Ink, Grass Roofs and the Easter Bunny

Maybe it was passing the neon pink closing signs fifty times a day.

OK I'll admit I've been drifting in a rather bored fashion of late. Was the whole Red Apple theme played out? Had I hit the bottom in terms of finding anything of interest around the 'hood? Inertia was plaguing my soul. I felt alone. Worse, I was beginning to feel weird. Like, what is this obsession with my neighborhood?

When I was young I wanted to be Samantha on Bewitched. Now I was Mrs. Kravits keeping an eye on things--looking for the Blue Bug in Stod's Parking Lot, puffballs lurking around the corner, garage doors sending coded messages.


Then things started happening. We're talking ink and lots of it. First, a big article on the front page of the B section in the Seattle Times on Wednesday. Next, Mustard Seed and Newport Hills Drinking Liberally Group on the front page of the Bellevue Reporter. No typos, and a well-written article on the latest democrat trying to unseat Dave Reichert in the Fightin' 41st District: Suzan DelBene. Well, they spelled her name wrong, but still, lots of ink. And I was there!


On Thursday I introduced myself to Pastor Paul of Newport Hills Community Church and secured a site for the April 25 Earth Day info fair and community garden kick-off. Not sure yet about the swapmeet part of it. It sounds like a lot to organize in a short time.

On Friday I visited my sister-in-law in Ballard and met up with Vic Opperman, the founder of Sustainable Ballard who is very keen to get a Sustainable Bellevue going. What an inspiration. Got a tour of the Ballard Library green roof--awesome!







This morning my daughter and her friend roused themselves early to go help hide eggs at the Newport Hills Easter Egg Hunt and I made friends with a neighbor very interested in biodynamic farming, who introduced me to the Easter Bunny.

Happy Easter everyone!

Politics is alive and well in Newport Hills

The first Monday of every month Drinking Liberally holds a get-together at Newport Hills' third place, The Mustard Seed. Last Monday we were introduced to Darcy Burner's successor as the nominee challenger to David Reichert on the eastside. Suzan del Bene spoke and took a lot of questions. It was packed.

I came across this while looking for images of Third Places: who knew that icon of iconoclasm, The Seattle Stranger, would have ever ventured to our shores? I just love their investigative tones as a way of combating incipient suburbaphobia. This is from last summer's race between Darcy Burner and Dave Reichert:

We are someplace called Newport Hills, which is about a 20-minute drive east from Seattle, sitting in what the SECB (not sure what this refers to) guesses you would call a blue-collar strip-mall bar. It’s called the Mustard Seed and the back looks like this:

Remember: he's 20 whole minutes east of Seattle



While the front looks like this:

We’re still waiting for Burner to arrive, so the SECB checked out the spread, which is not promising:

Memo to the Burner campaign: American flags are great and all, but they’re even better with food on them



The SECB spotted Blaire Butterworth, doing his second tour as a top Burner campaign consultant:


Note to SECB: Next time you cover politics in our neighborhood let me know and I'll buy you a beer or three!

Bug Update

Bug Update: Blue Bug is still there.

On April 25 this will be the site of the 1st annual Blue Bug Swap Meet and Earth Day Fair.

Of heatwaves and hedgehogs

At the end of the month I'm going back to Barnsley in Yorkshire to visit my friend Melly. She lives next door to a Victorian park in a house filled with stained glass windows. A family of hedgehogs lived at the back of the garden. It was extremely hot and I don't think we left the garden for three weeks. We drank a lot of strong iced tea.

Close up and in the shimmering light the colored glass would later inspire paintings.

Bright Lights

Well, here's my winter garden. It's Bright Lights chard. Withstood everything a Seattle winter could throw at it. I have to say it's never thrived, despite what all the experts say about growing chard in the winter here in the northwest. We had a bit of it at Thanksgiving, but it hasn't been what I'd call a bumper crop.

You might want to click to enlarge, but then again you might not want to.

Blue Bug

I've got my eye on you, little blue bug! You haven't left the parking lot since my post about the Earth Day event. I'm becoming quite fond of the little guy.

Click to see him grow.

Organic Panties

Preem, this is for you!!








At Seattle's GreenFest yesterday I worked for Washington Toxics Coalition and hung out with the folks at People for Puget Sound and the architect/timberworker/CEO Michael Kruger of Sunpod Greenhouses http://www.sunpodgreenhouses.com


I was briefly crowned Sustainability Queen of Bellevue at the SCALLOPS exhibition corner but promptly abdicated when we discovered there was already one. We just don't know how to reach her: Vicki Goode are you out there??!!!
SCALLOPS stands for Sustainable Communities ALL Over Puget Sound--and are they ever all over! Check them out at www.SCALLOPSwa.org


These are two darling little stoves for children made of recycled olive oil cans and available through eurostyle in Fremont.




Not my age, just my legislative district!