July 2006

The message I got from Elsbeth the other morning when I went down to fix my breakfast while she was poking around in the closet (trying to decide which of 97 tops to wear) was the remainder of a loaf of olive bread I found on the kitchen counter.

The silent message was to use this bread up because we have run out of English muffins.

Another message I get every morning is a little plastic cup with a handful of vitamin pills, a towel draped over the dishwasher door reminding me not to mash the door closed with my hip as the stuff inside was already washed, and if I do th

At two in the afternoon last Wednesday, the young woman was walking to her car after having lunch at Applebee's Restaurant on the north side of the Commons Mall.

Halfway through the parking lot, as she approached her car, a man came up on her left side and asked if she could tell him the way to Godfather's Pizza Restaurant.

The Reign '93 Purple, a U13 Premier girls soccer team from Federal Way, finished as the runner-up in the prestigious Diadora Soccer Tournament held July 7-9th in Redmond, Washington. The tournament featured 16 Premier U13 teams, including the 2005 Washington state champion and the 2005 Oregon state champion.

In the title match against Snohomish United, Reign went down a goal on an early penalty kick. The girls from Federal Way stormed back ten minutes later with an outstanding shot from distance to beat the keeper.

The 40-acre woods below my house are torn asunder.

Developers have brought in the heavy equipment, and where there was once many tall alders, graceful red cedars and hundred-year-old maples, there will soon be more Euro-manses; six-hundred-thousand dollar cookie-cutter boxes with fake rocks on the front and transplanted foliage in the manicured green-rolled sod.

For now, it is in the crushed rock phase and in order to pay tribute to the fallen trees, some of which were there before this country was a country, I decided to go take a look.

Mrs.

Few images in our paper have elicited such heated response as the photo that ran on page 12 of the June 28 issue.

The photograph depicts a teenage girl smoking marijuana in the woods during an afternoon gathering with friends at Dumas Bay Park in Federal Way.

Admittedly, we knew what response we would receive when we decided to run the photo.

But after lengthy consideration, we felt the photograph carried too much visual impact to go unpublished.

The image shows a Federal Way teen engaging in a blatantly illegal act, and it offered a unique and comp

Uncommonly dry weather this early in the summer means having a water conservation plan in mind. Maintaining an attractive garden requires about one inch of rain or other watering per week. As we head into our typically dry summer, the case for using native plants in the landscape becomes more apparent.

Native plants are attuned to the climate and other environmental conditions. Of course, there is some debate among aficionados as to what constitutes "native".