getthewholepicture

A Little More on Dirt

2012-01-25T20:54:00.000-08:00

For accuracy's sake, I need to tidy up the last post about dirt being forbidden entry on either side of the border. You actually can bring in plants that are growing in dirt if they are accompanied by a phytocertificate, which guarantees that they are pest free. You can get the certificate at nurseries, e.g., in B.C., if you want to bring a plant into the U.S. But you have to pay for the certificate in which, effectively, the nursery promises that it knows the plant and the plant is OK. We once tried to get phytocertificates for a dozen or so large rhododendrons growing in a friend's property in Bothell, WA. Since the plants were unknown to a nursery that issued phytocertificates, it proved too onerous a task for us, not to mention expensive.

In addition, dirt without a plant can be brought in if you have the right permits, which must be also be paid for. According to the U.S. CBP site, "Soil is considered the loose surface material of the earth in which plants, trees, and scrubs grow. In most cases, the soil consists of disintegrated rock with an admixture of organic material and soluble salts. Soil is prohibited entry unless accompanied by an import permit. Soil must be declared and the permit must be verified.

I have no idea how you would prove that your soil is OK, and a quick Google check did not enlighten me, but I am assured that it can be done. I'd guess it falls under the category of things kids shouldn't try at home when their parents are not around.

[Update: I still haven't got it right, a knowledgeable reader advises:
"However, soil is regularly brought from Canada into Point Roberts, either by PR trucks picking it up at nurseries or manufacturers in Canada or by individuals taking their own trucks and coming back with a truck load. We regularly use Augustine Soil & Fibre Ltd who deliver to Point Roberts. They bring soils from Fraser Richmond Soil & Fibre. The only fees we have to pay are for the product and the delivery, plus the commercial truck entry fee, when we meet the truck at the border. No permits are required.

People can also bring in bags of topsoil, mulch, etc bought from nurseries of stores in Canada and Washington – no permits needed."

Difficult Tasks

2012-01-24T11:19:00.000-08:00

I just received a phone call from a florist in California. She was trying to figure out how her outfit might arrange to deliver to me a floral bouquet for my birthday which, as it happens, is today. We had a longish talk about this, which once again reminded me of how those of us who live here have accommodated the limitations of life in Point Roberts and how those of us who don't live here have a lot of trouble understanding exactly what is the problem.

The florist lady was clearly someone who rose to the challenge. How about having somebody in Blaine deliver it? How about my driving to Blaine to pick it up? How about finding a Canadian florist to deliver it? How about my driving to Richmond to pick it up? How about sending it via the U.S. Post Office? We didn't get into hiring a private plane or boat from Blaine or Bellingham, or even a taxi driver. But she finally accepted defeat and sent me the birthday wishes from my oldest non-relative friend in this world. Which I gratefully accepted.

But then, I began thinking, how much more difficult if my beloved friend had decided to send me a nice potted plant! Dirt: worse than terrorists. Dirt may not cross the border in any direction and nobody can bring it. At least nobody we know.

[Update: I have just returned from Tsawwassen, where I bought a dozen tulips for me from my friend; since her birthday is close to mine, I have urged her to go out and buy a dozen tulips for her from me. Mission sort of accomplished, though in a kind of clunky way.]

[Yet one more addition]

Apps for Speed Traps

2012-01-23T10:06:00.000-08:00

We are probably too small a location with too few drivers to make this a useful device. But for other places, for other Officer Slicks....

Two Things: Updates

2012-01-16T10:58:00.000-08:00

1. Someone wrote to me yesterdayday to tell me that I was in error in a post written long ago in which I said that the people who ran the lavender farm that closed after a to-do with the border and what could cross it had left the Point. I am informed that they are still here, although the lavender farm and the lavender events and produce are not, alas. Glad to know that.

2. The Amaryllis provided by the International Market has bloomed spectacularly, about 8 weeks after first being planted in its ridiculously small pot (5 inch diameter). The stalk is about 25 inches tall, and it has a small set of leaves about 6 inches tall and growing. The stalk is topped by four big trumpet flowers, evenly spaced around the stalk. Each flower is about 5 inches long and 7 inches across. See photo below, which was taken from above the flower: the only angle at which you can see all four of them!

Almost Non-Existent Government

2012-01-15T18:03:00.000-08:00

There is much talk nowadays about how government ought to be smaller. I often think that those who think that way ought to come and see how Point Roberts works. Here we have almost no government, including none that could be helpful, although we sort of have some that is the taking not the giving sort.

I was brought to meditate upon this after sitting through a visit from a well-meaning and thoughtful Whatcom County Port Commissioner and a Port Planner to us up here in nowhereville. On Thursday past, the two of them made the trip up for a kind of 'get to know each other' meeting. There wasn't anything specific up for discussion, although the underlying issue was the fact that Point Roberts' residents, via property taxes, contribute about $150,000 every year to the budget of the Ports Commissioners, and none of that comes back to Point Roberts. Nothing that the Ports people do has any specific connection to us. They are responsible for nothing here. And, as a result, they pretty much do nothing for us here. They take our money are spend it.

We don't have a port or a County airport here and that's pretty much what the Port people attend to. (They don't pay for marinas: marinas pay for themselves.) They are also responsible in some way for economic development . (It wasn't clear to me ever whether they share this responsibility with some other agency in Whatcom County, but I suspect they do). Economic development: that which we also have pretty much none of and maybe can't realistically have much of given our location and unique problems. It's clear that we could have a little more tourism, but not much without a lot more infrastructure to take care of the tourists once they get here.

And how would that infrastructure arise? Well, the Port could help in a small way, helping us to get some money to develop a 'professional plan,' which would be based on a local plan that was very concrete and already well-developed. And then the Port could help us find some financing for the plan, maybe.

But the Port wants an initial plan. They don't want to hear about a cool idea. And who is to develop that plan? Well, if we had a little bit of local government, there might be someone--that is to say a government employee--whose job it would be to work out that cool idea into a preliminary plan. Doing that preliminary plan with nothing but volunteer labor is not likely to be very effective; it could work, but it's going to be dicey or go on for many years. We have done it before: see, e.g., the Wellness Clinic.

The Parks Board Commissioners can do some of that pre-plan work, but they don't have employees to do such things. The Community Advisory Committee is trying, in some ways, to see if there is some way in which their members can function in that way, building up alliances down in the actual county government and developing some information bases. But our status as an unincorporated area makes it much harder to get this ever to work. So, if you are enthusastic about small, even tiny, government, watch us flail. It's okay as long as you can manage all on your own for pretty much everything.

The Count Begins

2012-01-10T20:17:00.000-08:00

Last night, the Parks Board met and agreed to the final (and 9th) draft of a Memo of Understanding with the Friends of the Point Roberts Library and the Whatcom County Library System. In this Memo, the Parks Board gives the Friends of the Library five years to raise sufficient funds to remodel and rennovate the Julius Firehall and the WCLS agrees to take over the operation of a library in that renovated building. In the interim five years, the Julius Firehall may be used for other purposes by the Parks Board, but at such time as the necessary funds are raised, the Firehall will become the new library.

There was some discussion by some attendees at the meeting suggesting that the Firehall could have better uses: specifically, that it could be used as a gymnasium with little remodeling. And indeed that could be done during the period when funds are being raised. And there was some discussion associated with the idea that instead of remodeling an old building, the community should have an entirely new building that would serve both current community center functions as well as a new library and commercial enterprises of various sorts, although there was no mention of where the money would come from for that grandiose vision, and I'm pretty sure that the Friends of the Point Roberts Library aren't interested in raising sufficient funds to build an entire new civic complex. So I'm not sure what that was all about, except the usual Point Roberts 'Wouldn't It Be Great If....".

I have lived here long enough to have heard this theme numerous times: 'Wouldn't it be great if we had a theater for concerts?' Or a shopping mall? Or a swimming pool? Or a pizza delivery place? Or a ferry from Bellingham? Or whatever it was you had in the place that you used to live in and that you miss. I, personally, would like Trader Joe's to open up a branch in Point Roberts. But I don't expect that to happen. So I don't spend too much time talking to friends and neighbors about what a good idea that would be.

But about this library: well, I am prepared to talk about what a good idea it would be and to act in the interests of that idea. The signing of the Memo of Understanding means that the Friends of the Point Roberts Library is about to step forward to raise a half million dollars to create a building that can house a 21st Century American Library. What we have now is barely a 20th Century American Library. Andrew Carnegie, who was a major figure in creating this country's public library system, would be proud of this small group of people. Like Carnegie himself, who promised thousands of communities that he would provide them a building, if they would run a real public library in it, the Parks Board and the Friends of the Library will be working to provide that building which the Whatcom County Library Association has promised to turn into the kind of library that this community needs.

Those of us in Point Roberts, both the Friends of the Library and the much more numerous friends of the library, have five years. We've got a lot of work to do.

Visions of a Future

2012-01-06T15:41:00.000-08:00

In the grey months in Point Roberts, it is easy to feel kind of stuck. Each day, remarkably like the day before, can easily send you spiraling. And, this mood, if you are the right kind of person, may have a reverse effect and send you into imagining projects that you might put together someday, maybe today, well, probably not today, but ... later.

Last summer, I got myself together to order a bunch of lily bulbs because I thought it would be nice to have a bunch of lilies. Now I await the growth of a dozen or so lily plants. But in the grey days, I am imagining something better, maybe 80 lilies. That's what the winter does for you, gives you dreams of grandeur, possibilities of plentitude, surprising plans.

I hear from a Point Roberts friend the other day that she has been spending her grey days planning a multi-summer trip around the U.S. visiting the final resting places of all the U.S. presidents and vice-presidents, signers of the Declaration of Independence, and Other Important Americans. Now there is a project to take hold (or have take hold of you). She pointed out that the research possibilities that the internet gives us make the planning of such a trip a very engaging process. Not to mention the wonders of strange information that comes up along the way. Consider this, for example:

"Alabama's only grave of note is William DeVane King. Now you ask why I remember this. Well, Mr. King was actually Vice President King for about 40 days under President Franklin Pierce (1853-1857). . . . There are a couple of things about Mr. King that are unique. He was very ill with tuberculosis and so went to Cuba for "the cure" before the election even. And because of this, he is the only president or vice president who was sworn in on foreign soil (Cuba). He also served only 43 days of his term of office, growing increasingly ill, he returned to his native Alabama and died shortly after his return. NOW .. .here's our connection to him. The Oregon Territory, in celebration of the election of Pierce and King, named two of their territorial counties Pierce County and King County. And when Washington Territory was carved from Oregon Territory, the names stuck. And today … King County's county seat is Seattle, Washington … Pierce County's county seat is Tacoma. Some years back when I lived in Seattle, the county hoi polloi decided that they simply could not continue to sport the name of a slaveholding Alabaman, so they changed the PERSON the county was named for to Martin Luther King."

That's what the grey days can do for you: delight you with unexpected information and challenge you with an unexpected trip. But not right now: later.

We Are United

2012-01-05T11:03:00.000-08:00

Last mid-November, the International Market (our local grocery) decided for the first time in my 17-year memory of things here (not entirely reliable, I'm afraid) to sell us winter bulb kits. (Remember that we cannot bring bulbs in either direction cross the border so we get them only by mail, normally, which is often more trouble than it's worth.) The grocer laid out a table over in the near-produce section with cardboard boxes of various sizes from which we could choose a future treasure of amaryllis, daffodil, hyacinth, and maybe some other flowers. As I recall, you could go all out for a $14 flower investment down to about a $4 flower investment.

Now, about 7 weeks later, the boxes are all gone: the lingering lot was on half-price sale last week. But most of those boxes went home with someone earlier and have been working away on their assigned task. You opened your box and you got a plastic pot (which really didn't seem big enough for a flower that was going to be very tall) and a packet of high-quality manufactured soil and a big bulb (or more, depending upon the level of your investment). You put them all together, watered the pot and waited for the magic.

A few days ago, a friend came by and seeing my amaryllis on the coffee table commented that hers, by contrast was only about six inches tall. Mine is about 25 inches tall.

Now the difference between those results may come from the fact that she left hers alone to fend for itself for a couple of weeks while she was off on vacation; or it may come from the fact that my amaryllis, contrary to package description, neglected to provide any leaves for its flower. We just have this tall, naked, pale green stalk with the bud on top. Maybe all its possibilities went into flower, while her bulb was dutifully providing leaves as well.

But, the bud is surging leafless ahead. The top picture is two days earlier than the bottom one, and today it is even more open. A few more days, I'd guess, and we'll have a genuine amaryllis flower in our living room. And, despite the lagging results of my friend, I like to think that all over the Point, there are many other coffee tables with similarly uninspired pots producing prodigious blooms. There we are, altogether, thanks to the International Market: The Point Roberts Amaryllis Choral Society.

This Is What?

2012-01-02T18:42:00.000-08:00

Somehow, between Christmas and now, I seem to have lost track of what we're supposed to be experiencing. It's the day after New Year's Day and I still don't know who won the Rose Bowl. It seems to have been played today (as the Rose Parade seems to have happened today) instead of yesterday.

Such news as exists seems to be only about Iowa, where I don't live and don't long to live.

Haven't hardly been out of the house for a week. Fortunately, Ed goes out every day to work at re-roofing both houses. Doesn't hardly seem the right time of year for that. But that's what he's doing and at least he tells me what it's like outdoors.

In any case, this appears to be 2012, a year with a leap year day, and we seem to be moving forward toward it. Hope I'm better oriented this year than I seem to have been at the end of last year. Happy New Year, one and all!

Christmas Gone But Lights Remain

2011-12-28T21:07:00.000-08:00

Fortunately, people keep their Christmas lights up for awhile after Christmas, and we made it cross the border on Monday night to see what the Canadians had for us. Really quite a lot. The amount of cumulative work to get that many lights up on that many houses is pretty impressive. It's not even half the houses, but it's probably a third of them. Which is a lot of houses with a lot of lights.

Apparently the big new thing in Christmas decorations since icicle lights (in my view, the very highest point of aesthetic decorations) is giant blow-up figures, most of which look as if they're about to take off to make a late appearance in the Thanksgiving Day Macy's Parade. I'm not sure that they are an improvement, except for their capacity to take up a lot of space.

On the other hand, the mixed blue/red LED strings of lights provide a strangely intense sense of color, with a feeling of mystery about them, more like a solstice evocation than Christmas, though. Other light bonanzas seem not so much festive as like a visit to downtown Tokyo. Candy cane shaped lights seemed a new entry in the field, but I'm not sure they work that well, although we did see one wall of green net lights with lighted candy canes at the bottom that really stood out. The candy canes looked sort of like tree trunks for the green net hedge.

We don't do Christmas lights at our house, although we do have some 'colored winter lights,' which get turned on when daylight savings ends and then get turned off when daylight savings starts. And they're always on their respective trees, so we just have to turn on the timer switch when the right time arrivess

For a lot of those light shows that we came across the other night, I imagined a wife calling out in early December, "Joe, it's time to put up the Christmas lights." And then Joe goes to the basement to find the box and spreads them around with all the enthusiasm that my father used to show during the annual placement of storm windows for the winter. But for many other light shows we saw, it was more like some other Joe was saying, 'Come on, kids, let's put them everywhere; let's light up the sky!' And they sure did.

What Are We Come To?

2011-12-23T18:09:00.000-08:00

Ed is involved in a kind of game project with a bunch of other photographers on Flickr wherein you take pictures of items that involve specific numbers. The group starts with somebody taking a picture of one item; then somebody does two, and on to much higher numbers. You are on your honor to photograph things that already exist in the number; i.e., you are not supposed to group, say, 15 items when you need a 15 photograph. You have to find an existing 15. I spend a lot of my time these days reflexively counting whatever is in front of me. "Oh, there are 14 towhees outside the window. Alas, we need a picture of 13; will one, but only one leave? No, alas."

Below is a photo of a quilt that Ed used for the number 14: there are 14 appliqued sailboats in this quilt, which is titled: "The Way We Live Now." But it should be retitled "The Way We used to Live."

In pursuit of this very minor activity, Ed dropped into the Blaine Post Office the other day because there are many banks of countable post office boxes there and he happened to be there. And he took a few pictures. But then a postal clerk came up and told him that he had to stop because postal patrons had complained that 'someone was taking photographs of post office boxes.' True enough, but, SO WHAT?

Well, I guess we know. Blaine; gateway for terrorists; post office boxes; favorite haunt for terrorists; photographs, cameras, what have you: Be Very Afraid. How are we ever going to regain our senses?

Home Free at the Post Office

2011-12-22T15:28:00.000-08:00

It's impossible at post offices everywhere in the Western World, at least, at Christmas time. It's a little more impossible here in Point Roberts because our post office, designed for a town of 1000 people, is, in point of fact, serving the southern end of Metropolitan Vancouver, in addition to those 1,000 residents of Point Roberts. It makes for severe lines, you know?

Normally, I just plan to get everything ready before Dec. 7, which is usually before the massive rush. Except this year the impressive lines started even earlier than usual. I managed to stand in line only for 20 minutes on December 5th or so, but it was just luck because there was only one clerk at the time and the guy behind me (but no one of the 7 people ahead of me) was a mass mailer with 50 or so packages to be weighed individually. If I'd arrived 2 minutes later, I would have been behind that guy with his 50 packages and 20 minutes is not what we would have been even dreaming of.

That one good-luck package went on to the youngest grandchildren who pretty much still think of Christmas as the day you get the presents. For everybody else, however, I made an executive decision absolutely lacking in sentimentality. From here on, I said to the world at large, New Year's Day shall be the day you get the presents. And, Lo! it was as I said.

And, in that spirit, I today mailed a half-dozen or so packets of New Year's Day Presents: Guaranteed to arrive on time! Merry New Year.

A Not Point Roberts Moment

2011-12-21T09:53:00.000-08:00

I was at the library the other day, checking out all the new books by writers I've never heard of (another one of those facets of old age that nobody ever tells you about), when a lady of 60-ish years with blonded hair made a crisp entrance. She enquired of the main librarian whether she (the librarian) would like a large bag of silver tinsel. "No," she quickly replied (the librarian), "we have nowhere to put it, but thank you."

The entering lady made a few more comments about what nice tinsel it was and how useful it would be and then offered the following, as if she were negotiating her position: "Well, what if I just leave it outside and either someone will take it or the weather will do what it does?"

I really couldn't keep out of it. "If that's the option, why not just leave it outside your own house?" "No, No!" she came back. "I live in a condo and they are very strict about what you can leave outside." In a somewhat sotto voce (was this my battle?), I speculated that the Parks Board also had very strict rules about what you can leave at the Community Center. And, having completed my library tasks, I exited, leaving the lady with the continuing problem of her trash.

In fact, even the thrift stores won't take Christmas decorations at this time of year. I guess the alternative is just to dump it by the side of the road. At least for some. But that is not how we live in Point Roberts. At least not usually.

Soon on the Silver Screen

2011-12-16T11:19:00.000-08:00

The Barefoot Bandit, who about 18 months ago made a brief passage through Point Roberts (how could it not be brief? We're too small to spend too much time here while the police are trailing you), has plead guilty to many counts of burglary and theft and the like in both federal and state courts and will now get to go to jail for some years. But we'll get to see him in the movies! A film is now in the works about the sad life (or the antic adventures) of the now-20-year-old. Read all about it here.

Sail Away

2011-12-14T18:16:00.000-08:00

The Community Advisory Committee last night revisited at some considerable length the possibility of more walking paths (that is to say, paths at the side of the roads like the new one along the south side of Benson from Tyee to South Beach). There seemed to be general support for trying to determine what areas might benefit from path work so that when people walk along the road there is a continuous/clear shoulder to provide some measure of safety. There are those who think it is unsafe to walk in Point Roberts and there are those who think that people in Point Roberts seem to have mastered finding a way to walk safely along the roads in Point Roberts. The meeting included one difficult to process section in which the Committee was urged to use walking paths (?) or signage (?) to protect both domestic and wild animals from being killed by cars. Maybe it was about speeding? I couldn't figure it out.

Then for a grand finale, we were informed that the Director of the Port in Bellingham ( who either has too much money in his budget or knows very little about Point Roberts) is contemplating funding a $20,000 feasibility study to determine whether it would make economic sense to have some kind of water taxi service at the P.R. waterside. Apparently, the Port of Bellingham has signed a contract with an outfit called Leap Frog Water Taxi to provide some kind of service to the Gulf Islands. But Leap Frog has one 32-foot boat and it's difficult to imagine the business plan that has it providing too much daily taxi service as well as cargo delivery for the Islands and the Point.

Maybe it's all feasible. Maybe Point Roberts will someday become a thriving little business community, replete with tourists (at which point we will all doubtless complain full-time about all the tourists). But it seems unlikely. I'd bet on sewers first; or the long pipe to Blaine for water.

Winter of Our Discontent?

2011-12-13T11:24:00.000-08:00

We keep awaking to a frost wonderland. Then it goes away by noon, only to return twelve hours later. This is a lot more -32 degree F. weather than we usually get. But no snow yet, which is a blessing.

I got an email recently from a Canadian who had had the misfortune to fall into Officer Slick's speed trap busy work. A first trip to Point Roberts for lunch, then a $200 ticket, and a quick return to Canada. The Canadian wondered if this kind of thing was really good for business down here. I doubt it. I think it's largely a matter of revenue raising and, perhaps, a solution to not-enough-real-police work required at this posting. God knows we have a lot of law enforcement available to us.

I thought about asking the Community Advisory Committee to look into it. But, it turns out that, although the people I talk to think the speed trap activity is undesired and undesirable, other people think it is saving us from mayhem on the roadways: too much speeding going on here, accidents just waiting to happen (although they seem a little in short supply, actually). It is possible that what we actually have is posted speed limits that are too low. I don't know. But, that kind of community division on this kind of issue (the discussion of which will quickly turn into a fact/data-less talk undergirded by a lot of high-toned moral opinions--mine and theirs) is exactly what you don't want to start up in a small community unless you have more stomach for dissension than I have.

So, I can write about it, but I am unlikely to do more than that, coward that I am. And also, I'm cold.

Act Two, the Stop Sign

2011-12-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

Another good feature of the Christmas Craft Fair was that it allowed me to spend about 16 hours sitting in a chair, most of which time I was able work on my knit scarf for my most local stop sign. When last we visited this project, I had finished about 8 feet of scarf, but over the weekend with all that time, I was able to complete another 13 feet. And so, today I took it out to have the stop sign try it on.

Fit perfectly! So, now it's warm for the winter. And speaking of the winter: for the first time in 20 years up here, I have taken out my down jacket to wear. It seems much colder than other years, although perhaps I am just weakening.

The Ups, the Downs

2011-12-06T16:28:00.000-08:00

It is Monday, and I am just about back up to moderate speed after the Point Roberts Christmas Craft Faire. There were lots of people there, they bought lots of things, it was all decorated in a very Christmas-y manner, people sang and played various kinds of music, the food was good (especially the soup; Thank You, Seniors Group!). That was one set of ups.

On the other hand, you have to sit there next to your table for many, many hours, tending to the selling activity. It's certainly pleasant enough to talk to people who are interested in what you have, but a little less pleasant to be sitting there watching people come by (as many do at every table) casting a disapproving (at best) eye at your goods. The worst is total indifference; as if you had brought bags of old newspapers for their contemplation. I don't think I am really much made for this kind of activity, but what I would like to have is a table that sold only to kids, maybe under the age of 12, and with all goods under $5-7, and with wrapping on site so they could take things home and their mom would not see it.

The kids were the very best to sell to. They are indeed discerning; they look carefully and then, without too much trouble, they make up their minds. I had this tree branch with owl decorations made of felted llama, buffalo, and goat hair. The owls had big eyes, which is an attention grabber all by itself. I'm putting a picture here.

Grownups who were about to buy an owl would look and look; there were (at least at the beginning) 24 different owls and they had to pick just one out of all the owls. They looked and looked and finally, mostly without conviction, settled on one or two. Kids though, speed lookers. They did look and then without hesitation they pointed to "that one." And they weren't the least ambivalent. I want to sell little things to them because they really like what they buy; it's not just for somebody else; it's mostly for their moms, who I am sure deserve every bit of that intense focus. And they are imagining as they make their minds up to part with a little cash the exact look on their mom's face when she sees it on Christmas morning.

I remember that kind of shopping when I was 6 or 7; shopping at the dime store, not only for my mom, but also my dad, and my grandmother (for some reason, we were spared trying to figure out a present for my grandfather), and for my four brothers and sisters. That week of shopping: the hardest week of the year, but also the week of the year that was most engaging. I like that feeling, that remembering, about kids when they are shopping.

So maybe next year I'll just make things for kids and sell just to kids and that could be a very fun and less stressful thing.

All that notwithstanding, thanks to all those who bought from me and from all the other vendors at the weekend event.

It's Buying Time and the Christmas Craft Fair

2011-12-03T09:03:00.000-08:00

Friday night, the Craft Fair opened with a 5-7 wine and cheese event in which the vendors could drink and munch and buy from one another. Seems to lack proper respect for the customers, in some way. The best things, potentially, could be gone before they even get there at the opening bell on Saturday morning.

The Christmas Craft Fair is a big event here in Point Roberts: everything has to be made by locals and sold by people who are legally in the U.S. Canadians, on the other hand, are free to buy as much as they want and, if they take it with them back to Canada, deal with the border people as to taxes in whatever way is required. Or, if they've got places down here, they can just leave the new goods in their cottages and that's the end of it.

The quilt group had hoped to sell raffle tickets for its set of quilts. But the Fair organizers did not allow that because they are also having a raffle (goods supplied by local business and Fair vendors) and they didn't want the competition, assuming there would be any serious competition. In any case, they don't allow it, although they are letting us have the raffle quilts there with a sign saying that interested folks can buy raffle tickets at the Blue Heron. Nevertheless, the quilt group will be represented by four of its members with the wonders of quilts and quilted goods. Like these things:

Keeping the Trees Warm

2011-12-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

The leaves are all gone, so it's time to put the tree scarves back on the trees to help them feel better throughout the winter. I knit these many yards of scarf 3 years ago and this is the third year they will have warmed the trees in front of our house. We take them down in the spring when the bark needs to do a little breathing on its own but I never remember to mark them in some way as to which scarves go on which trunk. So, the color arrangement is a little different each year. And this year, we put some of them on different trees.

This is very small time 'guerilla knitting.' In urban areas, knitters are filling pot holes and covering entire buildings. Very committed stuff. It's not very hard knitting usually, but in these projects it is very often enormously time consuming. Check out these guerilla knitters: here and here, in Seattle.

I also began a little knit scarf for the stop sign on the corner, but apparently I seriously misjudged the size of the stop sign post and how much scarf I would need, because this is what I got on my first application. Pretty pathetic! (It's down there at the bottom of the post.) We've now started a seriously longer scarf for this poor, cold stop sign.

Trapped by Language

2011-11-30T11:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I made my way across the border to buy some Canadian flour (so much better than U.S. for breadmaking: harder wheat, no barley). I cross the border regularly of course for one reason or another and I know how it is supposed to work and, for the most part, how it works. Yesterday, however, it didn't work quite right.

Here's how it works: I approach the border, I open my car window, I hold my Nexus card out to the reader, and I drive up to the booth wherein resides the Canadian border person, still holding out my Nexus card. Then, he says, "What are you bringing in today?" Or something very much like that. It might be just "Bringing anything in?" or "Leaving anything in Canada?" But that is what they are supposed to say to me because they are looking at their information on me: they know where I live, that I'm an American, and that I'm driving a Washington-registered car. If I were Canadian or something other than what I am, they might say something else, but I don't know what that would be. I know what they are supposed to say to me.

And, when they say it, I say, "nothing today." Or I say, "Just a quilt that I'm taking to a quilt group and that is coming back with me at the end of the day." Like those things. And then, the Canadian border guy says, 'Go ahead,' and I say, "Thanks," and we're done.

Yesterday, however, he had a little brain loss experience as I got there and instead of saying what he's supposed to say, he said, "What are you bringing back?" And I was struck speechless. I couldn't say "Not a thing," which was sort of accurate, because my brain got fixated on the "bringing back" part. I wasn't coming "back," after all, I was "coming in." And as I sat there speechless, he realized his error but was having no better luck trying to rescue this conversation. Finally, as I was saying "Nothing," he said, "Bringing In," and we skipped the 'go ahead' and the 'thank you,' grateful the both of us to have managed to get past such a miscommunication difficulty.

What Is This?

2011-11-29T11:50:00.000-08:00

Ed found this on the beach this week during a Thanksgiving walk (west-facing beach). You can see that there is a kind of groove in the center hole. The rock itself seems to be some kind of conglomerate or aggregate. It's pitted and has a slight metallic sheen. It is about 3 inches across and, as in the picture, mostly hexagonal.

A spindle whorl? A net anchor? Some kind of boat equipment? Help?

No Place to Hide

2011-11-22T14:24:00.000-08:00

The phone rings midday. I answer it with my name. Comes back at me? "Hello, this is Newt Gingrich. Like you, I love..." blah, blah, blah.

Why am I not safe in my home from the likes of Newt Gingrich? Apparently, even Point Roberts is not far enough away to escape fools and knaves like him. An island? Or just phoneless forever? Slam.

A Beginning

2011-11-21T10:40:00.000-08:00

The selling of the raffle tickets for the quilts was something of a big deal for me. I'm moderately accustomed to selling my own work (quilts, various fabric things), but it's always stressful: I do not have the soul of an entrepreneur or the outward-oriented nature of a good sales person. One thing about selling goods in Point Roberts, though, is that I often know the people I am selling to, even if only casually.

My life-time experience with retail sales is decidedly limited, but largely not so pleasant. People can be rude, short-tempered, strangely critical and thoughtless when they are buying things. The Saturday experience, however, was absolutely lovely: people were kind, pleasant, cheerful. They spoke admiringly of the three quilts that we had on display and were generally enthusiastic about buying tickets.

It was a somewhat small turnout for the book sale/bake sale/quilt raffle ticket event, probably because the weather had turned brutally cold (for here: high 20's, F.). Nevertheless, the people who did come, man, woman and child, all bought lots of books and a really large quantity of baked goods. I talked to one lady, urging her to buy a German chocolate cake which looked very appealing. She said it was her husband's birthday and that's his favorite kind of cake, but he was away right now. I suggested she buy it anyway and invite the neighbors in to share. 'You'd be one of the neighbors,' she laughed, at which point I realized I had failed to recognize one of my across the street neighbors, all dressed up in winter coat and hat.

I spent the slow time knitting a long red and white piece, about 4 inches across. A little girl, maybe 6 or 7, asked me what I was knitting? 'A scarf for the stop sign at the end of my street,' I said. 'Why?' she countered. 'Because it's cold,' I said. 'Oh,' she said. And then she bought one ticket on the 'I Spy' quilt and went on her way.

I'm thinking that, given the number of tickets we sold, if we had 3,000 more days like this, the quilt group would be able single-handedly to fund the $500,000 library renovation. Others' help in fund-raising would probably be a good idea, though. I don't know that I've got 3,000 sales days in me.

If you want to buy tickets on the quilts, you can do so until the end of December at The Blue Heron on Gulf Road.

Take a Chance!

2011-11-18T21:22:00.000-08:00

All day Saturday, it will be the coldest day we've had so far this fall.

And much of the day, there will be a Bake Sale and a chance to buy a raffle ticket on four different quilts. All at the Community Center; all to benefit our Public Library.

Here are the quilts, but I'll leave you to imagine the baked goods yourselves.

Well, it's not four quilts: it's three. But the fourth one, a pictorial quilt with scenes from Lily Point isn't finished quite yet. At least not enough to take a picture. That will come soon, though.

Looking Ahead

2011-11-15T18:31:00.000-08:00

Getting in Shape

2011-11-14T08:26:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure that I will live long enough to be able to enjoy the fruits of the labors of this kind of work, but it does seems a natural activity for those of us in Point Roberts who have a lot of time on our hands and trees in our yard, though you'd have to start with young ones.

The idea is: since trees are going to grow anyway, you might as well have them grow in a shape that provides uses to you while it does its growing. E.g., a tree that is also a chair, or a table. Lots of pictures here.

Good News for the Point

2011-11-10T20:25:00.000-08:00

According to the All Point Bulletin, the Parks Board levy has been resoundingly approved by local voters. Good sense prevails. Let the maintenance begin!

On Being a Campfire Girl...

2011-11-08T20:04:00.000-08:00

Here is one of the things I get to do because I live in Point Roberts: fall and spring burning. The photo, of course, last week's fall burning. What with an acre of land, and dozens of trees and bushes, there is more than enough prunings and fallen branches and weeds in general and canes from numerous plants (raspberries, Japanese knotweed, etc.) to make it possible to burn for about 8 hours at a time.

Ed chose a sunny, wind-less day to get it all started up and then we dragged things to the fire all day long Usually, I don't get too much involved in this because usually we schedule this when there are grandchildren around. These are city children who think being allowed to burn things is an amazing amount of freedom. (But they were all in school this week.)

And, of course, they're right about the freedom. The reason we get to do this in Point Roberts is because it's not a city where they couldn't possibly allow it. Furthermore, the local trash haulers would be appalled at the idea of their having to pick up all this yard trash and dispose of it themselves. So we get to do it ourselves. This is a mixed blessing, of course. You get to do it, but you also have to do it if you have much land at your disposal.

And so you pick a day when there is no wind and maybe even the threat of a little rain (without wind), and you buy yourself a 2-day burn permit for $5 (Ed says $3 for 3 days) from the local hardware store, post it at the front of your property, and you burn, and burn, and burn. Fortunately, I was a campfire girl as a kid and a camp counsellor later and one of my jobs was to get fires to burn. Of course, since I've lived here, I've also had the opportunity to live with a wood stove for heat (not now, but originally) which means even more opportunity to exercise those campfire skills.

Still, on the whole, I wish somebody would just come and take all this yard trash away, instead.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished or Unappreciated or Something

2011-11-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

There's been a move to get the community involved in cleaning up Baker Field (the area adjacent to the primary school here on the Point) and some considerable progress with what can be done by volunteer labor workdays. The field lies under the jurisdiction of the Parks Board but what with its need to use its limited funds to get the Community Center's immediate problems (ceiling leaks, water pooling under the foundation) under control, there's little actual dollars left over to work on Baker Field. Thus the turn to volunteer work.

All that good work has now paid off with more people actual going to and using the area in some way because it is more inviting. Alas, we are greeted this morning by a note from the primary school on Point Interface with the news that the expanded use has resulted in things both dangerous and not very pleasant being left about for the school children to experience when they use the Field.

Maybe we need to have a national self-governance day where we talk about the importance of responsibility for our own daily actions and their consequences. I'm all for a social safety net, but people, all people--school kids to grownups to old people, ought to be able at a minimum to clean up after themselves. Maybe it means keeping a trash bag in your car; maybe it means finding the trash receptacles around; maybe it involves taking things to the transfer station; mostly it involves remembering to do it. I don't know what the pragmatic problem might be, but we need to be thinking more consciously about the basic rules of living together, especially in such a tiny place as this where we ought to be able to get it right.

Local Dangers

2011-10-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Ed was out for a walk and as he came back home, he ran into a small critter that appeared to be just resting in the middle of the street where a vehicle could easily run over it. He picked it up, brought it home, and we both inspected it. That's him (or her) in the picture below. Maybe 3-4 inches, brown nubbly skin on top and gorgeous orange skin on the underside.

We poked and prodded a bit, trying to get him to turn over so we could inspect the soft, moist orange side. He/she was not cooperative. I checked out 'salamander images' and found the critter pretty quickly. Turns out, it's one of the most toxic wild animals in the world:

"The rough-skin newt (Taricha granulosa) is one of the most toxic animals known to science. One case involved a 29-year-old man who had been drinking heavily and swallowed a newt on a dare in Coos Bay, Oregon. Within 10 minutes, he complained of tingling in the lips. During the next two hours he complained of numbness and weakness and then experienced cardiopulmonary arrest. He died later during the day (despite hospital treatment). In another case, toxin from a Taricha entered a puncture wound on a scientist's index finger, and he suffered 30 minutes of numbness up the arm into the shoulder, and some accompanying nausea and light-headedness. It can emit, from its skin, a milky fluid that contains a neurotoxin that is fatal to larger animals including people. " Source here.

It seems quite amazing that we would never have heard of a local creature with such toxicity. It's said to be quite docile and exudes its poison only if you irritate it sufficiently. I guess we weren't irritating enough in our attempts to turn him over. At least, we are both still alive 30 hours later. But best not to mess much with newts with orange undersides.

Life's Little Indignities

2011-10-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

I feel kind of bad about people in the post-70 age group who are very technophobic about computers. There's a lot of wonderful stuff that they don't have access to because of that. I'm not talking about Farmville or Bejeweled or the endless recountings of the misadventures of Lindsey Lohan. The things I care most about are (1) the quick email access to my kids, my grandchildren, and my friends who are still living one of the various places where I used to live; and (2) the ability to find information easily, and especially when the information is something I used to know but because of my brain files having all filled up, I can no longer get access to.

I can do without Facebook; I don't really care much about everybody's minute to minute status. I can even do without Jon Stewart (we have no TV). But the email and the information (think 'Wikipedia'), I would really miss. And so I'm sorry that my age-group acquaintances and friends are missing out on that, even if they aren't sorry.

What they are not missing out on, however, is a few experiences I have had, the most recent one yesterday. I have to admit that I read a lot of politics on the Web. A really lot, in truth. I've got a dozen or so blogs that I attend to regularly (reading not writing, but I do write on three regularly), and various newspapers both here and outside the U.S. (as long as they are written in English) are regularly before my eyes. I have one child (when will I stop calling an almost 50-year-old 'a child'?) who is very much on top of the technology and always telling me what to be attending to. As a result, I was on Twitter and Reddit and Dig long before most people had ever heard of them. And very long before I had much idea of what to do with them. (Twitter? Do nothing.)

Similarly, when Daily Kos showed up in the world, he became a writer there and urged me to do the same. I joined up, wrote a few 'diaries' about healthcare reform and the need for same, and read many other writers' views on various public issues and on politics more generally. (For those who don't follow this stuff, 'Daily Kos' is a sprawling kind of network for people of the progressive or leftist persuasion. Or at least it is said to be that, although in recent times, it has become much more centrist in some ways. )

Anyway, another of my children followed us on to the Daily Kos site and she wrote with great frequency there, formed lots of cyber-relationships, had a good time. But, she's more inclined to argue with people than either her brother or I am, and she got into some kind of shouting match with various other writers and the upshot was she was banned from the site. So, since I rarely wrote anything there, I told her to use my account instead, writing under my name. And then, I got banned yesterday for letting her do that.

So there you go: this is not going to happen to any of my friends who don't fool with computers and the net. But it happened to me. I have lived long enough to be banned, literally, by some group. Me, personally. Not only BANNED by Daily Kos; I have also had the peculiar experience of being Unfriended on Facebook--and by a relative. This is also what technology is bringing us. Too strange.

It may be enough to make me reconsider the virtues of information and email, but probably not. And it definitely would have happened even if I didn't live in Point Roberts.

Getting the EPA Out of Our Land and One Other Thing

2011-10-27T21:14:00.000-07:00

A little entertainment for those of us close to the border: The Republicans want border agents to roam around a little more freely within 100 miles of the Canadian and the Mexican border. Not a law; just a proposed law in the U.S. Congress. But it just goes to show how important we are to those in places of power.

Another thing that has to do with elections and politics. We don't have much local government up here: there's the water board and the fire department and the clinic board and the Parks Board. All of them of considerable importance to our daily lives. No one more important than the other, but....

The Parks Board operates the Community Center which is called that because it is that. It has to have enough funds to pay for the utilities and upkeep. It has to ask us for those funds every so often. This year is the year to ask. So, it's up to the voters of Point Roberts to say yes to those funds or else there won't be any Community Center or any of the things that go on there (public meetings, public programs, library, seniors' programs, Saturday markets, etc.). And, for no useful reason, it requires a 60% 'yes' vote. Don't not vote at all, please; and please vote yes on this levy which will cost property owners very little (a total of $49,000/year split among 3,000 properties amounts to about $16 per property on average, with more expensive property owners paying more, less expensive property owners paying less).

If we don't pass this, the center of the community will be gone.

Return of the Racoons

2011-10-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

(And other wild life).

It is the fall harvest season and it would be the time that the squirrels were making off with all the walnuts from the walnut tree. Except that...well, following the general rule that the right time to prune is when you have a pruning instrument in your hand, we severely pruned the walnut tree this spring after it bloomed. It was really just all over the place and we had to walk around it. The result, of course, was no walnuts for the squirrels. No way to communicate the reasons for this action to the squirrels, of course. By now, they've discovered the result for themselves.

However, since these walnuts have come to be a major part of their winter diet (they clean the tree out every year), I needed to find some other nutrition for them. As it happened, I had several bags of pecans in my neighbor's freezer and my neighbor needed me to remove them from her freezer...they'd been there over a year and she might reasonably have thought that was long enough, but it was really more that they were thinking of selling the property and I was thinking about a source of nuts.

I have all these pecans because my older daughter owns a pecan tree in New Mexico and sends me many pounds of pecans each January. Usually, I manage to allot the pecans (which I must shell; she's a wonderful daughter, but she doesn't shell 30-40 pounds of pecans for her dear old mother, or at least not yet) over the year, coming to the end of the supply about the time the new year's supply arrives. But a couple of years ago, that didn't happen and I was still working on that year's supply when the new supply arrived.

Possibly, nuts in shells are okay for years when they are living in the freezer, but this particular lot had been a little dry in the first place and more difficult than usual to shell. Sitting in the freezer was probably making them yet drier and it wasn't making them easier to shell. So, it's almost November; I have yet two big bags of this year's pecans to get me through the next two months; and the squirrels can have the old pecans from the freezer.

I put out the first quart of nuts under the walnut tree about four days ago. The next morning, nothing had happened. The pecans were just where I put them. Then, mid-day I saw the squirrel in the walnut tree. And in the morning, all pecans were gone. So, I kept putting out more quarts as soon as the previously placed ones disappeared. I never saw the squirrel touch them, but they would disappear. Then, yesterday, after putting out a new bunch, two of our three raccoons showed up to poke around the pecans. I didn't see them put them in their mouths but they did bat them around with their paws, as if trying to figure out what they could do with them. Unsuccessfully. And then two black cats appeared to take in the game. And then, there was the squirrel up in the tree, his tail waving frantically, but not coming to ground.

Finally, I went out and the sight of me sent cats and raccoons racing away, while the squirrel went into hiding among the tree leaves higher up. By nightfall, the last of about a gallon of pecans had disappeared. The larder well stacked, the squirrel is likely to do all right this winter. While the raccoons think about all the apples they could have stock-piled. And the cats? I don't know who they belong to, but they sure spend a lot of time in our yard as if they think we ought to be provisioning them.

A Puzzle

2011-10-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

We are heading for an election in which, fortunately, there are very few people to vote for and very few issues to vote on. Nevertheless, the mail box and the p.o. box and the telephone are unusually full of voices and papers urging me to champion one person, one issue or another Most of the championing is over a proposition which, as I understand it, will take the state out of running liquor stores and open the running of liquor stores to the wonders of the free market. Well, fairly regulated free market. The people who support this assure me that competition will do wonders for the sale of liquor and that the state surely ought not to be in the business of selling anything.

I am guessing that the wonders of competition means that prices will be lower, not that thousands more gallons of liquor will be sold. At least they don't mention that the outcome would be much more drinking going on in the state, but if prices were lower, surely consumption would increase.

They haven't, at least so far, mentioned that the state shouldn't be in the business of selling liquor because the state is too incompetent to do so, but I suppose that is at the bottom of their reasoning; that and the idea that if there is any money to be made here, the state ought not to be making it when liquor store owners, instead, could be making it. Thus reducing the unemployment rate.

Right now it's hard to say whether we would be better off if more people were working or if the state had more revenue. Of course, if more people were working that would produce more revenue. But if the state had more revenue, it could hire more workers. Like teachers, particularly the ones they are busy laying off.

Well, it's a hard question, especially for someone who doesn't buy liquor in the first place. But, it does seem to me that if the state is competent to run a prison system of vast size, it is surely up to the much simpler task of running liquor stores.

Masked!

2011-10-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

I went over to the library today because they were having a mask-making session, presumably in honor of the upcoming Halloween season. I noticed the newspaper announcement of this event and checked with the library to see whether I was welcome or whether this was just a kids' event. Graciously, they said they expected only kids, but I was welcome to come if I were in the mask-making market. I felt like being behind a mask at the moment, so I made my way over, grateful that they hadn't asked me to volunteer my services in helping the kids make masks.

I got there just before the kids arrived: all 13 of them from the local K-3 school. Then another little girl arrived a bit later; home schooler? They all got themselves arranged at tables where the priority was eating something. Everyone had some apple juice and an oatmeal or a pumpkin/chocolate chip cookies. Then the leader began the explanation of what was going to happen next. Tables had been set up with supplies and each table had slightly different supplies, depending upon what the kids wanted to make.

"Any questions?"
"Can we make more than one?" from a little boy.
"Can we have another cupcake," from a little girl.

"I want to make a bat," from another boy. (There were about 10 girls and 4 boys; Point Roberts making up for the reverse ratios in India and China.)

The extra cupcake issue was generously addressed (everybody got one more cupcake OR one more cookie) and then we (the 14 kids and me) were set free to do our will with the goods.

In no time at all, masks were on faces, finger puppets were produced, and addition rounds of masks were being undertaken. I had the advantage of being an adult (only adults were allowed to use glue guns, which were required for feather use; a rule objected to by one little boy who noted to his seat partner that he used glue guns all the time). Not only was I an adults with privileges but I also carry a good pair of scissors in my puirse for cloth cutting, which possibility the kids were entirely bereft of.

I completed my project (an owl finger puppet) and made my way to my car. In the hallway, four little girl escapees from the mask making were painting one another's fingernails with a sparkly lavender polish. Alas, they were missing a good thing, I thought, but maybe they already lead lives filled with creative endeavours and didn't need any more.

In Which We Run Out of Our Sense of Humor

2011-10-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

For 17 years now, I've been being generally good humored, I think, about the vagaries of the border people and their agricultural prohibitions. I memorize the rules they give to me, I am tediously meticulous about telling them what food products I am transporting into the U.S. from Tsawwassen's markets. In fact, the guards usually stop listening while I am reciting my list: ten Canadian apples in season, six bananas, six pounds of peaches, 436 blueberries (no, that last one is a joke).

And for 17 years, long before 9/11, I've been bringing in Canadian apples and pears in season, which is to say in the fall, without any questions being asked. Today, however, some otherwise bored dude who asked me "Where are you going?" (note that he has on his computer monitor the information that I live in P.R., but he hasn't bothered to look), wanted proof that my six apples and my four pears were grown in Canada. And what he wanted was stickers. I pointed out that at this time of the year, they would only come from the U.S. or Canada, because Ukraine isn't trying to break into the northern American apple market and Mexico isn't growing them. (I didn't actually say that about Ukraine, but I did about Mexico.). He graciously granted my point, but insisted tht they could have come from anywhere, and only a sticker would show otherwise.

Only a sticker would show that I had not injected the apple with nanobot terrorists, I suppose.

Now if I buy the apples and pears at Thrifty or Safeway, they will have stickers, but if I go to the Farm Market, where the fruits are fresher and from local sources, they will not have stickers. The solution to this problem, obviously, is to save my fruit stickers, carry them with me at all times, and apply as necessary.

I do grow weary of people pretending that their pronouncements/solutions are based on anything other than a pretense at rationality. The Age of Reason. Wish I'd been there for it.

Ingrates!

2011-10-16T14:12:00.000-07:00

Three raccoons just walked through the yard and by my kitchen window: a mom and her two midsized offspring. On their way, they had to walk virtually through a two-foot pile of apples that I'm not using because they are small, but I am a lot bigger than a raccoon. Apples not good enough for the wildlife? Probably they were hoping we would be growing salmon or fried chicken or chocolate ice-cream.

Cleaning Up the Garden

2011-10-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year when there is almost nothing to feel about the garden but guilt. Everything that is going to bloom or produce something has done it. The raspberries have not been able to produce their fall crop because everything got pushed back too far, and there is just no way that all the miniscule berries covering the branches are going to get bigger and turn red when the highs are barely in the 60's. Alas.

I have bought three dozen+ tulips and managed to get them under the gound here and there and next spring I will be saying, "What was I thinking putting them there where the water pools, or where there is no sun or some such. This past summer, I saw a wonderful lily garden here on the Point and decided I needed to have some lilies in my yard. We might say I was inspired by what I saw, but it was actually more like great envy. Then, scouting someplace on the net where I could order a raft of lily bulbs, I discovered why there aren't lots of lily gardens: at $6-$8 a bulb, it's going to take awhile to have a big bank of 8-foot tall fragrant lilies. I may not live long enough to get such a collection. A few this year; a few more next.

My 15 lily bulbs will be arriving in a few weeks, so there is going to have to be a big push to clear out an area to plant them so that like army recruits, they can be all they can be. One more item on an endless list including cut back campion, Shasta daisies; fertilize peonies and iris; cut back every thing, really. Rake leaves. Get rid of lingering weeds. Do all the things that every year I swear I'm going to do, but that I never quite get done. Guilt is my companion as I don't get these things done.

The Pleasures and Problems of Maple Beach

2011-10-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

First of all, it's a lovely beach; and second of all, it's tides are so far out and back that it is always a surprise to see it. On the other hand, given that I don't live in that area of the Point, I seldom go there. And that is not because I'm a masochist. It's because there is no place to park there except in someone else's yard.

We used to have good friends who lived right down on the beachfront, and I usually felt okay about asking them to let us park in their driveway. But they have gone elsewhere and so, in the summer when our grandchildren are around, one of us, Ed or me, agrees not to go to the beach with the crew but instead to drive everyone down there and in a specified time drive back and pick them all up.

When the summer is gone and all the tourists with it, it's a little easier. There still isn't any real public parking but every cottager is not having to host some unknown person's automobile full time, so it feels a little less of an infringement to park on the edge of the street/lawn/easement for an hour or so in midday. We were there both last week and the week before with visitors and it was lovely both times. We spent the second trip down at what we call Shady Beach, which is to the south, just before the corner where Point Roberts shore turns more or less west. There are trees that are growing out of the hillside and whose branches come down and shade that section of beach. It's rocky and odd, with bouncy branches that you can ride.

Last week, the big red jelly fish (lion jelly fish?) were plunked about the beach in great abundance, separated by big wrapped/twisted quantities of eel grass. The jelly fish with their beautiful red gelatinous shapes are not to be touched, I'm told. And then, the rest of the U.S., right there before your eyes.

But why isn't there any parking? That beach area is our fourth County Park. Over at Lily Point Reserve, they are hell-bent on getting in parking, even though the number of people who go there is remarkably small and for all I can tell well within what the shoulder parking on APA can handle. At Maple Beach, the number of visitors is very large, and the County doesn't seem to care at all.

I'm told that the County is thinking about something that would involve some one-way streets in that area that would free up room on Roosevelt for parking on one side. They ought to be thinking a little harder, I would say. They ought to be getting a little more encouragement to think harder. For my part, I'd like to say, "HEY, COUNTY PEOPLE! THINK HARDER ABOUT GETTING SOME PUBLIC PARKING ON MAPLE BEACH BEFORE NEXT SUMMER COMES ROUND! AND THEN DO SOMETHING, FOR AN ENCORE PERFORMANCE." You're welcome.

Worthy Projects

2011-10-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

The Community Advisory Committee (it advocates for the Point with the County by mission, but also works with other agencies whose work affects life here on the Point) met last night with the goal of discussing possible funding mechanisms for what were described as 'three worthy projects.' These included the necessary repairs to the Community Center, the renovation of the Julius Firehall for a new library, and the production of a lighthouse at Lighthouse Point. Each will ultimately involve costs of about a half million dollars.

The discussion part never mentioned the Community Center repairs and I had thought that the Parks Board had developed a plan for that which would not, at least currently, involve seeking either new taxes or an additional levy. Nevertheless, it does seem to me that the community ought to be prepared to cover maintenance costs for the main community building in Point Roberts via the tax system. But that is not going to happen now. So people who resist having taxes pay for anything can sleep well in their beds.

Indeed, all three projects involve funding outside of raising taxes. There are private institutions that provide grants, there are private donors, there is grassroots' fundraising, and, to a small degree, there are government agencies that provide funds for such projects (e.g., restoration of historical buildings).

Unfortunately, the discussion seemed to drift into peoples' feeling that the projects were not the projects they wanted, sort of. One discussant pointed out that, although he had no data, he felt the price tag of renovations for the Firehall was too high. Thanks for sharing, was my inner response. Another voice urged thinking 'out of the box,' and suggested putting the library in Baker Field. Not exactly a vital location for a community library, I'd say, but definitely out of the box. Way out of the box. Someone expressed the view that the new library would be just the same as the old library and we would be out a half million. However, when asked whether she had looked at the architectural plans, her reply was a succinct, 'No.' And with an implied 'and I have no plans to do so.'

The Lighthouse Project simply presented its status and its plans. Nobody objected, at least.

The most useful information of the evening was that the Point Roberts PREP group (which encompasses both the Food Bank and Emergency Preparedness) is currently using the Julius Firehall as a storage site for its supplies. Obviously, if the Library project is to proceed, some other storage will need to be found for them.

Given that my focus and interests are largely on the Library Improvement Project, I can't exactly conclude that it was an evening well spent, but maybe just hearing these dissenting voices will tell me something that I need to know. Or, maybe not.

Hard Times for Blogging

2011-10-11T18:18:00.001-07:00

Many days involved in guests and rain and internet problems has left me writing not at all. But, I am back in the internet business, I think, and tomorrow I will begin posting again. Tonight is the Community Advisory Committee Meeting where the Point's many needs will be discussed anew.

A Very Short Story with a Good Ending

2011-10-05T18:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a hermit thrush flew into our kitchen window, stunned himself (sitting upright still), lost some feathers (including a tail feather) from the shock of it all (?), got his picture taken, got warmed up a bit, recovered, and flew away with a pair of fledglings in tow.

Drama in the woods with windows. The birds seem, sometimes, to be as out of it as I sometimes seem to be. But I probably wouldn't have recovered as well as she did.

[Forgot to say that Ed did that excellent photography up there.]

Such Service!

2011-10-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

Not only do we get new pavement on Tyee and a hard surface on the south shoulder of Benson to South Beach, but now they've come round and painted white and yellow lines all over the place. It's a remarkable sign of urban life, somehow, at least here on South Beach. It looks entirely out of place. But I appreciate the thought and the work nevertheless. I suppose it is possible that, now that Whatcom Public Works has been up here doing this road work, they'll have fallen in love with us and be hanging around all the time, trying to figure out what else we might need that would require them to come up here and hang out.

Everything Going Wrong

2011-09-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

Today, the October issue of the All Point Bulletin arrived, providing us with a disastrous report of what happened to this community in September. Usually, the Sheriff's Report includes just a few items, most of them involving a domestic agitation or more liquor than appropriate under the circumstances. But this September...Well, My Gracious!

September starts with excess alcohol and a silver pick-up running into a large rock in a yard just a little down the street from me, and ends with someone stealing a bag of dog food from a car parked in front of the car owner's house in the middle of the night. And in between? $16 worth of hard lemonade stolen from a porch, attempted invasion of the local school, a guy in custody who punched his fist through a reinforced glass window resulting in both the fist and window in need of repair, kids drinking and doping around a bonfire in a State Reserve, the poisonings of two willow trees, the discovery of some 500-year-old remains, a sudden death, and a lewd exposure.

I don't know whether to consider this just end-of-summer excitement, a statistical anomaly, or a harbinger of things to come during the bad times of a double dip recession (stealing dogfood already?). But it is hard to believe that the Sheriff's Deputies who live amongst us would really have time to be lurking in driveways looking for speeders.

The Weather Gods Look Down Upon Us

2011-09-27T20:44:00.000-07:00

And are not so pleased, I guess. Yesterday was like receiving a sharp rap on the knuckles. As if they were saying, "Yes, we've been busy making other peoples' lives wretched, what with droughts and hurricanes and giant winds and floods, but don't think we've forgotten about you up here. Here's a day of rain that will remind you, despite the calm and mild summer weeks you've been living and dreaming through, where you come from and what is your lot in life."

On Sunday, it was windy but sunny and the windsurfers were out in force in Boundary Bay. [I'm told they were 'kiteboarders' not windsurfers.] But on Monday, it was just clouds and greyness and off and on heavy rain all day. Easing off Tuesday, and some sun promised on Wednesday. But the message was sent; and received. It's fall, and don't be forgetting it!

Different Strokes

2011-09-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

We are in to the quiet time. The wet days, the grey days, the quiet days (well, now that the big trucks have left off restoring the walking path shoulder on Benson). The Saturday Market is over, but the rush to the International Market and the gas stations continues, at least on the weekend. There are still a few tourists around, but with the rain, that will wither away. It is so slow that last weekend the Seafood Festival was held without any publicity. I saw a picture of attendants, so I know it happened, but I never saw any announcement on the Community Events Sign. In fact, I thought it must have been cancelled for some reason.

In mid-week, we had a little Let's Hear It For Peace occasion. The Lutheran Church folk organized a pot-luck dinner and a peace celebration. They distributed fabric flags and invited us all to write messages of peace on them and then they intended to fly them at the beach, at Lighthouse Park. Except that it rained and they moved indoors to the Church. But peace would be good, regardless of the weather.

The strange part, is that the weather is warm. We spend our days in the 70's with high, very high humidity, and on-and-ff overcast skies. It feels like weather I've never felt here before. Although, having said that, someone will immediately remind me that it was just like that 14 years ago when some event happened during a warm humid September.

The Community Events Sign when I saw it last had no signs on it. We are closed down for the moment, I think. But, for something to think about, read this. The guy who writes this blog wrote to me awhile back to comment that I was a city person living in a strange place and he was an Alaskan living in Yucatan and that there were some things we had in common. In this case, though, I suspect we are mostly like the foreigners. Probably to our loss.

Plus or Minus

2011-09-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

The big trucks were back on South Beach yesterday as they got ready to continue work on the shoulder walking path on South Beach. Ed went out to take photos of the trucks because he likes to take photos of out of the usual objects. It was around lunchtime when he started taking pictures and none of the workers was around.

Then a border patrol car arrived and parked. And then a Public Works employee came up to him and engaged in a little small talk. It felt a bit as if they felt he needed to be investigated for taking pictures of the public works truck. And it reminded me of the time that the local Deputy Sheriff responded to a local resident's call about "a man walking fast with a suitcase," and conducted a little conversation with Ed about where he was going. (This was pre 9/11 even!) (He was walking to the border to catch a bus to the airport.)

So, I don't know whether it's a good thing that people are suspicious or not such a good thing. No harm, no foul, I guess.

But it also reminds me that if you spend much time on South Beach near Benson, you will get to see one of the current Deputy Sheriffs sitting in his residential driveway, just barely outside the fence, where he can ticket any driver driving too fast on Benson. Just enforcing the law, I know. But I wish he had something a little more useful to engage his skills than running a speed trap from his driveway, especially at this time of year when the traffic is negligible and the probability of people driving over the speed limit is perhaps higher just because of that.

A plus? A minus? Life in Point Roberts.

How About That Paint?

2011-09-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

Updated below.

Down the south side of Benson, from Tyee to South Beach, someone has painted blue and orange stripes on the shoulder of the road. The blue stripes are a particularly attractive color in this setting. Here it is:

And what does it mean? I think the blue stripes are indicators of water lines and the orange stripes may be phone lines, and the painters are communicating some important information to somebody who might be digging there. And why would they be digging? Perhaps to restore the walking path along the shoulder. That work was scheduled to be done after the Tyee road repair. And it looks like it's about to get under way!

The walking path was established some years back, but then it was never maintained and the endless growth took it over. Hope maintenance is part of the budget this time.

Update: And there they were, from the Whatcom Co. Public Works Dept, first thing Monday morning, scraping and filling. Starting at South Beach and then down Benson to Tyee.

About the Post Office

2011-09-16T20:55:00.000-07:00

News is out that the post office will be closing over 250 post offices nationwide. Normally, in such a move, I'd expect that small rural post offices would be first in line for evictions. At best, they'd be turned into a counter in a local grocery store. And Point Roberts would be an easy target because there aren't enough voters here to complain sufficiently to change the P.O.'s point of view.

But our little post office is probably safe through a lot of closings because it is a big money maker for the P.O. As critical as we may be sometimes of the Canadian mailers in line, we need to remember that they are the ones that are protecting us.

Eight of the post offices that will be closed are are in Washington State and include offices in Everett, Olympia, Pasco, Redmond, Fife, Kent, Tacoma, and Wenatchee. The list of all post offices being closed can be found here.

Not Enough Water...Someplaces

2011-09-14T19:57:00.000-07:00

If it turns out that the Pacific Northwest gets less rain as a result of climate change, our acute dependence on Vancouver might get to be a real problem, not only in terms of cost but of actual availability. Our isolation with respect to water makes me somewhat attentive to what's happening in other places with respect to water issues.

My older daughter lives in Carlsbad, New Mexico, which is sharing Texas's current severe drought conditions. The City Council there, she tells me, has just passed a law seriously restricting water use. From April 1 to September 30 of every year, outdoor watering is limited to three days a week between 6 p.m. and 10 ~~p.m.~~ a.m. The restrictions also prohibit the planting of lawn, trees or shrubs during that 6-month period. Unfortunately, she says, April is when everybody plants because it's too hot from May on and too cold in the other six months. Those are pretty harsh restrictions.

Washington State recently passed legislation legitimizing use of rain barrels. That would be a good start here in Point Roberts: i.e., for people to install rain barrels.

Ride That Ferry!

2011-09-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

CNN has offered us a little news analysis or something about the effects of 9/11 on the border. Included in its report is a section on Point Roberts.

Apparently, someone actually came up here and actually looked around and actually talked to some people, including people who had not lived here prior to 9/11, to find out what the effects of 9/11 were. And then its intrepid reporter (after experiencing lack of sufficient respect by the CBP) points out that one of the essentially worrisome problems of Point Roberts is that a terrorist could come here and then take a ferry to the mainland.

Is it that there is a ferry to the mainland from Point Roberts and Homeland Security has kept it secret from us P.R. residents? Or is it that CNN does not know what it is talking about?

CNN reports; you be the judge.

Small Town

2011-09-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon, I showed up at the post office around 2:15 in order to make the 3 pm mail. one guy in line ahead of me with about 25 packages. Oh, dear. Well, I've got time. Then, about five minutes later, an older woman walked in, thanked the guy with the packages and entered the line ahead of me. Then, as he had tended to her, she tended to him and he disappeared to re-appear with another cart and another 25 or so packages. Jeez...maybe I'll make the 3:15 mail, maybe not at this rate. Maybe they'll open another line?

But, not to be. Turns out the evening power outage (what was that about? Grid problems from some San Diego outage?) had disabled all but one of the post office's computers and thus only one line was the story of our lives today. And we began to talk to one another about our plight or at least about our lives in Point Roberts. Such talk always starts with stories about the border. Apparently it was problematic that day coming in. The day before it had been absolutely awful going out. There remains some kind of road work that can bollix it all up for us all.

The guy with all the packages inquired of me whether I had only one thing. Alas, I had three small packages and he gave me a look, the equivalent of 'not going to be able to help you today, and tomorrow doesn't look too good either...' We drifted off in our conversation to the lines in the grocery store, and eventually found ourselves off into the weekend's quilt show, when one guy asked what we did here in Point Roberts on a weekend, those of us who actually lived here. The quilt show was an event nobody in the post office line had attended, but they wanted to know about it; from boredom or from interest? Well, hard to know.

Then we discussed the summer weather and its strangeness...too warm too long. But, the lady in front me said it had been just like this the year of Expo (maybe 20+ years ago). And another woman agreed with that memory, thus leading us to conclude that it wasn't unusual. And yet, once every 20+ years seems unusual to me. Unusual enough to be caused by different things. We didn't discuss global warming or climate change. Too worrisome for an afternoon at the post office. But there had been an earthquake in the vicinity a few hours earlier, but we didn't feel it, even though it was 6.4. Not going to happen here, one woman said. Like, right.

It's now 2:40 and we discuss whether we'll make the mail deadline at 3:15 and conclude we will. And the guy at the head of the line slowly processes his massive pile of packages. Lisa, the post office clerk, apologizes to the rest of us, but the guy never turns around. We are not there, apparently, for him.

Fiinally, he is done, and turns to see the half dozen of us behind him. He looks amazed. I wish him a nice day, acknowledging that there had been some hard feelings during the past half hour. But now, I said, we were all past that. And he smiled and said, 'thanks,' and left. And we moved through our own processing steps. And Lisa thanked us again for our patience and apologized for it all.

I know all the post office peoples' names here. I never knew a single name of a post office employee in any of the many places I have lived previously. If I keep at it, maybe I'll get to know the names of all the people in line at the post office too, and we can learn to work out our differences. Small town.

Strange Days

2011-09-07T20:22:00.000-07:00

More sun, day after day. Hardly even could call it Indian Summer. And then, this afternoon, the wind came up and it was a warm wind from the west. Westerlies are never warm up here, it's my impression. Sitting on the porch tonight with the warm breezes still coming, I felt like we were living in a moment that we wouldn't see again. But maybe that's what climate change will bring us: warm westerlies coming in over the warm northwest Pacific Ocean?

It's time to start on the end of summer gardening chores. Yesterday, I pruned the summer raspberry canes, to give some room for the fall raspberry crop which is, usually, not much of a crop; but if this weather continues, it could come through unexpectedly well. And, today, I began transplanting a large crop of 2-year plants that will bloom next year: lunaria and digitalis seedlings, especially; and then it's time to spread the crocosmyia bulbs around, and do the autumn fertilizing of the peonies and lilies. And in no time, it will be time to plant tulip and daff bulbs. And if it's still sunny and warm then, well, I think we may be in trouble.

Out of One, Two and It's Legal

2011-09-05T18:29:00.000-07:00

The big news from the Border Conference with the Community Advisory Committee is this:
We can now bring tomatoes and peppers over the border but only if we slice them at least in half, first. (Presumably, the CBP will not get agitated if they discover that we are now traveling with sharp knives.) And, somewhat more, if the tomatoes and peppers are clearly marked grown in the U.S., they don't have to be sliced or even halved.

Also, which is probably a big deal especially for Canadian cottagers who come down for a chilly weekend in the fall-spring seasons, we may all bring firewood in from Canada if it is for one's personal use. I don't have a wood-burning stove, so this part is not such an improvement for me. But it is for lots of people. And we rejoice for all improvements, small and large. The Advisory Committee deserves a lot of support both for taking this issue on and for making some headway.

In other news, the last Saturday Market was held with something less than a full pack of vendors. But there were some and there were lots of visitors to the market, at least in part drawn by the Point Roberts Quilt Group's Quilt Show, which was fabulously attended. The quilters send out their thanks to everybody who came. We had a lot of fun, and it seemed like our guests did too.

It's something of a challenge for just a dozen people to put on a substantial quilt show, but we managed it with great variety this year. Maybe next year, again.

An Event on Saturday

2011-09-02T14:56:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, Saturday, from 10-2, the Point Roberts Quilt Group will have its occasionally annual Quilt Show and, in this case, sale. I'm busy, with the other members of the group, getting this put together today and then doing it tomorrow, so I don't have time to write much except to say that it is happening and that we all hope, if you are in the vicinity, that you come and see what we have been doing over the past year.

And say hello!

"To the Nines," 2011, an Improvisational Quilt based on the traditional 9-patch block. 44"x64"

The Wonders of Point Roberts

2011-08-31T20:27:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I was about ten minutes early for a meeting at the Community Center, so I stopped to investigate the 'new' McFrugal's, which recently announced its grand opening. It's in the Miller building on Gulf, where Heather McPhee used to have her real estate office. I don't know where she's gone, although she's still here and still in the real estate business, such as it is nowadays.

But, the 'old' McFrugals was up on Tyee, near the border and, apparently, is still up there. The 'old' McFrugals was sort of like a very small dollar store. Handy enough, but probably too small to be a big draw. It had small things, odd packets of foods, envelopes, t-shirts, crayons, stuff like that. I assumed that it had moved its stock down to the Miller Bldg. But when I went in, I was surprised to find multiple rooms, 5? 6?, filled with a very large number of objects. Less a Dollar Store than Liquidation World. There were sets of dishes, nice looking sets of cooking pans, stainless steel bowl sets, silverware, leather aprons (leather!), fishing tackle, boat stuff including a pup tent with pontoons for use on land and sea (perhaps for a real pup?), dehumidifiers, coffee makers, a vast selection of fleece blankets and pillows, and a good deal more.

I've never been a big fan of Dollar Stores, although useful enough, like the Kress and Woolworths of my youth (where I had my first actual job). There used to be a Liquidation World in Tsawwassen and there was also one on the Sunshine Coast and I found them both providers of extremely entertaining shopping when one is in that mood. They might have anything and it probably will be at an excellent price. But I never imagined that Point Roberts would have such entertainment. Seems a real addition to the commercial scene here: for those days when you'd like to shop but don't want to cross the border.

I even went back today and purchased one of those fleece blankets: 60x80" for $10--I can't buy the fleece for $10. It's a very useful addition underneath a quilt for that season (which is now) when a down comforter is too warm but a quilt is not warm enough and a quilt plus a regular blanket is too heavy. Welcome to fall, I'm afraid, looking at the last two mornings.

Apples Falling Down

2011-08-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

Each morning, the grass is now littered with apples that just betake themselves from their attachment to their respective trees. We have about five apple trees, each with a somewhat different schedule and each with a different apple, most of them unrecognized by me. Our most productive tree is a four-graft, and those apples I do know: transparent, jonagold, red delicious, and golden delicious. But the rest? Hard to tell.

This year, they are all behaving somewhat peculiarly. They bloom roughly at the same time, but historically, their ripening time is quite different. This year, though, four of them are ripening pretty much at once. The transparents were only slightly ahead of the jonagolds, and the round red apples, which are usually in between those two have been ripening at the same time. And their sizes are all weird. The transparents are all stretched out and skinny, whereas the round red apples are round and red but tiny...barely 2" across, though they are usually more like 3.5 inches. The jonagolds, too, are small this year, and another tree, which usually has large red and green apples this year has even tinier apples, all of which are falling off the tree before they ripen.

The red and golden delicious haven't ripened yet, which is typical, and the final tree, which normally ripens in November or even December has precious few apples of any size or color. So, it's looking like a disappointing apple year in our yard anyway. The transparents have provided us with apple pies and applesauce of fine quality, but the rest look like they may have a future mainly as apple juice. I put a 5-gallon barrel out near the trees so that all the windfalls (even though there is no wind, I guess that's what you call them) can be easily gathered up and delivered to the apple juice machine.

Hard to be a farmer, especially if you're a farmer who doesn't really know much about the crops you are growing and harvesting. I am, at best I fear, only an incidental farmer.

New Residents

2011-08-24T21:24:00.000-07:00

The 2010 Census showed that Point Roberts had a population increase over ten years of 6 people, a pitiful .45%. But what the census didn't even look at was the horse population. It, too, had an increase of at least 6. I know that because I met six new residents this afternoon.

Yesterday, driving down Benson, I passed the corral wherein six little donkeys are more or less securely held. Next door, at the entrance to what had been the nursery, was a big grey horse. A big, grey, commanding horse, standing right next to the fence. I was taken aback at seeing there a horse where I had never before seen a horse, especially not such a good looking horse. When I got home and tried to describe him to Ed, I felt like I wanted to say that he had had a feather headpiece, like the big horses at the circus, but that wasn't really true. But it felt true.

I went back today and met him up close, as they say in TV, as well as his five horse colleagues and his owner. She, too, is a new resident of Point Roberts and has come to provide a home for her rescued horse group. Increasingly used to Icelandic ponies, I kept thinking how big these horses were. The lovely grey horse, named Lance, is an Arabian, with a brown freckled coat (his mother was grey; his father was brown, but the freckles go away in the winter), and is elderly, 28(?), but doesn't look a day over 15. As if I knew what age a horse looked.

All six of them are terrifically friendly, anxious to get close to you and see how you are doing. They were having bad lives somewhere else, or at least difficult lives. Now they have retired to Point Roberts and, like the rest of us here who are retirees, are living lives that are very different from our prior lives. And, like the rest of us, need special papers to cross the border.

Hint of Fall

2011-08-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, sunny and very warm, found the raccoons irritated by our outdoor presence. A mother, who looked pretty juvenile, and her very young baby, strolled about 60 feet straight up a cedar tree in our back yard to take a nap rather than share the yard with us at grass level. And today, it rained all day. It wasn't particularly cold, this rain, but it reminded me that the vine maples will be turning red any day now and in less than ten days, it will be September.

I suppose it's good to be reminded, but it does seem way too soon. The other good news is that the Tyee paving as far as Benson is finished. And today, there was no sign of workmen contemplating or planning the next section of Tyee, so maybe Whatcom Transportation has decided that enough is enough and that, given how close fall is, they should just call it a month.

A friend comments: "I asked a border guard today if it was time to take down the flashing sign indicating long delays were happening at the border. He told me that the crew would be back next week to put another layer on the asphalt!! I thought that somewhere along the way I had heard that the paving job was only happening as far as Benson Rd...."

Shedding More Light

2011-08-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

I neglected to mention the fact that, with respect to the gas tax monies (currently approaching $470,000), the Community Advisory Committee has actually in the works one more project. While the Tyee Drive repaving is underway, the mechanics for a street light at Johnson and Tyee are being installed. That particularly dark intersection will now be illuminated. The gas tax monies will pay for the electricity to make that happen as an ongoing matter.

Surely, that is a use of the monies that will be beneficial and appreciated by pretty much all of us, despite the fact that this was not something, probably, that the community gave a thumbs up to in the Committee's survey of 'what do you want'. Which is the whole point of representative government: the people whose responsibility it is to think through our community problems can do a better job of thinking than the vast bunch of us just milling around in our brains.

Expanding to the Border

2011-08-18T20:51:00.000-07:00

The Community Advisory Committee got its beginning when the County decided to have a committee to advise it on the gas tax monies. Implicit in this creation was the possibility of the committee also serving as a liaison with the county on other issues. Might have been helpful to have them in place back in the days of the trash wars.

The committee consists of a person appointed by the Taxpayers Association, a person appointed by the Voters Association, a person appointed by the Chamber of Commerce, and two people appointed by the County Administrator (currently Pete Kremmens). Arthur Reber was appointed/elected, by the committee, as its chair. Over the past year and half, the group has held almost monthly meetings at the Community Center, open to the public, although the committee members get to sit at the main table and the attending riffraff sit around the outside row of chairs. Anybody can (and does) talk, but only the Committee members can vote.

Mostly, they futzed around with the gas tax moneys, although the major achievement so far appears to be in the non-use of the gas tax moneys to pave Tyee. That, the Committee says, was achieved by forcing the County to use its own money for that project, although the gas tax money also is the County's money, in truth. Moral force is what it is said was used to shame the County into allowing us to use "our" gas tax moneys for other purposes if we could ever figure out exactly what it is that would be both useful, appreciated, and also fit within the County's narrow definition of 'transportation projects.'

The August meeting of the Advisory Committee showed the group moving in a new direction: the border. They have scheduled a meeting in late August with a variety of Border honchos to discuss 'issues' that we in Point Roberts have with the border. The purpose of the meeting was to have the community advise the Committee as to what issues the community is having.

I, personally, have found that the border has not ceased to be an occasional irritant (which I can live with), but has ceased to be a daily outrage since Michelle James took over as head of the Northwest Region. So I went to the meeting not as a suggester but just as an observer. The suggestions primarily fell under two headings: agriculture and labor. The short summary of the meeting is that the Advisory Committee is going to try to get the CBP to make a clear statement (a Memo of Understanding) about the "In Transit" rules from Bellingham (i.e., the Mainland) to Point Roberts, and the same for how specific labor issues are to be addressed. One example of the latter issue is the ability of B.C. veterinarians and ferriers to come across the border both to provide emergency care and routine care for horses. Other examples are largely problems that business people face. E.g., if you rent an event tent in B.C., then the rental contract includes people who must be the ones who put the tent up (for liability reasons), but then they are Canadians who are not allowed to work in the U.S. and putting up the tent is working in the U.S., maybe, and the Point Roberts border people may or may not let them in.

I thought that the Canadian people were very clear last time about what could be considered "In Transit." If the average traveller can't bring X or Y into Canada, then neither can a Point Roberts traveller, even if he/she is taking it to Point Roberts. Oranges, potted plants, tomatoes: NO; yogurt, cheese, pineapples: YES. About parrots, they were silent. But maybe something broader is in the works, although I'd be surprised.

Anyway, that is whom the Committee is currently advising. They've broadened their mandate and I wish them well.

Road Improvements

2011-08-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

We're now half-way through the summer transportation project on the Point. There was a lot of fear around here about what the re-paving of Tyee Drive, the main road into Point Roberts, would mean about our ability to get through the border without horrendous wait times. The prospects of a single lane of travel in each direction (rendering our Nexus Card privileges useless) seemed pretty daunting. As a result, I suspect a lot of us have reduced our cross-border travel as much as possible. Certainly I have, given that this is the season when Okanagan stone fruit is available in Canada (and not in Point Roberts: could someone explain that to me given that it is incredibly fine fruit and right there?). I've been across only twice in 15 days, and that was because my younger daughter and her two children were here this past week and had to be collected and returned to the Vancouver airport.

Now, this is a pitiful number of data points to base any generalization on, but the fact is that these two occasions, either of which could have been difficult exits from the point, were a piece of cake. The first one, Monday, early evening, had no one in line going north but us; and the second one, the following Monday, at noon, had three cars ahead of us in line. So, although we had allowed an extra hour for waiting at the Point Roberts border in our our airport travel schedule, we needed none of those sixty minutes.

Coming back, both occasions, equally easy, though that direction of travel is less problematic because coming from Canada we have the Nexus Card still working for us (i.e., providing a separate lane of entrance: it's only after you cross the border into Point Roberts that you get the one-lane only problem). Not only that, but they had plenty of Roads people from the County providing good direction for people to figure out what they needed to do to get where they wanted to go. Good work, County! That's my experience; others may have had different ones.

Yesterday, they looked to be getting very close to laying the final asphalt covering for the border-Benson Road section. And with that done, our border fears should be considerably lightened, although there will be yet another two weeks of bumpy travel from Benson to APA and thus to the gas stations and the International Market and the Post Office. Particularly hard on the Canadians who may get Okanagan fruit easily in their own markets but still come here for other of life's essentials: the gas, the butter, and the internet purchases.

Some Get Bigger, Some Get Smaller

2011-08-13T22:52:00.000-07:00

Updated, below.
Lillies in Point Roberts growing very, very tall--some up to 8 feet-- and luxurious this summer. Not mine, not in my garden, and not even in a garden with a lot of sun. Congratulations to the gardener! (The bottom picture is not, of course, lillies but liatrices.)

By contrast with these thriving flowers, the Saturday Market seems to be in a seriously shrinking phase. This morning, around 11 a.m., there were only 4 vendors and, at least at that moment, about 3 buyers. Last week, the organizers offered to let the 'used goods' vendors return, but I guess the used goods vendors don't feel inclined to do so.

The plan, I believe, is to have the market continue until Labor Day weekend. And, on that weekend, the Point Roberts Quilters will have their biannual Quilt Show at the Community Center (10-2). It was originally scheduled for early August, but their was some confusion about the booking date and the show had to be rescheduled. One might hope that the Quilt Show doesn't mark the end of the Saturday Markets, but there will have to be more vendors, I'd think, for it to go on. However, the Quilt Show (and Sale) will go on (cash/check only).

Maybe we could just sell flowers to one another. There are certainly plenty of them about. This year also has turned out to be the year when the yucca bloom, even in my yard. Yet more abundance. And the transparent apples are falling from the tree and into pie crusts, just as the raspberries fall into breakfast bowls. Just lovely, these days of sun and fruit and flowers.

Update: With the permission of the lillies' owner, you can see them on Burns Road, east of Mill and north of Johnson. She says about her gardening habits:

"Lilies are, in my opinion, temperamental ladies who do what they do, sometimes seeming to disregard whatever you do to encourage them. A great many of mine grow well beyond their stated height. I've no idea why; I don't think it is anything that I do. When I moved here there was an old half dead cedar hedge across the entire front of the yard about where all that stuff is growing now, and soil that appeared to be gray hardpan, old construction rock, and lots of black bags of garbage buried barely under the surface. We took the hedge out, excavated the garbage, and planted things that bloom instead. Other than adding some good compost, some good soil, and planting deep, they grow as they grow. "

Sands Everywhere

2011-08-11T13:50:00.000-07:00

Day before yesteday, we went to South Beach. Last evening, we went to Freeman Beach. This morning, we went to Maple Beach. Happy to report that all beaches so far are up and running. Adults, children, dogs are in attendance. Water at Maple Beach this a.m. was a little spotty what with something like a minus .7 tide, but boats in abundance lying in the sand. One beached sailboat was playing exquisite music as the breeze played with (or just played) its metal rigging. Many excellent rocks waiting to be observed and wondered at as far as their origins. Many tiny living conical shells in the stranded eel grass, awaiting resurrection with the returning tide.

Another sunny day in paradise.

The Friends of the Library held its meeting on Tuesday and agreed to endorse and organize the initial steps for a fundraising campaign for a new library to be created at the Julius Firehall. It's going to be a community project, it's going to take some time, it's going to work, and it's going to be a wonderful end-project, although I can easily imagine that some of the here to there is going to be difficult. I mean, it's Point Roberts, no?

About the Library

2011-08-08T08:52:00.000-07:00

Watching the stock market with its downward dive, I am reminded that this is very possibly not the greatest time to talk about spending money on the public good. Actually, if we were sensible folks, it might be the very best time to talk about spending money on the public good since interest rates are very low. However, one of the downsides of old age is the increasing conviction that humans, or at least the current manifestation of them, lack a certain kind of good sense.

Nevertheless, Point Roberts probably, very probably, ought to be thinking seriously right now about investing in a bigger library. The way library funding works here in Whatcom County is that the locale provides the completed building and the Whatcom County Library turns the building into a library with books, furnishings, employees, services, computers, and like those things. If we want a larger library, then what we have to work with at the moment is the Julius Firehall next door to the Community Center, which the community owns. But it is not a completed building. It needs about a half million dollars to turn it into a completed building such that the What County Library could turn it into a real library.

There are several ways that could happen, realistically. The money could be raised locally by private donation, the money could be raised by passing a tax levy, or some combination of these two, or some of the money could be raised by pursuing foundation grants of some sort. What's your choice?

I haven't made the case for expanding the library's size. Moving to the Julius Firehall would effectively double the square footage. There was a meeting last week in which I was persuaded that it needed to be done. I'm not going to repeat all the content of that meeting today, but I'll come back to it.

What I'm writing about today is the fact that tomorrow at 1 p.m., at the library, the Friends of the Library are meeting to discuss what might be done. If you are a library user, if you are a fan of Point Roberts as a good place to live, if you remember how important libraries have been to you throughout your life, if you are in the locale, if you are free tomorrow, Tuesday, August 9, at 1 p.m., come and help us think this problem through.

Tomatoes and the Border

2011-08-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

Went down to a friend's place on a west-facing beach last night to watch the sun not exactly set but at least drop toward to horizon. Several other people there; a companionable evening talk. A wonderful ... what? A story? An explanation? Folk wisdom? Hard to know how to describe what I heard.

The background: for some reason, this past year, the border people decided that no tomatoes could come into Point Roberts (or, more specifically, into the U.S.). This kind of thing is usually not about terrorism but about agricultural worries from California. Harm could be coming to its tomato industry.

So my friend asked the border agent, when she noted to his disapproval that she had a tomato in her possession, if there was any way to acceptably bring the tomato across. And, she swears, he told her that the reason you can't bring tomatoes over the border is that there is some dangerous (to the crop) insect on tomatoes. Thus, if you slice the tomatoes before approaching the border, you can bring tomatoes across BECAUSE if you've sliced them, then the dreaded insect has doubtless jumped off in the process.

I just don't know what to say about that. But I'd be interested in running it by California's Agriculture head honcho.

To the North, But Not For Awhile

2011-08-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

We drove up to Simon Fraser University in the Greater Vancouver District (specifically, Burnaby) this weekend to see what it looked like. It's another Arthur Erickson (architect) project and a very interesting place. It's a city on a hill (literally), as every university should be but seldom is. You drive up a long hill through a lovely wooded park and there it is, right at the top.

The first view of it is particularly beautiful as it spreads before you. It is not, like a cathedral, high so much as it is a spreading edifice. Great horizontal planes of building open before you, layering with air spaces between that seem quite magical. But then, when you drive through that section and look at it from the back, it seems more like a massive institution, almost prison-like, with the layers places where people at the top can give orders to the people on the next level down. Very surprising.

Concrete is the building material, dark grey concrete. There are many vistas with broad, very broad ranges of stairways that look like something out of a Alfred Hitchcock movie: stairs that people are running across, looking back over their shoulder because someone is chasing them, coming out of the dark that is behind them and just around the corner, bad things, bad events. The layering of the building, the great widths of steps, the darkness of the concrete all leads to a feeling of being enclosed in a vast and potentially dangerous structure. It didn't help that the clouds rolled in shortly after we got there making the sky about as grey as the concrete.

Because it was a holiday weekend and summer, it was virtually deserted. I imagine it might look very different with a big student body roaming around, but it still might have the look of someplace where Mussolini might have gathered his minions to speak down to them. Not at all what I expected, and I suppose that Mr. Erickson might have had a different image in mind, although the Bennett Library is described as 'Brutalist Architecture' and similar to the FBI building. The University certainly got its moneys worth for impact, anyway.

So that's what happens when you leave Point Roberts. But we are not going to be leaving Point Roberts if we can possibly help it for the next month as the County has chosen the highest traffic month of the year to repave the main road into the Point. Combine closing one lane--leaving us with only one in, one out, and thus no special access out for the Nexus lane--with the ordinary border situation and we are mighty fearful of what lies before us. But going North is not a choice to be lightly made.

Big Weekend

2011-07-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

This is the weekend that, according to the All Point Bulletin, 10,000 visitors will appear in Point Roberts to celebrate the Arts and Music Festival and B.C. Day, marking the first weekend/Monday in August. Now, how we would suddenly get 10,000 people through the border just for the weekend I can't imagine. Maybe they started arriving in June. I went through the border yesterday and there was no particular lineup and I asked somebody who had just come over, this morning, and they said that the lineup was minimal.

10,000 people would be about five visitors per house. Don't think it's going to happen. But, there are more people around than usual. We went over to the Saturday Market this morning and sold some of Ed's Point Roberts postcards. There were only about 9 vendors, but there was a steady enough supply of buyers and lookers to keep the vendors entertained. The Seniors Group sold great quantities of cookies and other baked goods. The Friends of the Library contributed to the recirculation of books by selling donated books. An Avon rep, the chocolates lady, a jewelry lady, the Sagewood Farms guy, a lady selling shelled walnuts for $5.00/pound joined in to the modest selling frenzy. A kind of mixed bag today.

What was interesting about the customers today (and maybe this is who shows up on B.C. Day) is that they were more than willing to hang around and look at postcards, talk about the images, and talk about the details of Point Roberts that the postcards illustrated. Yes, they'd seen Lily the Llama and the four goats. And what were the goats' names? The abandoned house quilt postcards provoked discussions about the actual houses, the quilts (now on display in the Community Center), and peoples' own histories with the houses. Two guys (brothers?) told me that they had lived many years ago in both the Goodman house and the Hanssen/Jonsen house (on corner of Tyee and Benson). But they got away before I found out how that happened to be. People went through the books of postcards, looking at every photo (70 or so) and trying to figure out where on the Point it was taken. A very social experience compared to other Saturday Market Days.

Was a nice day all round here in momentary paradise. And two more days of the weekend to go.

Assessing the Assessor

2011-07-28T23:02:00.000-07:00

This winter/spring, we got our 'pending assessments' of property notices. Happens every year. Every year, the number goes up a little, but in light of the real property crash here (like most places), we all assumed that property values would go down in the 2011 assessment. You can imagine our surprise when we discovered that our houses were worth more than they were the year before and to a person we pretty much doubted that that was an accurate assessment, comparatively.

But, at least for most of the people I know, it was still, as a number, somewhat lower than what we imagined we might be able to sell it for, so we didn't call up the assessor to demand our money back, or the equivalence thereof. But some people did, and there were notices out on Point Interface urging people to call the Assessor's Office and request explanations.

It all did seem particularly strange when word began to seep around that Point Roberts properties were the only properties in the County whose assessments increased. Had everybody's assessments gone up, I would probably have assumed that it was Whatcom County's way of increasing its income. But since we came up unevenly, maybe an accurate but inexplicable assessment? Or inaccurate?

The local Taxpayer Association asked the Whatcom County Assessor to come up and explain this anomalous result at a meeting last night. Alas, he got held up at the border--failure to have a Nexus Card-- and arrived just as the meeting was about to disband. But, having come to hear him, people hung around to listen.

He was remarkably unlike a politician, I thought. Or like the ones who are said to be just like somebody you'd like to have a beer with. Since I don't drink beer, there's nobody I'd like to have a beer with, but I could imagine sitting down with a pizza, say. Although he would be eating the larger portion, I think.

His office is actually non-partisan. He's been in the Assessor's Office for 30 years and for 23 years has been elected time after time as County Assessor. He's running for office again this fall but no one is running against him. Seems good qualifications for a guy who's either doing a reasonable job or sponsored by the mob in a mob-run town. No evidence of the latter, so probably he's doing a reasonable job.

He proceeded to explain to this audience of about 35 folks how assessing is done. His is a highly technical and difficult job: how to establish a dollar value for every house in the County. If you’ve ever sold a house, the real estate agent, who knows a lot about house sale prices, gives you a big range for what your house might be worth and then recommends a single price. And if times are good, maybe you’ll get something near that, but even then, probably not. Because nobody knows what a house is worth until somebody is willing to pay for it with actual dollars.

So, the poor Assessor pours over the actual sale prices and looks at some portion (in his case, one-sixth) of the actual houses each year and talks with real estate people and follows the real estate market and calculates complex mathematical models and algorithms each year to establish a better than average guess about what every single property might sell for. And when he is done, he says, “Here’s what I think.” And if you disagree with what he thinks, you can ask to discuss it with them.

And if you don’t disagree enough with what he thinks, then you let it go. The problem is that if you don’t understand mathematical modeling and algorithmic projections, you are going to be in for some difficulty. He says potatoes, you say potahtoes. And you can’t call the whole thing off. I'm not a mathematician, so I don't really know what he’s talking about but, in the old days, you would credit his competence and good intentions and unless you had some really compelling information to change his position, his view about the value of your house would stand, and you would go on being fellow-citizens. Nowadays, though, as a result of the anti-government fervor that has taken hold in lots of places, we often have no trust in an official's competence or his good intentions and insufficient acknowledgement or appreciation of our own lack of understanding of what his job actually is and how it is done.

What seemed to be the bottom line is that Point Roberts was last assessed individually four years ago. In the intervening years (2006-2010), our property values went up and then went down, but they didn't go as far down as they went up, so over the four years, the appreciation was about 10%. Other areas, like Birch Bay and Blaine and Semiahmoo, went down farther than they went up over the four years, so their property values depreciated some. Seems like it could happen. But, as the Assessor repeated time and again, what his office is trying to do is make a good estimate of a property's value and every area is not going to be the same. It's not rocket science: it's much harder than rocket science. If people complain, he can show them what the office has considered, has taken into account, and if you, as a property owner, have some special information that the office didn't know about or take into account, they will try to incorporate it to the extent that it's relevant. But you really can't prove they are wrong and they can't really prove they are right.

It's a hard job and somebody has to do it and by and large, I found that I'm willing to trust the Whatcom County Assessor, even if I and probably most of the people at the meeting don't really understand exactly what he is doing. I don't understand what lots of people who do technical things are doing. But if I listen to them talk about their work, I can kind of get a sense of whether they're serious people with the right attitude to their work. That may be the best most of us can do, so I appreciate his coming up to let us judge him. But I really think he should get a Nexus Card if he's going to be roaming around Whatcom County, if only to expand his understanding of the way we live now: the we being those of us in Point Roberts who, like our assessments, are quite different from everyone else in Whatcom County.

Garlic Crop

2011-07-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

I dug my excellent, though small, garlic crop yesterday and it was very well done.

I just plant about a dozen cloves in the fall and then harvest them in the spring. If there's something you are supposed to do other than that, I don't know about it, but that usually brings them through. This year, the deer ate the tops early in the spring and, though they generated some new tops, the greenery was pretty sparse so I thought it might not work out well. But it did just fine. Some bulb are bigger than others, but most of them are of a good size and they are drying out on the back porch; or they are drying as much as they can given the level of our cool humidity these days.

Tonight is the meeting to learn about whether and why we ought to be thinking about making our library a bigger place. 8 p.m. Try to come and learn.

Progress!

2011-07-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

Well, if we can't do something as simple as lift the debt ceiling, perhaps we could achieve this. I've given up (because it's too late) for Point Roberts to be the first wireless community, but maybe it could be the first penny-less community. We could be known for something other than excess difficulty and beautiful living.

Another Summer Daze

2011-07-23T22:14:00.000-07:00

We have family visiting this weekend, so we went down to two different beaches here on the Point to check out the summer traffic. Sunny, blue sky, a beach, no traffic, no requirements of me of any significant sort: the kind of day that seems like whatever it is that lies at the heart of our dreams of how lovely and shining life can be.

First we went to visit Lily the llama down near Freeman Beach and took her for a walk on an absolutely deserted beach. Hard to know why there were no people along this stretch, but there were none but the six of us. A few birds in the water; a sailboat a ways out; a big cruise or ferry-sized ship much farther out.

Then we went to South Beach, where Mt. Baker was looming to the east as if it had a special spotlight on it. That beach was filled with half a dozen or so families in bathing costume, sitting in beach chairs, kids digging in the sand. Entirely iconic. A two-year old tottering around at the water's edge discovered how to throw stones into the water and then a goofy little dog showed up to chase after her stones. She threw, the dog raced after it but never found it, as it quickly became just another rock in the water; she threw again, the dog raced, and again and again. She looked over her shoulder at her parents to see if they liked that she had discovered, maybe invented, an absolutely brand new in the whole world activity, but they weren't paying all that much attention. A big moment in her life, but she won't really remember it for long.

Then we went up to Dylan's and ordered up a lot of ice cream cones. Finally, home in order to loll around for awhile before we cooked up some dinner. Saturday in July. Calm, sunny, lovely. Lucky us.

Raspberries Finally In

2011-07-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

We've been getting raspberries at the markets from farther south for awhile, but the local raspberries, which is to say the ones in my backyard, have shown no signs of getting big enough to ripen, let alone to chnge color. And then, yesterday, there they were. Only about a cup of them, almost all the early 'Sutters Gold,' which are kind of apricot colored and are sweet and highly flavored but not too acidic.

So we sprinkled them over a little bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream and rolled them around our tongues with the other flavors mingling nicely and spoke about how absolutely wonderful summer is when it behaves properly. Our deepest sympathies to those in the center of the country where the heat is unspeakable, but the raspberry crop may be fantastic.

The Market and the Summer

2011-07-19T21:09:00.000-07:00

The Saturday Market has now moved to an every week activity but it is showing signs of problems. This past week, it rained and had to be held indoors, but nevertheless there were precious few vendors. The best were Sagewood Farms, our local fresh produce supplier. Best in terms of quantity of stuff, good looking and new looking stuff, and customers. They had more different greens than you could shake a stick at if you were in the market for shaking sticks at greens. There were fat French radishes and mesclun and beet greens and lettuces of other kinds including a very spicy arugula. It all looked very appealing.

But a Saturday Market with only four or five vendors isn't really viable even if one of them is doing really well. Maybe it was just the rain and the following weeks will see more vendors. On the weekend of August 6, the Point Roberts Quilt Group is having a quilt show and sale in connection with the Saturday Market. If it rains, the Market will be in big trouble: the vendors won't be able to come inside because the quilts and quilters will have already filled up the inside. That's one of the reasons we expect no rain in July and August. Lots of luck so far. The quilts will be more of an exhibit than a sale but there will be some smaller pieces for sale so if you, dear reader, are so inclined, bring cash/checks. We don't do credit cards.

People do come to the Saturday Market. They may be just wandering around on Saturday morning and see the sign and step in, or they may be making a trip to the library and step in to see what's happening, or they may be there because they're picking up their weekly or biweekly allotment of vegetables from Sagewood, or they may be there (less likely) because they are looking for some arts/crafts object to buy. But for that last kind of random buy, you need a lot of new/fresh/different kinds of objects and that's pretty hard to supply in such a limited population, especially if you outlaw flea market type objects.

Oh, well, maybe it will pick up, or maybe it will just be a short summer activity, or maybe it will die a slow death. I'm not worrying: it's not Chinatown, but it is Point Roberts.

About the Water

2011-07-17T22:28:00.000-07:00

Here we are in the Northwest with a rainstorm a day. Well, not quite, but more than people really need in the way of water from the sky, and occasional flooding and the like. And what is Point Roberts actual biggest problem? Water. We don't have any of our own, somehow. Now, the conservationists/ecologists say that water is going to be everybody's big problem in the coming decades (too much or not enough), so in that sense we are just like everyone else. But in the Point Roberts sense, we are, of course, not just like everyone else. We never are. That's what it means to live in Point Roberts. With respect to water, we have plenty of water coming out of the air and down to the ocean, but we don't have any water of our own that is potable. There are, I'm told, a few wells still around, but that's really not a viable water source for all these folks when we have sandy soil and septic tanks everywhere.

What we have is Vancouver water. They signed a long-term contract in the 80's to provide us with X gallons of water per day, at a price to be determined by them. We pay for those X number of gallons every day of the year, even though there are apparently never enough of us here any of the time to use up that daily X number of gallons. So, those extra gallons? We pay for them and Vancouver keeps them, once we have filled our limited storage capacity. That turns out to be a lot of water that we pay for and don't ever get. According to the Water guy here, we pay for about twice as much water as we actually use. And Vancouver is sorry to inform us that the price for both the used and unused water is going up dramatically in the next few years. And the contract has another 23 years to run, and as far as I can tell, there is no reason to be sure that Vancouver will renew that contract because B.C. doesn't allow sale of water outside of B.C. any longer (it did when the original contract was signed).

So we pay for water we don't get, we are going to be paying a lot more, perhaps double or more by the end of the decade, for water we don't ever get, and then, at the end of that, we may not get any more water. This is another serious mid- to long-term problem for us. The Community Center repair is a short-term problem. The library space is a mid-term problem. By contrast, the gas tax moneys are no problem at all because they are not available to be used for much of anything that is a problem for us. Just treats. What's wrong with this picture?

Time to think about our problems.

Laying Back

2011-07-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

You walk out the door and there are sounds of kids calling to one another or just calling into the air in the sheer joy of a mostly sunny summer day at the cottage. Normally, our neighborhood doesn't resonate with the sound of kids, but everytime I walked outdoors today, there it was.

The beach was filled with people doing the kinds of things people do at beaches, and that is very rarely the case here, even in the summer during the week. Of course, today is Friday, which maybe does not any longer count as a week day. The International Market was running five check stands when I was there the last couple of times, its parking lot far fuller than normal. The roads have bikes and cars, but not many walkers once the morning hours are over.

All in all, it is the kind of sunny, warm but not hot, summer day when you can't imagine there is a better place on earth to live than Point Roberts.

And certainly far better than Southern California, where Los Angeles is about to learn how to do without a chunk of the San Diego Freeway for several days. The purpose of the closure is to build, quickly, an HOV lane. In honor of this adventure in craziness in the crazy place, some wondrous wit put together a YouTube video to explain exactly what is at stake. You can see it here. (There's a very brief commercial at the beginning of the video, but persevere and you will get to see what I think this is one of the ten funniest things I've seen in years.) It did occur to me after watching it that we are in for something like this when they close down various parts of Tyee this summer to resurface it. Maybe we should ask Chairman Reber to release his moneys to buy us an HOV lane out of Point Roberts, just to avoid that kind of stress.

No Sooner Said...

2011-07-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

I just got an email from Point Interface announcing at least the first community meeting sponsored by the local library staff to discuss the issues around the Community Center's needs and the community's needs for the Community Center. I think we'll need more than one of these and it will probably be discouraging at the beginning: that is, turn out will be small. But we are going to have to persevere.

Turn out is good when people are angry (as, in the past, when the border practices have caused tempers to rise, or fury driven at the thought of some big development devastating a beautiful tract of land). But nobody is angry about the Community Center's current excess access to atmospheric water. Or about the library's space or lack thereof. If everyone were angry, then we would get a good turnout at the meeting, but a good turn out driven by anger is not likely to provide a thoughtful discussion about defining our current needs and our future needs. For that, we need open minds and information. We can start getting that at this meeting, which is to be held Tuesday evening, July 26th, at 8 p.m. Please try to come to it and let us begin this process.

I did get one suggestion from the previous blog posting on the question of how to pay for the Community Center repairs. First, said the commenter, construct a sheltered area behind the building with a tarp, say, and put some bicycles under it. Then, ask Chairperson Reber to repair the Community Center roof and underparts in order to ensure that the bicycles are protected, which would surely be permitted under the requirement that the funds be used for transit. I mean, if we had a local bus, surely we could use gas tax funds to make that sure the bus was adequately protected from bad weather conditions. Why not bicycles?

That's the kind of creative thinking I like. But I wouldn't count on Reber, the County, or the State being convinced by it.

What Do We Need?

2011-07-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

There are a series of questions that are facing us as a community here in tiny Point Roberts, and the questions got harder over the past few weeks. It is difficult in any small place with a small tax base to deal with infrastructure. How much the harder here when the size of the community changes dramatically over the year and when most of the property tax payers aren't voters and when there is very limited control over how money can be raised or used.

The biggest issue at the moment is the Community Center, a heavily used, elderly building in big trouble. There is standing water under the building, wood rot resulting therefrom, and roof damage. There is no money to pay for these repairs. This is not a matter of long term infrastructure improvement and investment. This is a "needs to be done right away or we won't be having any Community Center" kind of issue.

So, the Parks Board is considering proposing a specific tax levy to cover these repair costs. There is worry that the voters will not approve this request, given that last fall the Fire Department had a substantial levy approved. Of course, money for the Fire Department upgrade will do nothing for the Community Center. But this is what comes of tiny government arrangements in which overall needs are not coordinated and priorities among various needs are not able to be considered.

The Parks Board can lead us voters and residents to water but it cannot make us drink or perhaps even convince us that we are thirsty. We need to think about this seriously. Do we need quick repair or an entire re-building? There has been previous talk about the need for more library space. Should we be thinking about that possibility too?

We are in a difficult economic and political time right now. Many people are happy to "just say no" to any public expenditures, but this is our home, our town, that is at issue. The question of the Lily Point Beach Club development and of the removal of the maples in the APA canopy brought out a lot of public concern. We need to be just as concerned about the future of the Community Center. But I don't know how that concern is going to find a focus for a thoughtful discussion that addresses both short term needs and long-term community wellbeing.

I'm thinking we need to have a series of town meetings to get us all up to speed on the various issues. The drastic problems at the Community Center may be exactly what we need to focus our attention on this issue. But it will be a struggle to awaken us from our customary lack of involvement.

In Point Roberts Again

2011-07-09T09:36:00.000-07:00

We are back from the medical adventure in Seattle/U.W.Med.Center, and if I were writing about life in the arms of our medical system, there would be many posts already written in my head. But, since I'm writing about life in Point Roberts, suffice to say that the surgery was to all appearances successful, the hospitalization long for nowadays (9 days), there's a several month convalescence ahead of us, and we are pretty much exhausted by it all, but happy to have it behind us.

So, I've taken a few extra days off from blog posting (we got back on Wednesday), and will start again in all seriousness on Monday, two days from now. For now, it was wonderful to come back to sun, to the garden all in bloom (although I missed the peonies' bloom pretty much in the two weeks we were gone), and to sitting on the porch. I thought of Otis Redding, 'Sitting on the dock of the bay,' but without the bay, but absolutely just wastin' time.

Still in Seattle

2011-07-02T21:42:00.000-07:00

Here longer than we expected. All going well, but, realistically, trying to get back to Point Roberts from Seattle over the July 4th weekend with a passenger whho is recovering from a significant surgery seems like a very bad idea. Not least because it is more likely right now to be much more than a 2.5 hour drive. So, waiting out the holiday and missing the July 4th parade is what we are doing.

New Dock on the Way!

2011-06-28T16:29:00.001-07:00

Sending on this good news from Arthur Reber:

Hear ye, hear ye ...

The RCO Grant was funded!

We wil have our dock/pier at Lighthouse Park restored.

The details are buried somewhere in the State and County documents (I'm trying to ferret them out) but here's what I know.

1. The grant is for $240,000.
2. The County is on record providing matching funds at 1 to 3 which means they will put in an additional $80,000.
3. The full $320,000 will be used to replace the wood pilings with steel ones and put in a new pier with the same footprint as the old one.
4. The project is slated to begin in late 2012 and be finished in February of 2013. .

I think we should all give our personal thanks to Mike McFarlane for his efforts in getting the grant and to County Council and Pete Kremen for their support in securing the additional funding.

Arthur Reber
Point Roberts Community Advisory Committee

High Cost Zone

2011-06-24T15:15:00.000-07:00

When you head south to cross the border into the U.S. at the Peace Arch crossing, there is a big billboard on the west side of the highway that says, " Now Entering High Cost Medical Zone: Use Caution.". That's where we are now, in the high cost zone that is the University of Washington Medical Center, and we are probably throwing caution to the winds and just using what needs to be used.

In any case, we are in Seattle and not likely to be writing much about Point
Roberts, except to say that when you live in Point Roberts and need some serious medical care, you have to go somewhere else. Sometimes that is Bellingham, and sometimes that is Seattle.

Good Day For Maple Trees

2011-06-21T20:41:00.000-07:00

The message following, from a Whatcom County engineer, makes it sound as if the maple canopy is safe, at leat for the moment.

"to all who are concerned:

The Engineering Division will work with the plat applicant to accomplish their impact mitigation improvements to APA Road removing as few trees as possible, if any. The applicant has proposed the design below for APA Road. They are proposing the APA Road access be 'emergency only' and used for their sales office only. All plat traffic will use Pauls Road. Because of this change, the improvements to APA Roadway will be between South Beach Road and Pauls Road. APA Road will be improved from the existing 20-foot wide roadway with 3-foot gravel shoulders to 22-foot roadway with 4-foot gravel shoulders. This is a total widening of 4 feet. The applicant may use curbs, guardrails, turnouts, other methods, or a combination of methods to minimize clear zone and the removal of trees.

Engineering conditions of approval effecting APA Road are:

Off-site improvements to proportionally mitigate the traffic impacts of the development equate to 9,207 square feet of asphalt and 20,790 square feet of gravel shoulder. The result of this is widening of Paul's Road from plat access to APA Rd (widening a total of about 12 feet with asphalt and gravel shoulders) to a minimum of 22 feet wide asphalt with 4-foot gravel shoulders. APA Road shall be widening the same width from Paul's Road intersection to South Beach Road intersection (widening a total width of about 4 feet with asphalt and gravel).

The applicant may use curb and/or guardrail and/or another alternative to meet clear zone requirements while maintaining as many of the trees as feasible. Should any tree have to be taken down, the applicant shall replace it at a ratio of 3 native trees to one tree removed (maximum size commercially available).

All of the above may be reduced by the County Engineer through an approved traffic report modification.

Take Care,

Mary White
Engineering Division
Whatcom County
(360) 676-6730
"

Buying Locally

2011-06-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

Point Roberts this year has joined in the nationwide movement of buying food produced locally. In our case, Sagewood Farms (sagewoodfarms.org) has begun its operation on a relatively small scale (planning for 50-75 members in its first summer). It provides only produce; at least so far, they're not offering eggs or milk or lamb chops, and maybe never. But produce is a good start, even if it's only for part of the year.

We were a little slow signing up for it largely because I was not sure we could manage that much produce every week. But, I finally figured out that it was a good idea and on that basis alone, we ought to support it. And, of course, there was nothing stopping me from sharing this produce with others if it was too much for us. As it turned out, there was an every-other-week option as well as an every-week one, and every other week is great for us.

All last winter, I was complaining to Ed that I was tired of the very limited supply of vegetables that seemed to be on offer. The limits were largely that I was tired of six different ways of packaging carrots and iceberg lettuce and, well, I don't know exactly what the problem was. It just got harder and harder to buy any of it, other than broccoli, of which I am particularly fond. And now, I find, thanks to Sagewood that there are new vegetables in the world. Last delivery, we got Japanese sweet potatoes, which I had never known about; and this delivery, there were French radishes, which are much nicer than the little round red radishes which I wouldn't eat if it was just me and them on earth. Lovely greens, very nice mushrooms of various kinds, small packets of this and that. It's a little like Christmas when the shipment box arrives. So, it's not just a good idea: it's also attractive, very fresh and tasty produce, an education and a celebration.

If you are interested in joining, you can reach Tom, who makes it possible, here.

Tentative Good News

2011-06-16T23:26:00.000-07:00

There is a preliminary report that Whatcom County Planning is willing to forgo the widening of APA Road in connection with the Lily Point Beach Club. Perhaps they heard our concerted wail? News as it arrives.

And about Vancouver Rioting last night after the last hockey game? I fear that my assessment of the Canadian character will have to become more nuanced. But mostly I'm just shocked. I'm from Los Angeles, so the fact of riots doesn't surprise me, but over an irrelevant game? What will they do when it is something serious?

The Community Continues to Be

2011-06-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Last night, the Community Advisory Committee (that's advisory to Whatcom County) met and went through its agenda. In some ways, the agenda is always the same, although the discussion may differ from time to time. That's because there's always some kind of development issue that is rubbing lots of people the wrong way; there is always some kind of border concern; there is always something to be said about what is to happen to the gas tax levy money.

The gas tax levy issue produced the news that there is to be installed a streetlight at Johnson and Tyee, and that the gas tax levy moneys will be used to pay the electric bill for that light. Also that some kind of beautification on Tyee, at the Community Events Sign corner, and at the end of Gulf Road might yet happen with those moneys. And, finally, that the shoulder of Benson from Tyee to South Beach will have its walking path restored in the near future, assuming we have a summer this year.

And then there's the other things, about which much vaguer things were said, so they shall remain unreported.

The petition to the state and the county about protecting the APA Maple Canopy is being signed by people near and far. So far, about 370 signators. We ought to be able to do better than that, but maybe we are yet a community of cranks. One well known local fellow refused to sign when I offered him an easy access to it at the Saturday Market because 'Maples don't inspire him.' And, I have to say, he doesn't inspire me, either.

Abandoned House Quilt Reception

2011-06-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, June 15th from 4 to 7 pm the Point Roberts Historical Society invites the public to visit the new, permanent display "Abandoned Houses of Point Roberts". These 18 beautiful quilts were designed and crafted by local fiber artist Judy Ross and she has generously donated them to the Historical Society and to the people on the Point. Please join us to appreciate the beauty, the artistic detailing and the homage to the rich history of our community.

Well, there's an advertisement for myself. I will be there with the quilts, as will members of the Historicsl Society, many of whom can provide more history about these houses than I can. Please come.

Please to Sign the Petition

2011-06-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

Just to the right of this post, you will see in the right hand column, a Notice of a petition to save the maple tree canopy on APA. Click where it says 'here,' read it, and, I hope, sign it, so that we can demonstrate to the state and county the depth of local support for preserving these trees and obtaining Landmark/Heritage status for them.

Gathering Together Information on the Trees

2011-06-08T21:55:00.000-07:00

A number of people are writing messages back and forth to one another, but not always fully inclusive, so this is to try to bring together a variety of suggestions and actions.

1. A number of people have suggested writing to Amy Keenan, both by email and by snail mail, and many such emails and, I hope, snail mails have been sent. This should continue.

2. Steve Wolff, via Jim Julius, has suggested getting a conservation lien on the part of the land on which the maples grow. Ed Park thinks that won't work because the maples are largely growing on the County right of way, which is to say that the County already owns that land, so a lien could not be established by the property owners. Apparently Jim Julius thinks otherwise. Steve also says that the County's easement on the road is sixty feet and that most of the trees are outside that easement.

3. Jollena Tylor has proposed seeking historic/preservation/heritage status for the entire maple canopy. Judy Ross will try to get a petition up on line as soon as possible so that we can demonstrate community support on this measure to Planning, recognizing that planning has no role in such designation. Jollena's husband is looking into whether the County has any office to whom such a request could appropriately be addressed. It may involve the state. Judy has asked Pauli DeHaan to help her with the historical approach. Information about the petition, when available, will be sent out on Point Interface and on Judy's blog and on the electronic All Point Bulletin if we can make its deadline (probably not for this thursday).

4. Mark Robbins believes that the County can issue a variance on the widening the road.

5. Arthur Reber thinks the County will issue a variance not requiring a road expansion. Further, he urges the Planning Office not require the developer to provide an entrance to the project on APA but limit the entry road requirement to Paul's Road, thus eliminating the need to do anything to the APA maple trees.

6. Ed Park counters that the widening of the road (and thus the cutting of the maples) is only peripherally connected to the development permit, in that the County's concern relates to the fact that APA at that point is a substandard road in terms of County standards and, if the development is permitted, the developer can be required to bring the road up to standards; otherwise, the county would have to pay to do that if it wanted that done. You can read Park's suggestions here: http://getthewholepicture.blogspot.com/2011/06/we-could-do-what_03.html

7. Many people have offered to chain themselves to the trees for photo purposes and publicity. Some have offered a 'clothing optional' possibility.

8. Carol Woodman has offered a connection to TV news.

9. The All Point Bulletin has been copied on most of the communications.

The Lighter Side

2011-06-05T14:34:00.000-07:00

We're off to Seattle for a couple of days, so I thought I would send this photo to the County Planning Office with a cheerful "You really don't want to get a lot of old people angry, do you? That's not going to be a pretty sight."

In fact, now that we have all written serious emails, maybe it would be a good idea to send Amy and her colleagues postcards or notecards that show our more cheerful side, that convey the sense that our objections about this are not personal (i.e., we don't object to her; she after all has a job to do), but that we want to work with her, not against her, all things being equa, to save that maple canopy on APA. Maybe local kids could send her drawings of how sad they would be if the trees were not there, or what it would look like without trees, or whatever their fertile little imaginations come up with.

And the older kids and the very old kids, too. Right on up to the old people like us. We care, we really do!

(Amy Keenan, Whatcom County Planning Services, 5280 Northwest Drive
Bellingham, Washington 98226
Telephone: (360) 676-6907))

We Could Do What?

2011-06-03T16:31:00.000-07:00

Photographer Ed, temporarily working under the aegis of The Office of Incisive Analysis, has looked at the problems faced by the Whatcom County Planning Office with respect to Saving the APA Maple Canopy project and found some options in potential actions. He provides them here for your consideration:

There seem to be three general approaches to APA

road widening:

1. DO NOTHING, just leave the current pavement,

ditch, shoulder, and trees as they are.

Likely positions on this are:

Residents: Great, we like it the way it is

and strongly oppose harming those big maples

Developer: Great, we like the trees too.

Besides, this saves us the road widening

costs.

County. Bad; we would have to give up this

golden chance to bring APA up to current

standards (22 feet of pavement with 4 foot

gravel shoulders) at no cost to the county.

I think we should ask for this, but I don't

think the county will bite. A truly

enlightened county government might, but I bet

that's more enlightenment than we've got here.

2. HARD PAVING ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE ROAD ONLY.

That would require putting a culvert in the

ditch, filling the ditch in, and adding 3 feet

or so of pavement and some gravel on top of the

culvert. Four feet of gravel shoulder could go

on the south side without much harm to the big

maples. To alleviate any concern about

inadequate pedestrian and bike ways, a nice

gravel path could wind through the trees south

of the big roadside maples.

Likely positions:

Residents: Pretty good! Doesn't change much

and saves all of the trees.

Developer: Well, we do like those trees, but

culverts would add to our design and

construction costs. On the other hand, this

plan would greatly reduce community

opposition to our project, and that's got to

be a good thing for us. On balance? Gotta

think about it.

County: I think they'd go for it. My quick

reading of the standards

[http://tinyurl.com/44d7zbl] makes me think

this gives them most or all of what they

need for a standards-compliant APA. (To

head off any misunderstanding, these are

minimum standards for this type of road, and

do not result from projections of increased

traffic.)

3. HARD PAVING ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE ROAD ONLY.

Three feet of additional pavement and four feet

of shoulder would require cutting down some of

the big roadside maples and would gradually

kill the others through traffic damage to their

roots. (Just to be clear, there's really no

room for compromise between hard paving only on

the north side (2) or only on the south side

(3). That's because the pavement is already

very close to the edge of the ditch -- no room

to do anything without filling in that ditch.)

Likely positions:

Residents: No, no, no! To the barricades!

Developer: Hate to lose those nice trees,

but it does save us the culvert costs. Too

bad, but whadaya gonna do?

County: Happy as a clam, even without much

of a shoulder on the north side of the road.

That is, unless they worry about fire bombs

hurled through their office windows by

disgruntaled Point Roberts residents.

As things stand, the decision is pretty much up to

the developers. They could have their engineers

draw up either plan (2) or plan (3), with a very

good chance of getting county approval for either

one.

Do We Want to See This?

2011-06-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

Point Interface circulated yesterday's post on saving the maple tree canopy on APA Road and there was a lot of enthusiastic response to it. It appears that I can buy chains for many and they will join me in front of the bulldozers, or whatever. I appreciate the company.

One person offered to get a TV camera to come and take pictures of us in chains. Another suggested that we do it in the nude. I'm up for either, but perhaps not for both. Although, if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. Consider the possibility. It's supposed to be 72 degrees here on Saturday so that at least suggests we could pick a sunny day for the clothing optional activities. Hats, however, would be appropriate.

In the meantime, what you, dear readers, can do while staying in your living room and keeping your warm jackets on is write to Amy Keenan at

akeenan@co.whatcom.wa.us

Ms. Keenan is in the County Planning Department.

If you've written before, write again, remind her you're still here and getting ever more concerned. Mention the nude chains (no, maybe don't do that; maintain some decorum, I suppose). There may well be a hearing later in the month where we can all traipse down to Bellingham to whine and complain in responsible citizen mode before we get into major activist mode. Also, now you can nag your friends and neighbors to write. Do the nagging gently; the writing they can do however they want.

More news at 11 p.m., or whenever we get any.

Aux Barricades!

2011-06-01T18:13:00.000-07:00

APA Road Maple Canopy

Apparently, the County Planning Department is still feeling some compulsion to follow some rules about widening APA Road where the great cathedral ceiling of maples inspires everyone who has ever been near to it.

The developer doesn't want it to happen (although he wants to build a bunch of homes that triggers its happening), the future home owners will not wish it had happened, nobody who currently lives in Point Roberts wants it to happen, and I suppose the maples themselves, if they were given a voice, would say, "Oh, No, Please!"

But County Planning has rules and if you want to develop that area, you have to widen the road because the road is already substandard. By having the widening take place upon a development application, the county makes the developer pay to get the road up to standards. And to widen the road you have to cut down the maples. And even if, in my lifetime, nobody is going to sell and then build 50 homes in that area, in order to sell ANY homes, the developer will need a construction permit, and to get that, the developer will have to cut down the maples. And then we can all agree that that was a real shame, given that there are not enough people or houses actually to justify this wider road and these no trees.

We had to destroy the village in order to save it? Are we going to have to end up lying down in the road in front of the bulldozers as they come down APA Road to do their dirty work? (Or whatever machines they use; I doubt if axes are on the agenda, so if they send a crew of folks with chain saws, will we have to chain ourselves to the trees? I'm up for it. I'm mad as hell, etc., etc.). Perhaps it's time to think of ourselves as about to become part of The Arab Spring, demanding a little democracy for Point Roberts. To the barricades!

Canadians All In

2011-05-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

The Saturday Market showed that the Canadians had arrived for the 'summer' in Point Roberts. Summer in quotation marks because, except for the abundance of greenery, it still is pretty cold and wet for summer. The Canadians have spent the 'spring' being exceptionally excited about the Canucks, which I take to be the hockey team, but because I am not a sports person, I don't know what the current status of their excitement is. Largely, I know what's happening by the number of cars I see that have blue flags streaming from their roofs.

Back to the Market: the Point Roberts Garden Club made a wonderful appearance, selling their abundant excess plants for a dollar or two (probably not received with that much excitement by the now three local nurseries, but it's only competitive selling for a few hours). People were pouring out the door with plants that needed to go right into the ground, which was a little problematic since it was somewhat damp outside, but within a few hours of the market, the sun had picked up, and then Sunday was a really lovely day for planting.

Ed dispensed with lots of postcards, even to locals, but mostly to Canadians and other tourists. One couple, who allowed their two children to choose five postcards each (certainly the longest transaction of the day...children really know how to put energy into the act of choosing) was from Dunedin, New Zealand, also the home of the only people I know in New Zealand, but they didn't know my friends. I must have looked disappointed because the wife comforted me in that distinctive Kiwi accent, 'Well, there are 125,000 people in Dunedin." As compared with 1,300 or 5,000 here, depending upon whether you are counting permanent residents only or summer residents, too. And I don't even know most of the 1,300, I'd guess.

I brought some quilted baskets and quilted postcards to the market, now that my used CD's have been prohibited (not just mine: everyone's used anything...said to lower the tone), and they received a nice welcome. Probably have to work on more of them for the Christmas Craft Faire.

Like the Canadians, the hummingbirds have all arrived but their food supply seems to be very short. Usually, by now, there are lots of flowers awaiting them, but the late season makes them dependent upon the sugar water feeders. The fuchsias, which are the main source of food in our yard, almost froze unto death this winter and are coming up only from the ground, which makes it a long trip to all those red flowers. We are cooking up a new bottle of nectar every day, as are our neighbors, and yet they are eating and eating.

So Good Memorial Day, Good Beginning of the Tourist Season, Good Growing and Eating to us all!

Trees Get Sick and Die

2011-05-27T16:14:00.000-07:00

Like everyone here, we have a number of big-leaf maples on our property. They are wondrous trees and only in the middle of winter when I feel saddened by the fact that I neglected to rake up all their enormous volume of leaf fallings, am I sorry to be their owner.

There is a pair of maples right outside our back door that grow straight and tall: about 40-50 feet tall and with a big spread. They're not all that old, and you would expect them to live a very long time, indeed to outlive you so that you don't have ever to deal with getting them removed from their spot. Unfortunately, one (and perhaps both) of these maples has run into hard times. In fact, has run into being dead. The last couple of years, fewer and fewer branches have had leaves, and this year, one side (it's a tree with a split trunk) of one of the maples has no leaves at all. So, yesterday, in a brief spell of not raining, Ed and our two visiting 20 year/old grandsons took to cutting the maple down.

That starts first with planning the cut and the fall. Step two involves getting out the 24-foot ladder and toting a massive amount of climbing ropes out to the porch. Harnesses, belaying ropes, sliders, all kinds of stuff gets attached to trees, ladders, boys, and then up somebody goes with a pruning saw to start the cut. Ed prunes stuff around here all the time and he figured it would work fine. But he had forgotten that even a medium-sized maple tree is hard wood, not soft wood, and the pruning saw, after about 20 minutes of diligent work up on top of the ladder, wore out the grandson.

Next, the neighbor's small chain saw was appropriated and Ed went up the ladder with all the appropriate ropes now attached to him, and within moments, the top 15-20 feet and all its attached branches came crashing down. Another fifteen minutes of rearranging and the next 20 feet of trunk was gone. The neighbor quickly cut all the pieces into firewood; the grandsons packed it into his cadillac of wheelbarrows, and within an hour total, our dead tree was gone, totally gone. Bye!

Unspeakable

2011-05-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

One cannot, I fear, devote an entire blog to slugs, but really, they are awfully interesting as well as appalling. Normally nocturnal, they were all over the place, all daylight long, the last few days in the damp grass and under the grey skies. This early evening, here is a slug trying to eat a rock.

It's pretty surprising that they have time to seek out and eat my little vegetable plants when they are otherwise engaged in either eating or travelling across a 3-foot tall rock.

Oddities of the Season

2011-05-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

Last evening, around 6:30 p.m., I went out to check on the slug activity in the kale bed. There are still a few there each night, but mostly they are not eating the new kale. This is because each of the young kale plants is now surrounded first by a thin cardboard tube, then a yogurt container, and finally by a circle of copper mesh. They could parachute in, or tunnel, but it's much harder than it was at the beginning with just the cardboard tube.

However, on my way to the kale, I passed by a 5-foot tall forsythia. At the 4.5 foot level, I found 2 large black slugs, each about 3-4 inches long and as thick round as my thumb. They were posed on neighboring branches of the forsythia, each eating the little new leaves that follow the flowers.

I have never seen slugs that high in the air; indeed, have never seen them have any interest in a bush of any size. Just one more strange thing in this strange spring-ish season. At least they haven't discovered the peony buds.

Where's the Fainting Couch?

2011-05-18T12:22:00.001-07:00

The weather people are predicting that the temperature in this part of the world will be, tomorrow, Thursday, May 19th, 2011, 68 degrees Farenheit. What will we do?

A Vision in Pink

2011-05-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

The streets of East Vancouver, today, were inches deep in light pink cherry blossoms and deeper pink plum blossoms. And me without a camera. Who could find fault with a day that had such a vision in it?