Many plants that are maligned as weeds are actually highly beneficial, with a long history of use by humans. After hearing about a friend’s determination and challenges in eradicating horsetail from his yard and listening to his children mimic his “I hate horsetail” mantra, I felt compelled to point out the practical and important uses of this botanical oddity.
To some of us, it may seem like tilting at windmills to take on Glacier Northwest. The company is huge, rich and relentless. It also, obviously, has a keen financial interest in the tons of sand and gravel that lie beneath its arsenic-laced soil — a commodity that has proven to be quite valuable in booming Pugetopolis, where new development means new roads and new roads mean a hunger for gravel.
How would cutting 100 sheriff’s deputies affect police response times? How would a reduction of 30 deputy prosecutors impact our ability to put criminal suspects on trial?
These are examples of the grim decisions facing King County citizens and lawmakers as we confront a $68 million budget deficit for 2009 and a possible $80 million shortfall in 2010.
Mud then cobbles and more cobbles, the hike from Fern Cove south to Cove on Colvos Passage tours Vashon’s best beach forms. The first wonder is Fern Cove’s delta, then Peter Point’s salt marsh and finally the big rock before Cove.
Last August, after a brief vacation, I returned to The Beachcomber with a gift for Eric Horsting, who had steered the ship in my absence. It was a smooth, pale-gray rock with a poem on it, and it seemed the perfect token for this man who loves poetry and is rock solid and dependable.
On March 28, with six weeks to go until my due date, my midwife worried that the baby’s growth had slowed. She ordered an ultrasound.
The technician started out chatty as she squirted goo on my tummy and flashed grey blobs on the screen. Then she fell silent. The doctor, too, looked gravely at the screen and didn’t say anything. They sent me straight to the hospital, sheet of indecipherable medical jargon in hand.
Kids are rejoicing. Parents who work outside of the home are scrambling to piece it all together. And a new energy has already, it seems, come to the Island.
The pea sprouts are about 10 inches high now. Noticing this, I decided I’d better patrol the perimeter of the deer fence that was erected after one summer when we got home to find the deer had eaten every single pea plant down to the nub.
Last August, after a brief vacation, I returned to The Beachcomber with a gift for Eric Horsting, who had steered the ship in my absence. It was a smooth, pale-gray rock with a poem on it, and it seemed the perfect token for this man who loves poetry and is rock solid and dependable.
If you believe that buying locally is the same thing as shopping at Thriftway, then please read on.
If you believe that buying locally is the same thing as shopping at Thriftway, then please read on.
June, with graduations and weddings and the garden’s demand for attention, is the calendar’s metaphor for a homemade jar of jam. You take the barely ripe fruits of your labors, give them a grand push of formality, endure the heat of an impossible schedule and an expensive, dizzying list of to-do’s and cross your fingers the finished product achieves a “successful set.”
Freshly graduated seniors have already heard their last high school bell and are steeling themselves for the next and often final phase of their education. Juniors, like myself, are anxiously awaiting their ascension to the apex of the high school pecking order next fall, all the while wondering how they managed to become the upperclassmen they looked up to just months ago.
In light of this hallowed rite of passage, an examination of the oft-misunderstood role of youth seems relevant.
