Behind the Ironic Column

The leaves have returned to the trees.  This always happens and it’s still incredibly amazing.  I love watching them grow — one day there’s a haze of green and very swiftly there are full grown leaves, hiding the limbs I’ve been watching all winter and erasing the buildings from view.  I know there are buildings across the park, but I can’t really see most of them anymore.  I can still see the corner of one of the taller office buildings, but I notice that there’s less of it to see this year than last.  That tree has grown taller since last summer.

Portland is still in the midst of a building boom and there are construction cranes in all directions. You might almost think our city bird was the yellow construction crane rather than the  Great Blue Heron.  I believe I could see five from my window in February.  Now they’re almost all invisible, hidden by the green of the trees.  They’re really still there, I know because I can hear the construction a lot of the time.  Makes me wonder what it will sound like if they ever finish and go away.  Not that that’s likely to happen any time in the near future.

But one of the cranes has grown since last summer as well — even since the winter.  I didn’t expect to be able to see it, but it’s up above the tops of the trees, rising higher on its framework as the apartment building rises higher on the Park Blocks.  I’m sure I’m not imagining this because it’s higher (from my vantage point) than the tall office building I can also see.  And it was definitely not that high last winter.  I can’t remember exactly how high that new building is projected to be so it will be interesting to follow the crane’s growth. 

The crows across the way still seem to be dealing with a nest they built.  I can hear them, and see them swoop into the top of the tree, but can no loner see the fork where they were building the nest.  It’s disappeared behind a cloud of green.  The hummingbirds hardly need a cloud of green to disappear, one largish leaf will do to make them invisible.  I know they’re still hanging out there in their favorite spots, though, because they cruise over to my feeder for a snack every so often.  Before the leaves come, I can spot them in the trees, but not now.

Yesterday the elm seeds decided to take wing in all directions.  The dancing disks carrying the seeds floated up, down, sideways, on the breeze, resembling a cloud of butterflies swirling through the park.  Or, if you ignored the evidence of 90 degree temperatures, like a snowstorm.  They’re prolific — piles of them are lying on steps and balconies and sidewalks.  The germination rate must not be very high or we’d be overrun with elms.  Even the ones that land in my plant pots don’t seem to necessarily sprout.  Not like the acorns that the jays bring to plant for me.  And not like the cranes that sprout all by themselves it seems.

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