Our house was built in 1954 from a kit (kind of like a puzzle) in this first suburb of Anchorage (South Addition).The original owner was a first rate gardener, and the house was on the garden tour at the time.

The Sitka Rose Hedge still gets a lot of attention. Noses are stuck in it every day. The day I did this drawing a neighbor remarked, “I could stand here and smell it for hours.” Last year Brian decided to get rid of it because he has a constant battle with an invasive weed; his arms were in shreds from weeding amongst the rose thorns. Several neighbors mounted a protest, so he put down a weed mat and hoped for the best.

The sun is a door knocker, not a gate ornament. There are stars in the hedge because the roses have five petals, leaving a star shape when the petals fall off. Which is apropos because I was focusing on this quote when I did the drawing:

Peace mounts to the heavens, the heavens descend to earth, earth lies under the heavens, everyone is strong.

–Victory Song of the Morrigan, Book of Fermoy

http://www.mythicalireland.com/

There are two roads out of Anchorage, one heading northward and one heading east and ultimately south where it splits into two roads, one headed to Seward and the other to the Kenai Peninsula. The road along the Turnagain Arm is classified an “All American Road,” of which there are 31 total in the US. Brian and I parked in the pullout across the road from where we procure our drinking water, which gushes generously at all times from the mountain rock.

The guardrail for the pullout is in the lower left, and both the road and the railroad track can be seen winding their way along the contour of the mountains. The waters of the Turnagain Arm are tidal and always shifting, sometimes glistening like thousands of diamonds in the sun. The town of Hope is to the right, on the other side of the Arm. Cordova is to the southeast, on the other side of the dark mountains (see previous word portrait post).