San Francisco has passed an ordinance that will ban petro-based plastic bags from being distibuted at businesses. I suggest that our city council consider adopting an ordinance similar to San Francisco's that reduces pollution and dependence on petroleum based products by requiring environmentally friendly bags to be used in our city.
IKEA has made a bold environmental statement by charging for their plastic bags in an effort to encourage customers to bring their own bags and curb waste. I think it is time our city take the lead in the northwest and require compostable bags or renewable material bags (paper or natural fibers) to be given out at stores here as an option to bringing your own bag while shopping.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai has taken the lead in Kenya to ban plastic bags there in an effort to curb a vast pollution and related health problem.
Waste can be reduced for our landfills and our environment can become cleaner without discarded plastic bags floating around endlessly. As those bags end up in our natural areas they pose a danger to endemic wildlife. Please encourage your council members to take a bold move towards a greener future and reduce waste.
just finished my new grocery bag. it's made out of a weird crinkly fabric, with cotton embellishments, that is quilted with cotton batting sandwiched inside to give it some body. this was a fun quilting project, on a reasonable scale, after doing that monster quilt.
grocery bags can be more than utilitarian. they can be a fashion accessory.

happy spring!!!!

almost finished quiltingnext is to sew on the binding

...............

birdies on the last day of winter

steller's jay

chestnut-backed chickadee

ring-necked pheasant

let me know if you know what kind of gull this is

today's garden

prunus 'accolade'

wild mustard

ribes sanguineum alba

ribes sanguineum

ribes sanguineum

hummer magnet

there you have it the full array of colors for ribes sanguineum in our garden.

katakanasince i ran out of japanese hankies to fill out the quilt matrix
i painted a quilt square with my name in katakana.
quilters are always supposed to sign and date their quilts,
so i signed it right on the front in big black inky script.
a friend from college taught me how to write my name
in katakana(the script used for foreign names + places).
when i was little my sister's friend
(whose parents were in ww2 internment camps)
taught me how to say, "i don't speak japanese"
in japanese, along with a bunch of other japanese phrases.
i would love to be able to sit in on the classes
taught at the high school and learn
how to write and speak japanese.
then i would be able to read all the
fabulous craft books i've been buying at uwajimaya.
i hope that mariko, our japanese exchange student,
when i was little, will enjoy seeing this quilt
when it is finished since she gave all the hankies to my mother over many years.

rugged beautytalk about a plant that can take it...
these beauties have fought off large hail pellets,
three days of snowfall, + rain,
and still hold up under the pressure.
the best of the spring bulbs!

ahhh snow on the first day of march!

i love being an island within an island.
here, way at the top of the hill, we sometimes have the benefit of snowfall when it occurs nowhere else on the island. tromping through the soft crunch of snow under foot in the early morning sunshine my mission was to chop up some firewood from a tree i just felled.
was i in vermont?
oh i love the sound and feel of snow under my gardening shoes!
such softness in my quiet strides.
only the nearby stellar's jay breaking the perfect silence.