Mark’s Bloomin’ Journal

It hit hard today, the dearth of some products the market craves and the surplus of what the market does not crave. Little wonder that beautiful things become commodities traded for pennies rather than dollars. Thus perpetuates a cycle of products becoming loss leaders and an inability at times to wrest better compensation for all concerned. This price pressure is not a result of consumer demand but rather of the grower community looking over one another’s fences and collectively thinking the grass is greener over there. We have seen it of late in Gerbera Daisies and in countless other flowers at one time or another. (more…)

At the the same time Flowerbud’s elegant little green boxes zoom around the night skies of the USA there are much larger and far less elegant boxes rushing headlong to these shores bearing flower riches from around the globe. The first stop for many being Miami which handles an amazing 88% of all imported flowers. That amounts to some 32,000 boxes per day. If that number leaves your mouth agape then consider that the days before Mother’s Day see around 62,000 per day. (more…)

No matter the price of the coffee nor the tone of the town or the size of its hanging flower baskets it appears that an early birds contemplating is to be shattered by a leaf blower.

This morning just prior to 7 AM I was down the street from my office in Lake Oswego, Oregon although I could just as easily have been enjoying a much less expensive and somewhat more stimulating cotrtadito on Key Biscayne, FL. You know the rest of it; a deafening shriek, the stench of two cycle and the blast of wind just moments prior to the dust and detritus of yesterday enveloping you. Nationwide these things are a nuisance, polluting in countless ways.

I had just walked a mile or two, seen the carp rolling along the lake shore, a Bald Eagle flying towards the Willamette, given my customary nod to the regulars and their Golden Retreivers, including the one carrying his owners empty coffee cup and was preparing to sit a minute and start the day with my wife who is working away in South Florida’s humidity…..presumably after enjoying a Cortadito and a leaf blower some three hours earlier. It’s a bit much if the landscapers of the world don’t mind me saying so. (more…)

That was one ass-busting ride yesterday being almost the full course of the Little White Salmon River. From confluence with the Columbia to just about where the first drops fall from its glacier’s icy fingers.

As it turns out the steeps are not as bad as thought and the new 29-tooth cog never got used. The 27 saw much good sweat though! The cool of the morning at 45f gave way to an afternoon’s 87F. No wonder my tank ran dry. The last uphill sprint to avoid traffic into White Salmon ended with me wheel sucking a 70 year old for the last five minutes. No excuses… I was whipped much as Levi Leipheimer was by Floyd Landis in the inaugural Amgen Tour Of California. One has to try though! Miscalculations being a fact of life.

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A much vaunted “green corridor”. One of Portland Metro’s cool places in which to enjoy the beauty of the northwest goes by the name of Larch Mountain. In a car, taken at speed, one might fail to see the more sullied details. Not so on a bicycle.

In Portland we are constantly bombarded by how livable we are, how environmentally aware and proactive we are, how this is the place where everyone and their dog wants to come and live due to our ever lighter footprint on the planet. I have always considered the barrage of self-congratulation and promotion to encompass the surrounding environs and not just the gentrified downtown. Life really does go beyond Whole Foods and Powell’s Books when it comes to livability.

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