This is just a brain dump, really.
Work and Downtown Portland
No idea yet what the future will look like. My work is doing a rolled out approach. There are workgroups and committees and lots of things are involved. We finally got a sort of email with a timeline. It sounds like some kind of return to the office in September. We will see.
I went into the office for the first time since OCTOBER recently. I was part of a project and I needed to go in. It was a little weird. Not too weird because from June-October 2020 I was going into the office on my own every 2 or 3 weeks to take care of stuff I couldn’t do from home. And then in October our work went 100% digital and I no longer needed to go in. (Which was nice!)
So I have not been downtown or to the office since then. I drove to SE Portland and took the bus into downtown. It was weird being on a bus after 15 months. It was pretty empty, which made me feel better. A few Starbucks near my office closed. There were homeless camps all over downtown. There are still so many buildings boarded up because of the protests.
Downtown was gross. It was gross pre-pandemic. It’s even worse now. It makes me sad that Portland has gotten so bad. So many businesses are gone. Even though there were a fair amount of people downtown, it felt like a ghost town because of the empty buildings and boarded up shops.
In some ways it was nice to be in the office. I got to see and chat with people I haven’t seen in person since pre-covid.
Home
One of the perks of working from home, and my favorite part tbh, is going for walks every day with Bella!
I will miss that the most!
Heat Dome and Wildfires
Portland recently broke records with the heat wave we had. One day it got to 117 degrees in our town. So far, 63 people have died due to that heat wave. (A few days later the number was in the low 100s). It’s so tragic. And I fear that is our future. Climate crisis and rising temperatures are going to create a horrible situation for so many people.
In addition to that, wildfire season has started. It’s scary and frustrating. They are banning fireworks in parts of Oregon and SW Washington but I don’t think it will be actually enforced…it’s a nice idea though.
A bunch of my plants in the garden died in the heatwave. One tomato plant was completely dead. I bought a new one and replanted it. The other ones had some dead leaves on them so I trimmed those off and kept the green ones and I am hoping that will revive the plants. My zucchini plant was the same: trimmed the dead leaves and pulled a few of the tiny zucchinis that got decimated in the heat. I hope new ones grow soon. SIGH. It was such a bummer. Had I been thinking about it, I would have figured out a way to cover my veggie plants in the heat wave to TRY and keep the the sun and heat of them. But honestly? I don’t know if you can protect plants in 117 degrees.
Time will tell if the rest of them bounce back!
bethh
It IS sad about downtown. I hate what the handful of bad actors have done in terms of needing to have windows boarded up. Such a vast majority of the protestors are peaceful, it’s so infuriating when a few people give it all a bad name. And it’s so so so depressing seeing all the trash and unhoused people. I just don’t know how we get through this.
I draped a sheet over my blueberry plants and it helped a LOT. They’re against a chain link fence so I used rubber bands to attach them at the top, and put small hand weights on the bottom to keep that fierce hot wind from blowing the shade away. Next time I might go even further and mist the sheet so it’s damp, but I’m just happy my poor blueberries made it!
Lisa Eirene
I agree with you. I honestly don’t see how this will be fixed.
That’s a great idea for your plants! I will do that during the next heatwave. I just hope it never gets that hot again…