Honey, could you bring me a pillow?

No, Mike didn't ask for a pillow, but if I could have taken a picture of his predicament (he declined my offer of the photo-op), that's the caption I would have put on it.

The house phone rings at 9:10. I answer, and after Hello (twice), I hear "Hi, it's your hubby, in the backyard. Could you come help me get out of the raised garden bed?" Oooo-kay. He had gone off on an adventure. At dusk. Which also means the mosquitoes are biting. Not a plan I would have endorsed, but I wasn't consulted.

I will take a picture later and add it to this post to show that the terrain is not friendly for someone who is mobility-challenged.

So yes, there he was. At least he managed to fall into the one that doesn't have any plants.

Starbucks

A family member we recently visited had been a teacher for 30 years, and retired about five years ago. She decided earlier this year that she would try something completely different: Starbucks barista! And once she was working 21 hours or more each week, she would have medical benefits (the cost of which was taking about half of her retirement check).

Chris has a longer story about the types of people who work there, and the juggling of detailed orders. "Vente drip in a tall cup" threw her off the rythm!

But the best story was on her first day, with ten minutes left in the shift. She said to the leadworker, "I have ten minutes left, what would you like me to do?" The assignment: "Pick up the crafts."

Crafts? We have crafts? Chris was looking at the windows and tables, trying to figure it out.

Nicole, the lead, finally put her hands on her hips and explained, "For heaven's sake, Chris, the crafts for the milk."

Chris (the former language arts teacher) did not say anything when she finally understood: carafes. I would have just said pitcher, but Starbucks has to have their fancy labels.

Chris also soon found out they never schedule 21 hours. She stayed eight weeks.

Community Supported Agriculture

Poor Mikey still doesn't understand our CSA subscription. He keeps describing it to friends on the phone as "...we just went to Julie's son Bill and girlfriend Ayn's place to pick up some of the food from the community garden."

So the three of you who have followed my blog (if you're still out there -- I haven't posted anything in more than a month) probably already know what Community Supported Agriculture is, and the difference from a community garden. And if you heard Mike say we had a spot in a community garden, you might be puzzled as to why we would have a garden at home and another spot somewhere else.

But just for fun, here's the explanation. In short, CSA is grown by a farm, and community garden is grown by you.

CSA is where you pay a "subscription" to a farm, and get a weekly share of goodies. Each farm can be very different in what you pay and what you might get. Here's a link to a good description: www.sightline.org/publications/enewsletters/CSNews/CS_6_05_csa

Our farm is Rainway Farms, in Hillsboro (practically a stone's throw from my old high school). Bill/Ayn pick up at the Portland Farmer's Market on the PSU campus, just a couple of blocks from where they live. We paid about $400 to get 18 weekly "boxes" (bags, really) of food, June through October. They also provide (by e-mail) information on what's in each week's box and recipes.

I've been forced to try some new things. Kale is very interesting. I tried a recipe for "baked kale chips." Oops, yuck. I've found it best to cut the leaves from the stem and just put it in a salad. Turns out that kale is one of the superfoods, and 1 cup has over 200% of your Vitamin A and ascorbic acid RDA, 25% calcium, 10% iron, 5 grams of protein, and only 45 calories!

I put turnip into a root vegetable side dish. The jury is out - maybe pre-roasting them in a bunch of butter, salt, and garlic would help.

Tonight was kohlrabi in potato-chip-like slices, baked with olive oil, garlic, and parmesan. Of course that's going to go down good!

There was another recipe for radish top soup which was great. And to think all my life I've thrown out the radish tops.

Now I have to figure out how to use these fava beans. Very strange.

Oh, community garden: you all know this one, right? Rent space and grow your own stuff. In Vancouver, you can rent a 20'x20' space for $40. Or 10x10 is $20 (with age 60+ discounts, and some low income scholarships). At the old poor farm (and maybe the other locales, I'm not sure there), you can't use pesticides or herbicides.

Any way you do it, here's to good eatin'!

The news told me to call my mother

Honest, the TV news tonight really told me to call Mom.

Sure, I'm paraphrasing a tad. "If you're feeling stressed, skip the massage and call your mother."

A study out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that girls' comfort hormones (oxytocin) increased and stress (cortisol) decreased just by hearing mom's voice.

Oh, yeah, I have her on speed dial!

Duh-oh, oh no!

Rats, darn. Good news is that the cement ramp, replacing the front steps, was poured Thursday, and the "exposing" part of the exposed aggregate was finished Friday.

I took Mike to a class on making rain barrels Thursday night. And that is where the "Duh-oh, oh no" part comes in. And I KNEW this: we want to use a rain barrel to capture part of the rainwater coming from the roof, and use it in the flower gardens. This helps make up for our big impervious footprint, where rainwater can't filter back into the groundwater systems like it used to. During this class, they reminded me of what else I already knew that can help: use pervious surfaces.

We should have asked the contractor to use pervious concrete (also known as porous concrete).

Pervious concrete looks sort of like Rice Krispie treats, so it looks a lot like exposed aggregate. Water drains right through it instead of (in our case) runnning down the street and into Salmon Creek.





Maybe I should go out to the worm bin and beat myself with one of the red wigglers. Oh, wait, that wouldn't be kind to the worm.

Group pic (mostly) from Kooza

J, Di, N8, B3, C, B1, Gma, Gaarbacca : ), Mike

Escheatment

Escheatment is when property (money) is sent to the state for safekeeping, held in trust, because the original owners/claimants can't be found or checks go unclaimed.

One of our county departments couldn't get a city to take a $150 check (long story) starting in 1995. So after reviewing controls many times in this county department, we convinced them in 2006 they really had to escheat the money to the state.

We did another review yesterday. The check to the STATE never cleared.

So how do you escheat another check to the state because the money was never "claimed?" We've gotten a good laugh out of this one.

Note: we know the City's current finance manager, who changed jobs from the county, so we think the county department can work with her to finally take a check and clear the original transaction completely.