The End of the Tour

Dear Diary,

How have you been?  I see you've had a lot of visitors the last day or two.  I hope they were all wearing masks.  I was busy doing something I thought I had to finish in one big heave, but I'm sorry I neglected you for so long, especially since I'm still telling you about my hikes in mid-October.

At least this page should finish one of the hikes.  The previous page, "To the Beaches!" all of two weeks ago, left me trying to sleep at View Ridge Playfield's picnic shelter the night of October 12.  I woke there October 13, verified that the water fountain still wasn't running, and continued north to 75th St, getting food at the Safeway at 35th Ave.  Continuing along 75th, I stopped at 30th to take a photo of Maple Leaf hill:

Well, at least that's what I was trying to show.

My destination, way over at 25th Ave, was

Dahl Playfield

I wanted to do three things:

• verify that the water fountain still wasn't running (it wasn't)
• take a photo
• and take a video.

The photo had to do with a mistake I'd repeatedly made.  I've visited this park just enough to have picked out a preferred spot in it, one of a pair of picnic tables near the path from the park entrance to the restrooms.  Just south of those tables, a thin screen of ?saplings separates the tables from what, in the summer, had looked like a child-sized trail, and I'd thought, "how remarkably thoughtful!"

When I visited earlier in October to begin my water fountain census, of course I found out that this was actually a creek bed, dry in summer but, well, not in fall.

Finally the video.  When I came here on June 27 I think I took one, but then deleted it.  This time I didn't even take it.  But my past failures to describe correctly what makes the men's room at Dahl Playfield uniquely non-private, even compared to other restrooms without stall doors, weighed on me, and some time later I shot this one.  I'll try to embed it, but since I flagged this one as age-restricted from getgo, and my embedded videos aren't working properly, I don't have much hope where this one is concerned.

So here's a link to my demonstration that there's no privacy for men at Dahl Playfield.

Anyway.  There's a reason I've visited Dahl Playfield so often.  See, it's right across the street from the last of the "last seven" parks, as I then thought they were, that I visited on June 27:

Picardo Farm

Have you ever wondered what the "P" in "P-Patch", the name in Seattle for community garden spots, means?

Around the middle of the 20th century, there were still farms in the Ravenna neighbourhood, but by the 1960s only one was left, and it was on its last legs.  Neighbourhood activists worked out a deal by which the city bought the farm, and parceled it out into individual garden spaces.  When people in other areas demanded their own places, the name of the farm's family - Picardo - got attached.  Hence P-Patch.

I mentioned re Maple Leaf Community Garden (in "Six Parks in Search of Another") that most P-Patches are assigned by the city to the Department of Neighborhoods, which runs the program in all of them, and that when a P-Patch was instead accounted to the Department of Parks and Recreation, it was worth asking why.  In this case, I think it's inertia.  I don't know that the DoN even existed when the city bought Picardo Farm; it certainly didn't get the property, which has, I assume, been treated as belonging to Parks ever since.

One of the many distinctive things about Picardo Farm is its size:

Another is its plumbing.  It doesn't have a water fountain, but oh mama, does it ever have a sink:

Near the sink is the sign explaining the history I probably butchered above:

Continuing east to the northeast corner, we reach ... well, not plumbing, not exactly, but a restroom nonetheless:

If you Google "Picardo Farm", one of the first things you hear about - one of the main things they brag about - is their "composting toilet", shown above.  I didn't find it in June, but whenever I did, it was ringed with signs admonishing visitors to use sanitiser, which was offered on a nearby table.  Now, I would think that a good idea regardless of the pandemic, but when I returned in mid-October the table, sanitiser, and, I think, some of the signs were gone.

Did I mention that Picardo Farm is big?  Three acres, not large for a park, but huge for a P-Patch.  Not that parks that size normally get plumbing or restrooms, either.  So of course Picardo Farm also has a picnic shelter:

Well, enough.  Picardo Farm really is a P-Patch, which means the rules governing visitors from the general public differ from those applicable in parks; in particular, the hours are shorter.  (Which is one reason why I didn't yell and scream about the restroom earlier; Dahl Playfield, even with less privacy, has a sink and longer hours, and is clearly preferable.)  Visitors should read and heed those rules.

Roosevelt Land-Banked Site

When I looked up the address, 1321 66th St, I was sure the parks department had made yet another deal for, well, this:

But it's only a fifth of an acre, which even I know is too small for a football field, and the address turns out to be across the street:

I don't know whether the department plans to put a park there after the construction office closes, or to trade the land for some other parcel, but anyway, my Rand McNally maps are still wrong about Roosevelt High School being park land.

I headed from there toward Wallingford, for reasons I'll get to soon, but stopped along the way to visit

Froula Playground

Like Bitter Lake Reservoir Open Space, this park is built next to a reservoir, but offers not a drop to drink, so I tend not to pay it much mind, but thought I should make up for saying virtually nothing about a place so close to the UW - 12th Ave and 72nd St - by taking a picture:

Note the concrete seat in the foreground.  This place just keeps finding new ways to disappoint me.

There are two parks department parks left that I haven't told you, dear Diary, about yet, even though both are in "NE".  I reached one on October 14, the other October 20.  I wanted to finish the job in this page, but to start and then run up against Blogspot limits would be worse than just starting a new page from getgo, so I'll stop here for now.  Until the next page, dear Diary.