Columns

It’s winter (though sometimes it feels and looks like spring) and this is the time of year for Meyer lemons and Valencia oranges. Our trees are bursting. We’ve picked all our lemons by now, but the oranges are still in great abundance.

We live in a time of much confusion. Our country is conflicted and confused. Large portions of our population do not share the same set of facts.  Our political differences often look too big to heal or to bring us back together. Yet, we have faith in America as a place and an idea where truth, fairness and intelligence shall ultimately prevail.

The following snippets of history are drawn from the pages of the Healdsburg Tribune, the Healdsburg Enterprise and the Sotoyome Scimitar, and are prepared by the volunteers at the Healdsburg Museum & Historical Society. Admission is always free at the museum, open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Recalling Ravitch

This Week in H’burg is a weekly column featuring photos and fun facts from local photographer Pierre Ratté. Each week we’ll feature a new photo from Ratté along with a fact about the subject matter of the photo.

This month, I have a few updates to offer on library services that you already know and love. We are always glad to hear your questions and concerns, and we're hoping that our upcoming plans will help with our community's information needs. 

Editor's note: This column is from our sister news site, the Cloverdale Reveille. As the country surpasses 500,000 COVID-related deaths, we thought Pamela's column might hit home to readers outside of Cloverdale.

Why in the world are we on Mars? Surely, we’re not bored with life on Earth, are we? We’ve got plenty to keep us occupied with a coronavirus pandemic, injured economy, crazy weather and mobs of people at each other’s throats. Forget all of that, our smartest scientists say. First, they want to know if there might have ever been any life on Mars.

Fertilizer is food for plants that need a variety of nutrients to grow and thrive. While we humans get our nutrients from different foods we eat, plants get most of their nutrients from the soil. Sometimes soils don’t have the nutrients necessary for plants to grow and thrive, so we apply chemical fertilizers and animal manure to our gardens and lawns to provide plants with the nitrogen and phosphorus they need. Fertilizer is typically added to the soil to help establish seeds or young plants and may be added to the soil throughout the life of the plant to help keep it healthy. But over-fertilizing can negatively affect aquatic ecosystems.

Thank you to those who made the fair happen