dishman Hills Natural Area is a mixed Ponderosa Pine & Douglas Fir forest maintained by the Spokane County Parks and Recreation Department.  It consists of 530 acres just outside the City of Spokane.  It is a beautiful native forest, remarkably free of alien species.  The rock formations are also quite impressive.

Ponderosa Pine forest generally occurs on the driest sites supporting conifers in the Pacific Northwest. It is widespread & variable, appearing on moderate to steep slopes in canyons, foothills, & on plateaus or plains near mountains. Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa) & Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) are the most common evergreen trees in this habitat.  The undergrowth can include dense stands of shrubs or, more often, be dominated by grasses, sedges, &/or forbs.  In the Dishman Hills Natural Area I saw Amelanchier alnifolia (Sarvisberry) Balsamorhiza sagittata (Arrowleaf Balsamroot) Mahonia aquifolium (Oregon Grape) Physocarpus malvaceus (Mallow-leaf Ninebark) Symphoricarpos albus (Common Snowberry) & quite a lot of grass.

Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa) is one of the most widely distributed pines in western North America.   Pacific Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa var. ponderosa) ranges from the Fraser River of southern British Columbia, south through the mountains of Washington, Oregon & California. In the northeast part of its range it extends east of the Continental Divide Montana & south to the Snake River Plain in Idaho.  It is found primarily on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains & in mountainous areas of eastern Washington.

Seattle Japanese Garden

All photos were taken in September 2014.

Click here for more photos of the Seattle Japanese Garden.

The best known Japanese garden in the Seattle area is located the Washington Park Aboretum.  In 2010 the Seattle Japanese Garden celebrated its 50th anniversary.  In 1924 the Olmsted Brothers designed the University of Washington Arboretum.  By 1937 it was agreed that the arboretum needed a Japanese garden, a project not realized until end of the World War II, for obvious reasons.  The Arboretum Foundation began raising funds for the creation of the Japanese Garden in 1957. The Foundation asked Tatsuo Moriwaki of Tokyo Metro Parks to help guide the process. He selected Kiyoshi Inoshita & Juki Iida to design the project.  The design was finished in 1959.  Under the supervision of Juki Iida & Nobumasa Kitamura, construction began in March 1960 & was completed within four months. More than 500 large granite rocks from Snoqualmie Pass were used. Construction was done mostly by local Japanese-American gardeners including William Yorozu as the prime contractor for plants, Richard Yamasaki for stone setting, and Kei Ishimitsu for Garden structures.  The Seattle Japanese Garden was the earliest postwar public construction of a Japanese garden on the Pacific Coast.  It had a strong influence on the design of future Japanese gardens throughout the region.  The original tea house was burned by vandals in 1973 & reconstructed by Yasunori (Fred) Sugita in 1981.  A new gatehouse & community meeting room were completed in 2009.  The bronze gate was designed by Seattle sculptor Gerard Tsutakawa.

September in Seattle

The South Lake Union Streetcar at Lake Union Park

Old & new buildings side by side.

 Old buildings soon to be demolished.

These photos were taken in South Lake Union in September 2014.  This area is converting rapidly from warehouses to office buildings for the high tech industry, mostly Amazon.

September 2014 in Seattle was warmer & wetter than normal.  The mean temperature was 64.8F/18.2C.  The normal mean temperature is 61.3F/16.3C.  Total precipitation was 2.23 inches/56.64mm.  Normal precipitation is 1.5 inches/38.1mm.  The highest temperature was 90F/32.2C on 9/6, the lowest 50F/10C on 9/13.  There was one day with heavy rain, 3 days with rain, 13 days with light rain, 13 days with fog (one of them with visibility at less than 1/4 mile) 10 cloudy days, 9 partly cloudy days & 11 fair days.  It was a pleasant month with an unusual number of fair days & some beautifully foggy mornings.

Lakewood Playground

Lakewood Playground in September 2013

The charm of the Lakewood Playground lies in its small scale in a quiet neighborhood in southeast Seattle.  It has the appearance of a village green, surrounded by attractive homes in this prosperous area on the shore of Lake Washington.  Lakewood is unfamiliar to many people even in Seattle, or is thought to be a part of the Seward Park neighborhood, which it borders to the north.  The park covers 2 acres with a play area, restrooms, soccer & baseball/softball fields.  It is located at 5013 S Angeline Street.  Angeline Street was named after Princess Angeline, the daughter of Chief Seattle.  She was born nearby in a longhouse of the Duwamish Tribe on Lake Washington.

Lakewood was originally a peninsula on the western shore of Lake Washington, formed by a long inlet called Wetmore Slough (the present location of Genesee Park) that extended more than half a mile south from the lake & turned west toward Columbia City.  The thick forest provided the cedar trees that the Duwamish used for their longhouses, but the tribe does not appear to have established a permanent camp here. During summer months, families erected shelters woven from cattails on the shore of the lake where they caught fish and dug roots. During the winter, they lived in elaborate longhouses on Pritchard Island, not far to the south.  Not until a bridge carried Lake Washington Boulevard S across the mouth of the slough in 1912 & a trolley line opened on S Genesee Street did the community gain good communication with the rest of the city.  This information comes from Seattle Neighborhoods: Lakewood at HistoryLink.org.

Jim Ellis Freeway Park

Freeway Park in September 2013

Jim Ellis Freeway Park opened to the public on July 4, 1976.  It was built on a lid over the Interstate 5 freeway along the the Washington State Convention Center, to which it connects.  At 5.2 acres, it is by far the largest park in Downtown Seattle.  It was designed by the San Francisco Bay Area landscape architecture firm Lawrence Halprin & Associates under the design direction of Angela Danadjieva.  The park is dominated by a huge waterfall set among a series of plazas that are linked & enclosed by concrete planters, walls & smaller water features.  This is a very well-designed park with pleasant open spaces, plenty of shade from mature trees & a broad walkway that runs throughout.  There are benches & small lawns for sitting & reclining. It's a good place for a picnic lunch. The park & especially the waterfall are among the most interesting features of Downtown Seattle.  You can find the park at 700 Seneca Street.

For the first few years of its existence, Freeway Park was considered a success. It was architecturally & structurally innovative. It also showed how to make the most use out of limited urban space. Landscape architects from throughout the world came to see it.  It became popular with area employees & residents.  But over the years, the park became a bit seedy.  Vegetation matured & cut sight lines.  The park became darker & more difficult to navigate. The homeless became frequent park users.  Drug dealing was a problem. Security patrols were improved & illegal activity lessened. Concrete walls were reduced & trees were pruned to open up views & add more daylight.  There was general improvement of overgrown & deteriorated landscaping.  And all of those big trees are a welcome sight in the urban core.  I highly recommend a visit.
 

Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park

Basalt rocks from ancient lava flows

Erigeron (fleabane)

Artemisia tridentata (big sagebrush)

Plants of the Sagebrush Steppe

Petrified elm.  All photos were taken in October 2012

Click here for more photos of Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park.

Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park covers 7,470 acres in central Washington near the Columbia River north of Vantage.  The trail here is a 3-mile loop through an ecosystem known as Sagebrush Steppe, a highly xeric community of plants including big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) bitter-brush (Purshia tridentata) parsnip-flowered buckwheat (Eriogonum heracleoides) gray ball sage (Salvia dorrii) & bluebunch wheatgrass (Agropyron spicatum).  In October, the landscape was especially dry, although I was surprised to find some of the sagebrush in bloom.

15 million years ago, this area was filled with swamps & shallow lakes surrounded by forests. Swamp cypress grew on the edges of the lakes. Ginkgo, maple, walnut, oak, sycamore, and horse chestnut grew on the hillsides.  Douglas fir, hemlock, & spruce grew nearby at higher elevations. Logs became buried in mud. 10 to 15 million years ago, lava floods spread over the area from fissures in the earth, covering the logs & allowing them to petrify. 15,000 years ago, during the last ice age, an ice sheet blocked the Clark Fork River & created Glacial Lake Missoula.  Periodically, the ice dam would fail, resulting in large floods that rushed down the Columbia River drainage, through the Columbia River Gorge & out to the Pacific Ocean. These floods exposed the petrified logs. Highway workers began finding petrified wood in 1927 while working on the Vantage Road. Crews from a federal Civilian Conservation Corps camp at Vantage began extensive excavations in 1936. The park was opened to the public in 1938.
 

August in Seattle

From top to bottom: summer squash, cherry tomato, purple broccoli, sunflower & chard.  These are all good choices for Seattle gardens.  Very large tomatoes ripen late in the season, if at all.  Cherry tomatoes produce much earlier.  Chard was bountiful this year.  All photos were taken at the Rainier Vista Sunrise Garden.

August 2014 in Seattle was significantly warmer & wetter than usual.  The mean temperature was 69.1F/20.6C, a full 3 degrees higher than normal.  Total precipitation was 1.81 inches/45.97mm, 0.93 inches/23.62mm more than normal.  The highest temperature was 96F/35.6C on 8/11, the lowest 52F/11.1C on 8/21.  There were 3 days with rain, 10 days with light rain, 1 day with hail, 9 days with fog (2 with visibility at less than 1/4 mile) 7 cloudy days, 14 partly cloudy days & 10 fair days.  The good thing about August 2014 was that there were only 5 days over 85F/29.4C degrees.  The extra rain helped keep the landscape green & lush.  Things usually begin to turn brown in August.   

Picardo Farm P-Patch

Picardo Farm P-Patch in September

Picardo Farm P-Patch in September

Picardo Farm P-Patch in September

Picardo Farm P-Patch in September

Picardo Farm P-Patch in September

Picardo Farm P-Patch is the oldest community garden in Seattle.  The P in p-patch stands for Picardo.  The Picardo family, Italian immigrants who arrived in Seattle in the 1890s, bought this property in 1922 in what had been the Ravenna Swamp & farmed it until 1962.  The swamp was essentially a peat bog & the soil here remains exceptionally rich in organic matter.  It is one of only 2 historical farms preserved in the City of Seattle.  This p-patch & the p-patch program were established in 1973.  There are 302 plots on 98,000 square feet owned by the Seattle Department of Parks & Recreation.  It is located in the Wedgwood neighborhood of northeast Seattle along 25th Avenue NE between NE 80th & 82nd Streets. 

In 2013, resistance to the new policy limiting the size of individual plots was centered at Picardo Farm.  It was said that one gardener there had more than 2,000 square feet of space, 10x the size of the average plot.  The P-Patch Program sets maximum & minimum plot size for each p-patch based on 2 criteria, the average wait for a plot & the p-patch size. In December 2013, 45 gardeners in 13 gardens (2% of all gardeners) had to reduce plot sizes.  Plot sizes are generally 50 to 200 square feet.

Carmelita Street in San Francisco

Waller Street at the corner of Carmelita Street.

Carmelita Street in San Francisco in April 2014.

Carmelia Street is my favorite street in San Francisco.  I used to live not far from here in the Lower Haight & just a bit farther away at Alamo Square.  My preferred hotel, the Metro Hotel, is very near Carmelita Street, which serves as a major pedestrian thoroughfare to & from the N Judah Muni Metro light rail train stop at the top of Duboce Park, & between the Castro & the Lower Haight.  The N Judah will take you all the way from the Embarcadero to Ocean Beach.  Carmelita Street is about half a block long between Waller Street & Duboce Park.  There is no outlet at the Duboce Park end of the street for vehicular traffic, but a pedestrian path across the park.  The 16 houses on Carmelita Street are all good examples of San Francisco Edwardian architecture from about 1900 to 1910, & all very nicely maintained.  In addition, the gardens along the street are exceptionally lovely.  The one fully landscaped driveway is wonderful.  It serves as a parking space.  We can all learn something from that.