The garden 20 years ago, when it still had a good view of the city!

Last Wednesday we decided to take a break from all the working and organizing and planning of lately and go for a little road-trip.
We'd talked about re-visiting Portland's rose-garden, where we'd last been about 20 years ago, and since it was a beautiful sunny day we went for it.
The International Rose Test Garden is a rose garden in Washington Park in Portland, Oregon, right next to the Japanese Garden and the Zoo.



There are over 10,000 rose bushes of approximately 650 varieties and they bloom from April through October with the peak in June, depending on the weather.

   

New rose cultivars are continually sent to the garden from many parts of the world and are evaluated on several characteristics, including disease resistance, bloom formation, color, and fragrance.



Portland's nickname is 'City of Roses’ and the garden is it's signature landmark.

It is the oldest continuously operating public rose test garden in the United States and draws an estimated 700,000 visitors annually.

The garden is situated on a hill above the city and parking close by can be an issue, since there are not that many spaces available. We planned to be there quite early, around 9.30, which was a good thing because we snatched up the very last one!

The entrance is free but you pay $2/2hrs to park, which is unheard of for Portland!

Well, we definitely managed to hit the garden at it's peak bloom! 

Pretty much all the roses were blooming which made for an absolutely stunning view down the hill and over all the flowerbeds that were just bursting with colors!

It took us about 2 hours to leisurely stroll the meandering paths, taking in all the sights and especially all the smells!

These last ones were some of my favorites, with their yellow buds that turned into orange/pink flowers!

We'd brought some coffee and cookies and found a sunny spot to sit down. The weather was beautiful, but this early in the morning it was still somewhat cool in the shade :

  

Closely watched by a whole bunch of, rather tame, ground-squirrels ... they were happily munching on some juicy new shoots but they were eyeing our cookies ...

                                                

We walked the steps down to the end of the garden and than back up again to the top from where you can overlook the whole garden and from where you used to have a view over the city (like the picture at the top of this post, which I stole from the web).
In the 20 years we hadn't been there the trees had definitely grown and nowadays you only have a few little peaks of the city in the far distance :

By than it had warmed up considerably, and we sat down again for a while for some more coffee on one of the benches where you can overlook the whole garden.

We watched quite a lot of groups of volunteers (mostly women) who were deadheading and pruning. I guess a garden like this can use some help in peak-season!

      

It's hard to stop making pictures when there's this much beauty around every corner!

                          

We debated going into Portland for some more sight-seeing and lunch but we'd had such a nice, peaceful and relaxed morning that we just didn't feel like having to deal with traffic or people or parking so we drove back towards Newberg and stopped for lunch at Sophia's Cafe in Sherwood instead.

This little Mediterranean restaurant, that offers Greek and Lebanese meals, had been on our radar for a while but we'd just never made it there ..yet.
We ordered a lamb gyro plate and fried vegetables with hummus and fries:

It was delicious! We'll be back!

And that's all she wrote for this week I'm afraid, not much else going on ..
We're still waiting on the permit from the county to come through, so we can move to our permanent spot, and are doing some daily weeding, mowing and pruning of the site.
I can't wait to settle in properly with everything hooked up and in it's permanent place. For now it feels like we're still sort of camping and might (have to) move any day.

We're keeping our fingers crossed. Hopefully we hear something soon!