Environment – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

Deer in the Park

I’ve mentioned Louisville’s Cherokee Park several times and it really is an urban gem, 400 acres in the middle of the city. Even in the city, though, the park is home to deer.

Today children from the Catholic school across the street from Nazareth Home Clifton spent the day working in its central courtyard. They weeded, planted flowers, mulched–and probably learned something about both gardening and community service while enjoying a different type of school day.

Beautiful Louisville

Louisville is a really beautiful city, something I am becoming more aware of and am enjoying more since I returned from Cambodia and started riding my bike through neighborhoods I never knew before. Today I had a 28-mile ride from Nazareth Home Clifton where I live to Iroquois Park in South Louisville where I used to live. Here is a photo on one of the lookouts in the park. Basically all you see is trees but under those trees are 150-year old neighborhoods and city streets. The city is green, not barren suburbs (we have those, too).

Iroquois Park is one of five parks inside the city which were laid out by Olmsted, the celebrated urban planner who designed Central Park, a masterpiece of landscape architecture, in New York City.

My first spring back home

Cambodia only has two seasons, hot and wet and hot and dry. Different trees have fruits and flowers at different times but everything is always green, leaves don’t fall off trees like in parts of the U.S.

It’s my first spring time in the U.S. in 40 years and I’m really enjoying it! The cold weather seems to have finally (almost) disappeared and everything is in bloom!

Bike Weather Again

This morning dawned rather cold and cloudy but by mid day, everything had changed. There was a really bright blue sky that invited me to a ride through Louisville’s magnificent Cherokee Park. The uncommonly cold and snowy winter was with us just a day or two ago but now the smallest buds are starting to appear.

On the road again…

The past two weeks have been terrible for bike riding: temperatures mostly in the 20ºs and 30ºs and then 8″of snow that just started disappearing two days ago. The cold I could deal with; the ice and snow on the streets were a no-no. But today the sun was out, the sky was clear, and the thermometer rose to the low 50ºs so I rode to the Maloney Center, the former St. Vincent de Paul School turned into a diocesan office building.

The riding was great after such a long absence. The large majority of the snow has melted. The snow that remains is in piles where parking lots were plowed—like above at the Maloney Center–and on really small streets untouched by sunshine.

More from Oregon

One powerful realization for me when I was wandering in the forested area of The Grotto in Portland, Oregon was how much I had missed forests of large hardwood trees while I was in Asia. From my days in the Boy Scouts and from our Dittmeier family camping trips (the only vacations we could afford), I have loved being out in the forests. At The Grotto I was able to be with huge, old trees that brought back good memories and renewed my love of nature.

Third try

We have had two significant snowfalls here in Louisville this winter (3″ is a significant amount here) and today looked like it was going to be a repeat. A few icy pellets hit me in the face as I bicycled home about 3:00 PM, and then the snow really started coming down. It was all for naught, though, and an hour later there was nothing on the ground.

Our second snowfall

Last night we had another snowfall that was almost a carbon copy of the previous three-inch snowfall last week. Again it occurred during the night and greeted us in the morning and was about three inches. The big difference is that this time much of the snow melted quickly and it was never a problem on the streets.

Snow–and unusual cold

Today I had a meeting after lunch and was debating how I could go when I depend on my bicycle for getting around. I went outside at Nazareth Home above and the sidewalks there and the nearby streets look reasonably cleared and usable for a bike.

The temperature, though, was in the high 20ºs and low 30ºs, and I learned over the last weekend my fingers–even with ski gloves–could only take about 15 minutes of that. My earlier rides were REALLY painful, so I was happy to learn today that another priest was going to the same meeting and I could ride with him–in a car. The trip was smooth and warm and I got to see more beautiful scenes from this winter’s first real snow.

Category: Environment