As I may have mentioned, we are having some trouble with trash collection up here in Point Roberts. The guy with the contract has announced he is throwing it in as of June 30. He will, apparently, continue to run the transfer station where we can bring our trash and recycling, I guess, but maybe not our recycling. Not clear to me.
Fortunately, the County Council has stepped forward into the breach—or into the trash--so to speak. Those of us on the Point Interface email list received the following email on June 1 from the person who is alleged to represent Point Roberts on the Council. Well, maybe not ‘represent’ us, but at least have some kind of knowledgeable relationship to us, and she has indeed been up here several times in recent years. Here is the entire text of that message:
Regarding what you may have heard or read, Whatcom County is responsible for your receiving responsible garbage service. If a certified garbage collector at any time interrupts or discontinues responsible, contracted garbage service, Whatcom County, working with the Washington State Utilities and Transportation Commission will ensure your service will continue.
Please forward this information to anyone you think may be interested.
I will forward any related information I receive.
Barbara Brenner, Whatcom County Council Member
Ms. Brenner apparently has failed to receive any related information insofar as two weeks have passed without any further messages. I’m happy to know that the County has this responsibility, but I’m not sure what it means from the County’s perspective. The County itself, of course, has no garbage trucks, so the County itself isn’t going to be providing anything, including ‘responsible garbage service.’ It’s only responsible for finding somebody else to do that. That might take awhile; that might take forever. After all, the County wasn’t making much headway in the matter of the current ‘contracted garbage service’ (that is, the curbside recyling) that was discontinued some time ago. So I’m dubious about the likelihood of their proceeding to remedy the new situation with any particular speed.
I wonder if it ever occurs to elected politicians to communicate truthfully, honestly, straight talk and all that with the public? Maybe Ms. Brenner could have sent us something like this:
Yikes! We just heard that the guy with the certificate to collect garbage is pulling out at the end of the month and we don’t have any clear plans at the moment about what to do next. We’re hoping to have a meeting soon to see whether some other company would be interested in taking the task on. But for the moment, we are pretty clueless. We’ve been fiddling around with this problem for a couple of years, but, strangely, it never occurred to us that we might come to this unhappy situation because, of course, we are pretty short-term thinkers here what with elections coming up so often and you people up there being so low on our list of priorities. Sorry! Probably won’t do better next time, but I did want you to know that we are thinking about you and your problems.
I’d have been pretty pleased with that, even if I still had to haul my own trash.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Strawberry Thieves
I never wanted to be a detective, have very limited interest in detective stories, even. It’s true that, as a child, I read all the Nancy Drew novels, but it was less because I admired her skills at solving mysteries than that I was extremely interested in her independent and adventurous life, which included a car. I would have been just as enthusiastic if she’d been a teen-age social worker or labor organizer, I daresay.
Nevertheless, I am forced to address the mystery of the missing strawberries. Last Wednesday, I read in the Vancouver paper that the local strawberries would probably start ripening this weekend; they would, said the local farmer, be sweeter (because of the recent hot weather) but smaller (because of the longer and cooler spring). I went to my strawberry beds and, sure enough, all had berries just beginning to suggest that red would be their final color.
I don’t get much from these strawberry beds because someone else gets there first. Maybe four years ago, the entire crop was consumed by the slugs. The next spring, I removed all the grasses and weeds from around the wooden edges of the beds (which are raised) and had Ed cover it with copper mesh which slugs are said not to be willing to cross because it causes a slight electric charge when combined with their propulsive slime.
That summer, which was pretty wet, the strawberries were largely consumed by sow bugs which are attracted to both strawberries and to damp places. The next spring, I carefully lined the raised beds with straw, tucking it gently around each plant so that the berries would be lifted up from any wet surfaces that sow bugs might be attracted to. That summer, there were no slugs and there were no sow bugs eating the berries. Instead, the raccoons ate them.
This spring, the copper mesh was still there (although I didn't do much work on getting the grasses next to it removed), I refreshed the straw manger, and in early June I covered the beds from the top with fine nylon mesh. Thursday evening, there was one berry almost perfectly ripe; Friday morning it was entirely gone and the net near it had been somewhat disturbed. I fastened the net more securely and Friday evening, there were two strawberries almost ready. This morning, they were both half eaten, in the manner of slug dining. But there were several more berries within a hair of being reddish all over, though not really perfectly ripe. I went back this evening before dinner, thinking to get there before the slugs and the raccoons (and it’s just been too dry for the sow bugs), and the two ripest berries had been munched halfway through. We ate the other two for dinner. Perfectly not-quite-ripe strawberries--definitely smaller, definitely not sweeter--but at least in our mouths.
So, at the moment, as near as I can tell, it’s Raccons-1, Slugs-4, and Us-2. That’s not good enough.
Nevertheless, I am forced to address the mystery of the missing strawberries. Last Wednesday, I read in the Vancouver paper that the local strawberries would probably start ripening this weekend; they would, said the local farmer, be sweeter (because of the recent hot weather) but smaller (because of the longer and cooler spring). I went to my strawberry beds and, sure enough, all had berries just beginning to suggest that red would be their final color.
I don’t get much from these strawberry beds because someone else gets there first. Maybe four years ago, the entire crop was consumed by the slugs. The next spring, I removed all the grasses and weeds from around the wooden edges of the beds (which are raised) and had Ed cover it with copper mesh which slugs are said not to be willing to cross because it causes a slight electric charge when combined with their propulsive slime.
That summer, which was pretty wet, the strawberries were largely consumed by sow bugs which are attracted to both strawberries and to damp places. The next spring, I carefully lined the raised beds with straw, tucking it gently around each plant so that the berries would be lifted up from any wet surfaces that sow bugs might be attracted to. That summer, there were no slugs and there were no sow bugs eating the berries. Instead, the raccoons ate them.
This spring, the copper mesh was still there (although I didn't do much work on getting the grasses next to it removed), I refreshed the straw manger, and in early June I covered the beds from the top with fine nylon mesh. Thursday evening, there was one berry almost perfectly ripe; Friday morning it was entirely gone and the net near it had been somewhat disturbed. I fastened the net more securely and Friday evening, there were two strawberries almost ready. This morning, they were both half eaten, in the manner of slug dining. But there were several more berries within a hair of being reddish all over, though not really perfectly ripe. I went back this evening before dinner, thinking to get there before the slugs and the raccoons (and it’s just been too dry for the sow bugs), and the two ripest berries had been munched halfway through. We ate the other two for dinner. Perfectly not-quite-ripe strawberries--definitely smaller, definitely not sweeter--but at least in our mouths.
So, at the moment, as near as I can tell, it’s Raccons-1, Slugs-4, and Us-2. That’s not good enough.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Review Revealed
The border people have announced that they are willing (doubtless because of P.R. residents’ endless complaining) to conduct a special, amazing review of everyone from P.R. who has lost his/her Nexus card or who has been denied a Nexus card. Since there is normally no accountability for CBP with respect to this (that is, they don’t have to and don’t necessarily tell you why it is being lifted or denied, let alone look into the matter), this is seen as ‘special treatment.’ Further, these folks at CBP say, ‘at the conclusion of the review a recommendation will be made to the NEXUS ombudsman [located in New England] concerning a redress or reapplication process for any applicants or former members that may be merited.” (as quoted in the June All Point Bulletin.)
So, we’re all pretty happy to have such special treatment, although I must say it sounds a little like the kind of special reviews that some people on land leased in Cuba are getting: the reviews where you already know the answer to the question. There is no timeline on this review, says the CBP spokesperson, and there is further no real clarity about who is doing the review, although someone in Blaine has apparently completed doing something. Where to next? No indication. At the end of all this time, says Mr. CBP, “if there have been any errors in the administration of the program those few individuals will be contacted shortly and invited to reapply for NEXUS privileges.” (I think we could try to diagram that sentence, but it would then appear that the ‘errors of administration’ refers to ‘those few individuals’, so who knows what the CBP might have in mind?)
Now, I don’t want to be too picky about this, but “IF THERE HAVE BEEN ANY ERRORS”? Surely we might concede up front that there have been errors. Any government agency spokesperson who suggests that it is possible that their agency is operating error-free in the administration of their programs is surely at worst a knave or a fool, and at best unbelievably naïve. Why can’t the spokesperson just say, ‘We will address any errors that were made’? And, when they find such errors, why can they not correct them, instead of inviting people ‘to reapply’ which means asking them to ante up another $50/person? These are often people who have already reapplied at least once. I know these are hard economic times, but the feds can surely afford to pay for their own errors.
So maybe I, at least, am so far not so happy. Watch what they do, not what they say: advice that is always good to remember when dealing with politicians and government people generally.
So, we’re all pretty happy to have such special treatment, although I must say it sounds a little like the kind of special reviews that some people on land leased in Cuba are getting: the reviews where you already know the answer to the question. There is no timeline on this review, says the CBP spokesperson, and there is further no real clarity about who is doing the review, although someone in Blaine has apparently completed doing something. Where to next? No indication. At the end of all this time, says Mr. CBP, “if there have been any errors in the administration of the program those few individuals will be contacted shortly and invited to reapply for NEXUS privileges.” (I think we could try to diagram that sentence, but it would then appear that the ‘errors of administration’ refers to ‘those few individuals’, so who knows what the CBP might have in mind?)
Now, I don’t want to be too picky about this, but “IF THERE HAVE BEEN ANY ERRORS”? Surely we might concede up front that there have been errors. Any government agency spokesperson who suggests that it is possible that their agency is operating error-free in the administration of their programs is surely at worst a knave or a fool, and at best unbelievably naïve. Why can’t the spokesperson just say, ‘We will address any errors that were made’? And, when they find such errors, why can they not correct them, instead of inviting people ‘to reapply’ which means asking them to ante up another $50/person? These are often people who have already reapplied at least once. I know these are hard economic times, but the feds can surely afford to pay for their own errors.
So maybe I, at least, am so far not so happy. Watch what they do, not what they say: advice that is always good to remember when dealing with politicians and government people generally.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Riding High
The USPO has this tiresome policy of requiring you to pick up your mail every twenty minutes, or something, and if you are going away for more than a few days, you have to fill out a form telling them how long you are going to be gone and when you are coming back and whether you want them to hold on to all your mail until you appear before them or want them simply to hold on to it until the day you come back and then they’ll put it all in your mail box. That latter option requires you, of course, to absolutely know when you are coming back and to be there within two days of it. Or else your mail will have been sitting around in your mailbox getting stale or cold or just too old to be of interest. And do they throw it away? Or what? I fill out the forms, so I have not found out the consequences of not doing so.
I suppose there are reasons for this that make some sense in some other places where the USPO operates. Perhaps people steal the mail out of street mailboxes. It seems unlikely that anybody is stealing the mail out of your post office box, though, and they make you fill out a form for that for every absence, as well. You can fill out the form for the street mailbox on the net, but you can’t fill out the form for the post office box. I doubt if there actually is any reason for that.
But the upshot of all this, is that we often don’t get a copy of the All Point Bulletin, because it is somehow put into the street mail boxes, but not if you have a hold on your mail at the time it comes out. And we usually do. In such a situation, you can generally pick up a copy of the newspaper at the post office itself or at the International Market, but this month, on the 2nd of June, there were copies of the paper neither place. And so I was obliged to wait for almost a week to discover a newspaper and find out whazzup. (In truth, I read some, but not all, of it on the web.)
We’re on a roll, it turns out. The County has decided to leave the remnants of the APA Cannery, including its pilings, down at Lily Point. And the never-ending saga of the Fire Department has taken another turn wherein the new Fire Chief, appointed only one month ago, wrote a very critical assessment of the P.R. Volunteer Fire Dept., and the Fire Commissioners sacked him (not clear whether it was temporary or permanent, but Episode 2,437 will be playing next month, stay tuned). The County Library wants more tax because the County Library has had its budget cut (yes!yes!yes! to public libraries!). And the Taxpayers Association and the Voters Association are going to try a merger. They used to be just one organization (the P.R. Community Association) back in the 1970’s. So we’re back to square one there, I think. The County isn’t going to operate the dock at Lighthouse Park, so I don’t know how anybody is going to get their boat in the water (and the boatowners are not happy). And the Chamber of Commerce wants help with the July 4th Parade, but unless they promise fireworks (I’m sure they’re an environmental hazard, but I have a sentimental fondness for them if handled safely), I’ll probably just watch the parade.
And, with all these matters in play over the summer, perhaps we can slowly forget about the trash situation.
I suppose there are reasons for this that make some sense in some other places where the USPO operates. Perhaps people steal the mail out of street mailboxes. It seems unlikely that anybody is stealing the mail out of your post office box, though, and they make you fill out a form for that for every absence, as well. You can fill out the form for the street mailbox on the net, but you can’t fill out the form for the post office box. I doubt if there actually is any reason for that.
But the upshot of all this, is that we often don’t get a copy of the All Point Bulletin, because it is somehow put into the street mail boxes, but not if you have a hold on your mail at the time it comes out. And we usually do. In such a situation, you can generally pick up a copy of the newspaper at the post office itself or at the International Market, but this month, on the 2nd of June, there were copies of the paper neither place. And so I was obliged to wait for almost a week to discover a newspaper and find out whazzup. (In truth, I read some, but not all, of it on the web.)
We’re on a roll, it turns out. The County has decided to leave the remnants of the APA Cannery, including its pilings, down at Lily Point. And the never-ending saga of the Fire Department has taken another turn wherein the new Fire Chief, appointed only one month ago, wrote a very critical assessment of the P.R. Volunteer Fire Dept., and the Fire Commissioners sacked him (not clear whether it was temporary or permanent, but Episode 2,437 will be playing next month, stay tuned). The County Library wants more tax because the County Library has had its budget cut (yes!yes!yes! to public libraries!). And the Taxpayers Association and the Voters Association are going to try a merger. They used to be just one organization (the P.R. Community Association) back in the 1970’s. So we’re back to square one there, I think. The County isn’t going to operate the dock at Lighthouse Park, so I don’t know how anybody is going to get their boat in the water (and the boatowners are not happy). And the Chamber of Commerce wants help with the July 4th Parade, but unless they promise fireworks (I’m sure they’re an environmental hazard, but I have a sentimental fondness for them if handled safely), I’ll probably just watch the parade.
And, with all these matters in play over the summer, perhaps we can slowly forget about the trash situation.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Change of Scene
The first weekend in June: that’s when all the tourists/summer visitors usually are noticeably with us. And it was pretty noticeable today. The International Market had lots of people, even at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, and they were buying lots of food. Planning to stay awhile, or at least eat a lot while here. The roadsides were almost cluttered with folks out for a walk, a jog, a run, a stroll, and they were all wearing shorts and sleeveless tops, or a little less. One lady in a bikini top.
The air last night and tonight smelled of barbecued meats. This is summer, indeed. And for inexplicable reasons, the sunny weather has continued, though the temperatures have dropped some. But three weeks without rain at this time of year is strange indeed. A Seattle meteorologist reported a very unusual red/orange sunset earlier this week. Our neighbor reported awakening last night at 1:15 a.m. just in time to see the moon fairly low in the sky, in the south, transiting a red/orange sky. If it weren’t such lovely weather, you might think we were getting messages of end times. But probably, we are just giddy with summer after our long, cold winter and spring, and giddier yet with all these people bouncing around us on bicycles and horses and in sandals and bathing suits. They’re all so talkative! I get to thinking through the winter that I’m living among the kind of people that Garrison Keillor describes as inhabiting Lake Wobegon: taciturn Norwegians (or, in our case, Icelanders).
When I went to the market, I was wearing a long-sleeved silk shirt covered by a jacket. This is to demonstrate, I guess, that I am an actual resident and not a fly-by-night, good-time-Charlie visitor in a bathing suit. Nevertheless, we barbecued a little chicken.
The air last night and tonight smelled of barbecued meats. This is summer, indeed. And for inexplicable reasons, the sunny weather has continued, though the temperatures have dropped some. But three weeks without rain at this time of year is strange indeed. A Seattle meteorologist reported a very unusual red/orange sunset earlier this week. Our neighbor reported awakening last night at 1:15 a.m. just in time to see the moon fairly low in the sky, in the south, transiting a red/orange sky. If it weren’t such lovely weather, you might think we were getting messages of end times. But probably, we are just giddy with summer after our long, cold winter and spring, and giddier yet with all these people bouncing around us on bicycles and horses and in sandals and bathing suits. They’re all so talkative! I get to thinking through the winter that I’m living among the kind of people that Garrison Keillor describes as inhabiting Lake Wobegon: taciturn Norwegians (or, in our case, Icelanders).
When I went to the market, I was wearing a long-sleeved silk shirt covered by a jacket. This is to demonstrate, I guess, that I am an actual resident and not a fly-by-night, good-time-Charlie visitor in a bathing suit. Nevertheless, we barbecued a little chicken.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Heat, But No Dust
Somehow, we have moved from May, when we one and all up here in the Northwest complained extensively about how cold it was this spring, barely making it to the mid-50’s during the day, to June, when the first week of the month has stunned us with 80+ degree temperatures. In the 16 years we have been up here, it has never been this hot in June, and most years it has never been this hot at all, let alone in June. The mosquitoes haven't even had time to breed.
Two weeks away from the Point Roberts garden, almost all of it at least pretty warm and relentlessly sunny, has made the garden seem more like a jungle with sudden growth and bloom. Things that grow next to one another but don’t usually bloom together are now making some wondrous visual pairings. The rhododendrons and columbines do normally bloom together, but not in June. That usually happens in May. And they usually last awhile, but in this heat they are fading quickly.
When I lived in the South Pacific, on the island of Yap, I tried to grow things I knew how to grow. I’d get people to send me some vegetable seeds and I’d plant them on Monday. By Wednesday, they had germinated; by Friday, they were well on their way to getting buds; by Sunday, they were finished. Well, that’s something of an exaggeration, but it was a very short (and unproductive) season from start to finish, and that is sort of what this feels like. Plants doing nothing, then blooming and ending bloom very quickly.
Everyone says, ‘If this is June, what is August going to be like?’ Clearly, the weather is providing us with an enormous conversation this year. I was reading about geoengineering the other day (fancy ways to fool around with the earth and/or its atmosphere in order intentionally to alter the climate). Maybe this weather is just one more project out of DARPA on behalf of Customs and Border Protection whose purpose (i.e., the project) is to distract us. If so, it's working: we're pretty distracted.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
New Learning
Despite advanced age, there is yet much to learn about one’s self and one’s life. For example, I take it as a given that gardening is essentially a solitary activity. When I first began gardening, during WWII in our Victory Garden, my father would assign each of his three (then) children his/her own individual plant areas to tend to. Mostly we were responsible for weeding, but occasionally we would be required to do the dreaded ‘thinning’ (how hard is it, 65 years later even, to pull up something that has grown solely at one’s request and with one’s tending?), and eventually the glorious harvesting. But weeding was probably 80% of the time commitment.
I imagine he did this to keep us away from one another and prevent our constant bickering. But, when you are a kid, you don’t really realize how irritating kids' bickering is, of course. So I thought he was just teaching me the nature of gardening, if I thought anything at all.
In the decades since then, I have almost always been a solitary gardener. There were a few years when my older daughter, a life-long, devoted gardener could have shared the experience with me, but I was busy with other things and was just happy to turn over gardening, for the most part, to her. So she mastered the art of solitary gardening. My son didn’t take to gardening much until he was an adult and many states away from me, and my younger daughter never much took to gardening. And the husbands…not gardening types.
So how surprised was I yesterday to find that gardening is NOT a solitary activity? The Garden Club requested residents’ help in digging out blackberries and horsetail from the beautiful main street ‘beds’ that they have built and planted. They are not exactly beds; more like the berms in roads as they are raised up from the dirt, but not surrounded by anything that would make them raised beds other than the piled up dirt and mulch itself. They are filled right now with wilting daffodil leaves, California poppies, the remains of croci leaves, a smattering of cosmos seedlings, and an ample supply of the offending invaders.
There are about 20 of these planted berms, each maybe 6-feet long, and I expected we would each be assigned to one of them and to do our work and leave. When we got there, there wasn’t anybody to assign our work to us, so Ed started in on one and I started in on the one next to him. A few minutes later, other people arrived and one of them set to work with him and one set to work with me.
I suspected that telling the newcomer to go work in his own berm wasn’t the way to work in the Garden Club’s ‘community flower beds,’ but it is surely what I felt like doing. He gave me some instructions on the best way to proceed (Did I ask for any instructions about how to weed a flower bed?), whacked away for awhile with a large shovel (while I used a narrow trowel and a dandelion digger in order to provide the least disturbance to the adjoining plants), and then moved on to a berm with a larger group of social gardeners. I finished off the berm, worked on a couple of others alone, and went home when it was all pretty much finished.
So, you can learn several things in a day: Gardening can be a social activity, and I am even more of a hermit than I thought. Also, horsetail like blackberry appears to be a tenacious plant. I suspect we'll be cleaning it out for several years at a minimum. And maybe I'll learn to talk while gardening.
I imagine he did this to keep us away from one another and prevent our constant bickering. But, when you are a kid, you don’t really realize how irritating kids' bickering is, of course. So I thought he was just teaching me the nature of gardening, if I thought anything at all.
In the decades since then, I have almost always been a solitary gardener. There were a few years when my older daughter, a life-long, devoted gardener could have shared the experience with me, but I was busy with other things and was just happy to turn over gardening, for the most part, to her. So she mastered the art of solitary gardening. My son didn’t take to gardening much until he was an adult and many states away from me, and my younger daughter never much took to gardening. And the husbands…not gardening types.
So how surprised was I yesterday to find that gardening is NOT a solitary activity? The Garden Club requested residents’ help in digging out blackberries and horsetail from the beautiful main street ‘beds’ that they have built and planted. They are not exactly beds; more like the berms in roads as they are raised up from the dirt, but not surrounded by anything that would make them raised beds other than the piled up dirt and mulch itself. They are filled right now with wilting daffodil leaves, California poppies, the remains of croci leaves, a smattering of cosmos seedlings, and an ample supply of the offending invaders.
There are about 20 of these planted berms, each maybe 6-feet long, and I expected we would each be assigned to one of them and to do our work and leave. When we got there, there wasn’t anybody to assign our work to us, so Ed started in on one and I started in on the one next to him. A few minutes later, other people arrived and one of them set to work with him and one set to work with me.
I suspected that telling the newcomer to go work in his own berm wasn’t the way to work in the Garden Club’s ‘community flower beds,’ but it is surely what I felt like doing. He gave me some instructions on the best way to proceed (Did I ask for any instructions about how to weed a flower bed?), whacked away for awhile with a large shovel (while I used a narrow trowel and a dandelion digger in order to provide the least disturbance to the adjoining plants), and then moved on to a berm with a larger group of social gardeners. I finished off the berm, worked on a couple of others alone, and went home when it was all pretty much finished.
So, you can learn several things in a day: Gardening can be a social activity, and I am even more of a hermit than I thought. Also, horsetail like blackberry appears to be a tenacious plant. I suspect we'll be cleaning it out for several years at a minimum. And maybe I'll learn to talk while gardening.
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