Anyone who has been reading this blog for more than a few months knows that one of my favorite excursions in Portland, Maine was the Wednesday farmers' market in Monument Square. I liked getting there when it opened at 7AM before the many, hard-to-find, heirloom fruits and vegetables were picked over.

Millennium Plaza Park is a good-sized public area in Lake Oswego, Oregon, where musical events, evening movies, holiday celebrations and such are held during summer including the weekly farmers' market. I can walk to the park in under five minutes and on Saturday morning, I made my first market visit.

I'd barely gotten my bearings on where to go first when I man offered me a sample of the first bing cherries of the year. Yum. So sweet and yummy that I bought a pound or so and forgot to take a photo of the gorgeous mounds of them. Here's one from home.

There were plenty of cut flower bouquets, but I didn't want to haul them around while I investigated my first farmers' market in Oregon. So I moved on leaving these behind – look at those amazing peonies on the left.

There was a good selection of plants too but alas, I have no gardening space in my new home. Even so, who could resist a taking a shot of this plant with it's – um, interesting name which brings back memories of a certain movie and TV show about the Korean War.

The farmers' market opens at 8:30AM which seemed a little early to me for popcorn.

But I couldn't resist a beignet for breakfast, forgetting that the powdered sugar would (and did) flutter down to decorate the front of my black teeshirt for the rest of the day.

If I had waited a little longer, I might have opted for this breakfast...

...especially since right next to the omelette stand there is a pleasant sitting area next to this reflecting pool.

I had other plans for Saturday dinner, but next week I'll remember among everything else, I can get seafood at the Saturday market too.

Having grown up here in Oregon, in the more than 40 years I lived on the east coast, I never became comfortable with the sun rising instead of setting over the ocean. It just felt wrong.

However, what did become part of my being was my sense of location - North American Atlantic coast - in relation to everywhere else. So I am sometimes a little disoriented since my move here a month ago.

When I email a friend in Germany, I still think he is six hours away. Wrong. It's nine hours now. And I think of Colorado, where another friend is, as to my left. Wrong again. It is now to my right. And so on. When you live in New York or Maine, Sarah Palin seems correct: Alaska is so far away to the west that it may as well be Russia.

But there is nothing like the sign at this market stand to remind me that I live a lot closer now to Sarah Palin country.

One of the difficulties of living alone is that food often rots before there is time to eat it all, so I was happy to see these mini-cauliflowers like the ones I bought at the Maine farmers' market.

I also picked up a fresher-than-fresh cucumber, several bunches of herbs and some scallions.

The Lake Oswego farmer's market is a lot more upscale that the one in Portland, Maine and a bit pricier too. At one table, the card next to the scallions said $3.50 a bunch. I assume it was an error but if not, there had better be gold inside those baby onions. I didn't buy any so I'll never know.

Generally, however, it's a good market and I'm looking forward to more and different fruits and vegetables as the season progresses.

Oh, remember those cut flowers I wanted when I first walked into the market? I stopped there again on my way home to pick up something to decorate the table for dinner here Saturday evening with my brother and his wife.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Mary B Summerlin: Aunt Lois