We live in the City of Roses

We visited the Rose Gardens in Washington Park last Saturday. I don't think I ever really had a proper appreciation for roses until then. The park has hundreds, if not thousands of varieties of roses. I always though roses were sort of cheesy and over-exploited. People in Hawaii don't really grow roses, so the ones I have seen are the typical obligatory Valentine's Day long-stem dozen. Red. Boring. But the roses you see in Portland are, first of all, everywhere. And second, they come in hundreds of colors, sizes, shapes, and scents. The other day, I saw what would have been a great picture to showcase Portland. Alas, I forgot my camera. There was a bicycle chained to a stop sign, and around the stop sign grew a bush. One single beautiful pink fully bloomed rose came out over the bicycle. Roses and bicycles...so Portland. Anyway, the Rose Gardens were so beautiful. I remember telling my mom when I left Hawaii that I would miss walking down the street and smelling the fragrant Hawaii flowers. Well, walking into the garden, you could smell the roses right away. There were three weddings going on at the gardens, so I suppose roses still are a bit cheesy, but it was a little piece of magic for us Hawaii people. Afterward, we went to the world's biggest playground structure (not officially). It is near the Rose Garden in Washington Park. Tania was so impressed that she wants to have her birthday party there. It's the equivalent of about four or five playground structures all put together. None of my pictures do it justice, so I won't bother. It was a very pleasant day.