Winter?

Well, I am pretty sure it's winter since it's December and all, but considering that there's no snow here it's a pretty different winter for me so far. Yesterday everyone in Portland went crazy because some freezing rain and a couple of inches were forecasted. It was ridiculous. And what happened with this crazy storm?? Nothing. No snow came. A teeny bit of rain fell, but by then the temperature was above freezing. Another reason it's

hard to believe it's winter is this:

a winter-flowering viburnum at peter & kathy's

This past week it's been in the 20's but since it hasn't been windy, it hasn't been too cold to be outside. I do my best to go on walks every day, even though when I first step outside it's very tempting to just go back in. Yesterday I went for a nice long walk, I used GoogleEarth to measure out my route afterwards and learned that I walked at least 3 miles.

Today I walked to go get a latte and a cookie at Stumptown. On my way there, I walked through Laurelhurst park looking for signs of winter and admiring all of the beautiful trees. I just love the trees in the park. They are all so different from each other as well as very different from what we have in Maine.

I like this tree. It is really tall and is really colorful. Just right there on its trunk it's got brown, blue, green, and white.

I think this tree is really cool-looking. It almost looks like some kind of creature.

This tree is just weird, I mean look at it! It looks like it has hair. Very strange.

I like this tree too. It's hard to tell in the picture, but this tree is really leaning to the right.

These trees are interesting with their bubbly things and their pale-colored bark.

Here's just a bunch of pretty trees.

This is a big one.

This one is another strange one with its multi-coloredness and its bumpy trunk.

This one looks old.

I wonder who lives here.

These are some more tall ones. They are also very straight.