Starting with a Joni Mitchell lyric always feels like a good idea, whether the garden holds a sea lion on the beach (it does) or a rose.

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

—Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock"

We had never seen a sea lion on the sand before. Seals. Their various tracks, sea lions swimming in the surf. All of that. But it was still exciting to see one come out of the water. (Needless to say I stayed well back and used my zoom.)

Years ago, Gary had walked his dog Manny south around the Cape and let him run loose for a while. He had just put him back on leash and turned for home when Manny became wild with excitement, barking and lunging on the leash, which was not his manner. Gary could not understand what was happening. And then the nearby drift log stood up over six feet tall, became a bull elephant seal, and lumbered back into the ocean. Adult northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) weight 1 to more than 2 tons.

Needless to say, Gary was relieved Manny was leashed.

Elephant seals carry a great amount of blood in their bodies to store extra oxygen which allows them to stay under water for as long as two hours. Once hunted nearly to extinction, they are making a slow recovery. Humans sometimes mistake a moulting sea elephant for a dying animal and in trying to “help” do more harm than good. All marine mammals are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), the first act of the United States Congress to call specifically for an ecosystem approach to wildlife management in 1972. Interfering with marine mammals in any way, or allowing them to be interfered with (by a loose dog, for example) violates federal law. The seals and sea lions were here first, after all, long before the rest of us arrived.

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Portland is known as “the rose city” and I have always known this. Our climate in many parts of the PNW is close enough to some of the great gardens in England to benefit from the horticulture of British gardeners. Portland has several test gardens. The Test Garden in Washington Park, established 150 years ago in 1917, is home to many famous and historical roses. New rose varieties grow in one section of this garden, where they are tested for hardiness, health, blooming, and so forth before being named and grown on. Beyond that, there is a garden of winners, tree roses, and many, many beds of single rose varieties with small tags identifying them.

Perhaps in childhood we visited the International Rose Test Garden. I knew it was here, but when we climbed the hill last week, it seemed like the first time I had ever seen it. I found favorite roses—such as Dortmund and Queen Elizabeth—and that was delightful. Tropicana bloomed. Dark reds and palest pink. Yellow and white. Stripes and speckles and blooms that change from yellow to pink as they age. Darkest red that defies my camera’s capacity. Roses of every color, hybrid teas and species, floribundas and miniatures. Most startling to me, however, was that all the roses seemed to be in full flower. The best of my own roses, all rugosas, are setting hips. Pink Grutendorst, which does not have fragrance or hips, has only two clusters of blossoms. The carmine rose on the road and white Double de Coubert have a few blooms. But late August is not the season for roses here, yet every bush in the Rose Garden showed both blooms and buds.