Columns

In the aftermath of the worst firestorm in Sonoma County history last week, local chefs snapped into action doing what they do best: They cooked. They cooked for first responders and the people they saved. They cooked for evacuees. They cooked for volunteers who were helping at local evacuation shelters. The resulting meals included homemade sausages, steak and lasagna. They were adorned with fresh vegetables from local farms, fresh bread from local bakeries and lots of love.

The Healdsburg Avenue Improvement Project’s expected completion date remains to be late summer/early fall. Those of us who drive through the roundabout regularly have seen the steady progress since January, when most of the underground work was completed.

It’s now been a full year of living under the physical, health-related and emotional restrictions imposed upon all of us by the coronavirus pandemic. The first shelter-in-place edict from the county’s public health officer was issued on March 16, 2020. We have felt at times like we aren’t really living so much as we are just merely surviving. Walking around with half-covered faces, not seeing smiles, and separated from co-workers, neighbors, grandparents and schoolmates is a real downer. That we have kept it together this well, for this long, is a miracle. Salute yourself.

When disorder rules the world it helps to put more order close by, as in our own domain. “A place for everything and everything in its place” assumes there actually is a place designated for those things that take up room. The problem is one of limitation. Unless we live in a house of cards, where all you do is add another lean-to, we will run  out of room if we keep adding items to our store of possessions.

There are two looming events on our calendars that may further confirm the difference between compulsory law and bendable customs.

There are vast benefits to composting, not only environmentally, but also personally within your home. Using compost in your home garden adds nitrogen, potassium and micro-nutrients such as manganese, iron and zinc. These additions strengthen the structure of your soil, retain water in plant structure, prevent erosion and are ideal for drainage.

Our last month of the market season, November, snuck in this year, on the heels of an October so scary that we barely noticed the month had changed. Healdsburg was on the edge of being obliterated, which took most folks’ focus off life as they knew it, and propelled them into survival mode.