I like fun.

        This spring we discovered Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden. It’s a gorgeous peaceful haven filled with cascades of colorful flowers, water features, ducks+geese+other birds and winding paths to walk. It’s about a 10 minute walk from our place and we take Roscoe there frequently. We wander through the gardens and watch people feed the ducks and sit on benches to chat or read our books. I’ve also taken a bazillion photos. You can check out my facebook album to see more. The place is seriously beautiful. The gardens are now on my list of places to take out-of-town visitors.

        Most of the ponds are lined with stone walk-ways. Roscoe tends to scale the ledges on his hunt for ducks. He’s become very stealth as he creeps along the narrow walk-ways. I keep thinking one of these days he’s going to lose his balance and take a nose-dive into the water.

        This fear, I’m certain, stems from the time I fell into a reflective pond in DC.  You know the one. It’s long and narrow and reflects the Washington memorial (it’s where Forest and Jenny reunite in Forest Gump). If you’re having trouble visualizing, I’ve provided an image. I was about 8 years old and on a family vacation in DC. We were cruising down the length of the pond, on our way to see the next sight. I was excited – probably overly excited – about the trip. I always longed to visit the places that I’d read about in books. I remember thinking that I was the luckiest girl in America as I carried my Instamtic filled with a vacation’s worth of photos. I was skipping down the narrow marble boarder of the reflective pond when disaster struck. My saltwater sandal caught the water-side ledge and I tipped into the pond. The left side of my body shot through the mossy-murky water and the thick layer of bottom sludge as my hand and knee banged hard onto concrete floor. I sucked in a mouthful of dirty water that muffled my howl as I heard my camera crack on the marble side. It was strapped to the wrist of my right hand that was gripping the wall ledge (I had some weird fear that I was going to get sucked into the abyss). I’d saved my soon-to-be photos from the water, but cracked the flash, the bottom of the camera and the 110 film. This last part I didn’t find out until the film was developed to reveal rainbow-striped images of the family at the white-house and in front of count-less monuments.

        My dad (he seems to be the unsung hero of all my stories) in a svelte move reached down and scooped me out, soaking wet and sobbing. I was of course, mortified that the entire world of Washington DC saw me take that graceful dip. I was half-drenched and had a broken camera. It was a very sad afternoon, but it makes a funny memory.

        These days when I watch Roscoe scamper down the stone water boarders at the rhododendron gardens, I’m frequently taken back to that moment when I fell in that reflective water. Thank goodness he’s not as clumsy as me and is totally capable of staying on dry-ground.

        If you’ve never been, or it’s been awhile, put the rhododendrons on your list of fun things to do in pdx this summer. The garden seems to be open all the time. There’s a $3 admission charge March – Labor day, Thursday through Monday between 10am and 6pm. The rest of the time it’s free.

Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden
SE 28th and Woodstock Blvd