That Sinking Feeling

While researching tents, awnings,  space frame structures and pre-fabs, trailers and canopies for a Newport Hills Tea or Coffee shop/bakery I came  across these sinks from Italy.  Sigh.  Would one of these transport me from a humdrum suburban lifestyle to the streets of Rome, the canals of Venice, the alleys of Napoli?  Maybe, just maybe...

Newport Hills Community Faire: First Ever!!

The stage was set.

The Tumblebus was booked.

The flyers were mailed out.

The day arrived: a perfect late September morning, sunny, warm, clear. After days of rain it seemed like a gift from the weather gods.

The kids began arriving, and flocked to Mike Intlekofer's amazing emporium of farm implements.

Jason and Erin Leach visit Sandi Tampa and Dorothy Bracken at the Newport Hills Community Club membership table.

This year's Community Club president Lisa Vierick displaying some of her
ice skating moves.

Nobody works a crowd like Farmer Mike!

Carol Murphy works the table for Sustainable Bellevue.

To be continued...

Viewpoint Park Ivy-Pull

It's hard to believe another year has gone by and the Red Apple is pretty much where it was (of course it hasn't moved--but you know what I mean...it's still empty, and more businesses have joined it)  But I want to start out the new year on a positive note because we did so much in the last half of 2010, and really I was just too busy to write about it, so here's to 2011.  More blog posts, a lively community and who knows?  Maybe this is the year that we see the Red Apple rise once more.

One of the cool things we did last fall was pull invasive ivy from Viewpoint Park in the north Bellevue neighborhood of Bridle Trails. Stephen Johnson, a young man on a mission, had attended a number of Sustainable Bellevue meetings and before long had roped us into this project. With a lot of support from City of Bellevue's Parks Department in the form of tools, doughnuts and a dumpster, we spent an enjoyable morning freeing the trees from their ivy "chains". Preston Glidden, Claire Waltman and I represented Sustainable Bellevue's labor contribution while Stephen enlisted lots of friends, family and neighbors. A great workout, if you stayed away from the doughnuts! Preston has since taken his battle on invasives to ever greater heights, now serving on the board of the Newcastle Weed Warriors in addition to his role as co-founder of Sustainable Bellevue.

Our method, though crude, was effective: each pair of volunteers pick a group of trees, clip, yank, pile, and move on. Very satisfying work indeed. The piles of ivy were then pulled to the dumpster waiting on the street.

Countless loads later, the dumpster began to fill up...

And victory was ours!

Recent Houses for Sale

The puffball house next door to us is for sale!! Day in, day out, that puffball is the beacon from my bedroom window. The house has been immaculately maintained, with a pool and badminton court in back. I think it's a steal for 479,000.00. If only the rest of the house were as original as the garage doors!

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Here's a house that caught my eye. For 399,000.00 it has a half acre with a view of Lake Washington and the mountains but it's also above the infamous "Kennydale S-Curves" on Interstate 405. We're going to go look at it anyway because it's such a lovely example of Northwest Regional/Pacific Rim Mid-Century Modernism and the entire lot is south facing with gorgeous potential for an orchard/produce garden.

Factoria P-Patch's first summer

Our p-patch at Holy Cross Lutheran Church yielded so much produce this summer that we were able to donate 1,000 pounds to the Hopelink Foodbank.

Just another sunny day last week at Newcastle Beach

Hydrangeas were in especially good form:

I couldn't believe the range of colors on one bush.

Red Apple Harvest Summer 2010

The reason I started this blog was to give voice to the collective grief our community felt when we lost our local grocery store. Over two years later we still don't have a grocery store, but now we know the reason why.

Red Apple grocery stores thrive in small towns where there is no other grocery store of a similar size to compete. Here in Newport Hills, we have two grocery stores (Safeway and QFC) immediately south of us, and again, two grocery stores (QFC and Safeway) to our immediate north. Easy drives. There's also Costco, Trader Joe's and Puget Consumer's CoOp: though they are a more substantial drive away folks are willing to drive the distance for the additional selections those stores offer.

Our Red Apple couldn't compete with their prices and selection...back in the day we actually had two grocery stores ourselves, Albertson's and Tradewell, later Red Apple. They were the only game in town and thrived for a short while before the competition drove them out.

Now I look for surviving Red Apple stores to try and understand what makes them thrive where they do.




Red Apples from our August road trip through Eastern Washington:





Chelan









Winthrop












Sultan











Manson