By IAN WOODSON
Herald columnist

Editor’s note: Ian Woodson is formerly homeless. He writes this column once every three weeks to build awareness about homelessness in North Kitsap, its causes, and possible solutions.

This story is about a friend who started drinking and smoking weed when he was 13.

He was sent to a group home for troubled youth when he was 15. He began to sell drugs when he got back from the group home and got caught when he was 17. His parents sent him back to the group home for eight months. The group home had a boot camp feel to it, and residents did farm labor such as growing and harvesting alfalfa.

He got into college while he was living at the group home. There was still strict supervision, but he managed to get a job at a deli near the college. This was his way out of the work camp. He saved some money from his job, then ran away from the group home and caught a Greyhound bus back to Seattle. He lived with a high school friend in Indianola. He went back to selling weed again.

After six months, he left his friend’s home and began to sell cocaine to support himself. He moved in with his grandparents during this period. His addiction progressed, because he had free range to do what he wanted. He reached the point where he was doing any and every drug he could get hands on and make a profit on. Money was the priority and drugs eventually took over.

Many attempts to quit were foiled by his return to his drug of choice, cocaine. He left his grandparents’ home to pursue greater use.

He started to couch surf, looked for places to stay, living mostly in his car. Shortly after turning 19, he realized that he needed help to avoid jail and death. His uncle and grandma came back into his life, getting him into an inpatient recovery facility in Burien.

He’s now involved in the 12-step community and learning a new way of life. His grandparents have welcomed him back home and he has also found regular work doing landscaping with his father.

Upcoming Events

— Kingston Cares will meet on May 8, 9:30 a.m. in the Kingston Financial Center, 10950 Highway 104, Kingston. Topic: Making sure the Kingston community has a severe-weather shelter up and running for this winter, and the organizing of committees to address specific needs in the community. Come with your ideas and concerns.

— The North Kitsap Substance Abuse Pre-vention Coalition meets on May 12, 1 p.m., in the Spectrum building, 25800 Siyaya Ave. NE, Kingston. The goal of the coalition is to change the perception among children and teens that drug use is a part of growing up. The coalition invites new members and donations.

 

For the Year of the Boomer — 2014 is the year the youngest Boomers turn 50 — here is another installment in my survey of 50 Boomers across 10 career categories who have reinvented themselves within the last 10 years.

Many of us are increasingly aware of the countdown clock as we hit our 50s and then our 60s. What once seemed like a future full of opportunity, and time to take advantage of it, is increasingly looking like a looming deadline, and we feel like we’d better get our act together before we run out of time.

Let’s be careful not to act precipitously, however. Lifestyle and career reinvention have to be the result of a measured and conscious evaluation process at our age. We’re not 30 any longer, where an impulsive idea and a resulting five-year jaunt into a new business still has a pretty soft landing at 35 if we don’t make it work.

In researching these profiles, I came across Susan and Stephen Ristau, who seem to have done a very good job of taking their reinvention slow and steady, and serve as an example to the rest of us for letting our reinvention evolve naturally and organically out of a set of renewed and/or defined values. The Ristau’s process is a text-book approach to career reinvention best practices, and can serve almost as a template for those of us looking to take the plunge, but not sure where to start.

First things first: some tough decisions. Like it or not, reinvention will require shaking things up, whether it means downsizing, simplifying our lives, or even moving. We need to be prepared to invest in (don’t think “sacrifice”) and commit to what starts off as an unknown future. In the winter of 2007, the Ristaus, whose kids were out of college, sold their home in Connecticut, got rid of stuff, put the rest in storage, and headed to Oregon, where a friend loaned them a simple cabin on Mount Hood to use as a sort of base camp for them to incubate their next move. Each of them had been successful (he in non-profit management; she in insurance), but they needed to manage their funds carefully with no immediate career prospects in sight. The next few months unfolded as a kind of meditation retreat, where the couple each engaged in personal visioning processes to spark ideas for where and how they could live happily, productively and meaningfully in their Third Act.

As reported on MarketWatch, Stephen said “We suddenly felt this great sense of freedom to choose to live differently. We both knew we needed to return to work. But we didn’t think we needed to earn what we did before. We were ready to take a bit of a risk.” As idyllic as their surroundings were, this was no vacation. Stephen used journaling and other writings (e.g. creating a personal mission statement) as a way of discovering what was exciting to him on the inside, and bringing forward ideas that he could use to find purposeful professional engagement. Susan took a less formal approach, but interacted with people she met in the local community, and allowed herself to consider new ideas that she had never before considered.

The result was dramatic on the outside, and has clearly been transformational on the inside. The Ristaus stayed in Oregon, finding a new home in Portland, with Stephen returning to the non-profit sector, where he works as a consultant to the non-profit sector, providing project consultation and training services to organizations. He also dedicates more time to volunteering and service work. Susan did a complete career pivot and discovered a passion for gardening, so she has now become certified as a “master gardener” and opened up a small landscaping business. To qualify for health benefits, she also works part time as a personal shopper for a local market. As expected, they’re making less money, but they’re also living more simply. What’s important to them is the freedom and flexibility of their lifestyles, the control they have over their days, and the way that the work they are doing is making a visible difference and touching the people they work for and with.

While the Ristaus clearly had the resources to figure out how they were going to achieve their reinvention, their story exemplifies the steps that all reinventions have to take in order to succeed. There is always a series of inner processes that need to take place — time that we need to spend contemplating this change, and working out the details of what it’s going to look like before actually embarking on the plan.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

• Several larger corporations such as Starbucks, Target and Land’s End are able to offer even their part-time employees benefits such as health coverage and paid vacation time (head over to ABC for a full list).

• For those with an entrepreneurial spirit and computer know-how, the Internet offers opportunities to bring in some cash from home — at any hour of the day or night. Take Jose and Jill Ferrer, a retired couple profiled by AARP for supplementing a freewheeling retirement with their website, Your RV Lifestyle. By highlighting certain products related to RV living, the pair earns 0 a month, AARP reports. “And we know the potential is there to grow our website business further,” Jill Ferrer says. Other ideas: Etsy.com allows the crafty to turn a profit from their hobbies.

• Personal care and home health aid topped the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ list of the fastest growing occupations in America. The time commitment may vary (between 10 and 30 hours per week, according to SmartMoney), but the median annual wage is around ,000 for both occupations, according to the BLS.

• Bartending is not just for twentysomethings — and for social butterflies, this part-time gig offers opportunity to rake in extra cash, not to mention tips, with a minimal initial financial investment (a 40-hour certification course at the New York City Bartending School costs a little less than 0, for example).

• Age discrimination is less of a problem in government agencies, reports The Fiscal Times. In fact, agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Transportation Security Administration actively seek older workers. Visit USAJobs.gov to search for available positions.

• If you’ve got an artistic flair or an interest in theater, makeup artists can make up to an hour, and only work 20 hours a week on average, AOL Jobs reports. Disclaimer: qualifications may include formal training in cosmetology or theater, and a license is required to practice in several states.

• What better way to scratch that globetrotting itch? If you’re up for an on-the-go lifestyle, flight attendants also earn up to an hour, making it a very well-paid part-time job.

• The nonprofit sector can offer more than volunteer opportunities for retirees, and may be particularly appealing to those who “thought they wanted to change the world … [but] put that on the back burner for 20 or 30 years while they climbed the corporate ladder,” as Tamara Erickson, author of “Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation,” told The Wall Street Journal.

  To get started, Idealist.org offers listings for available paid positions in addition to volunteer opportunities: applicants with years of experience under their belts are sure to be met with open arms. Even cooler, Encore.org offers paid Encore Fellowships to “match skilled, experienced professionals at the end of their midlife careers with social-purpose organizations” — while earning a small stipend for part- or full-time work, midlifers can get their foot in the door to a fulfilling retirement job.

• The pay may not be great, but if you’re an arts lover, a history buff or a sports enthusiast, the perks certainly are!

• “I studied hypnotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy 3 years ago and now I have my own business, couldn’t be happier” — Huff/Post50 reader Lee Adley

  It’s certainly a challenge, but as our amazing readers — and the many men and women featured on our page — can attest, going back to school and pursuing something totally different can be well worth the investment of time, money and energy.

Vice President Joe Biden will visit Cleveland Wednesday to promote expansion of a transit program that House Republicans would rather cut. The program is helping to pay for an RTA project near University Circle.Cliff Owen / AP

WASHINGTON, D.C. – When Vice President Joe Biden visits a Cleveland rapid transit station on Mayfield Rd. Wednesday, he’ll promote a form of federal spending that in its broadest outlines has few opponents.

Roads need paving. Bridges need fixing. Nearly everyone agrees.

But exactly what else counts as necessary for federal transportation spending, including a Red Line rapid station in Cleveland, is another matter.

If House of Representatives Republicans prevail, there could be much less money in the future for projects like the new Little Italy-University Circle Rapid Station, which is scheduled to open in 2015 and Biden will highlight Wednesday.

Biden’s Cleveland visit is part of a broader, week-long lobbying effort by the White House to draw attention to a desire to keep spending on improving infrastructure. The overarching issue – keeping the nation’s roads and bridges open and safe – has wide consensus.

Even the biggest pro-business lobbying groups in Washington, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, are spending the week much like Biden and his boss, President Barack Obama. They’re holding forums and other events to tell Congress that it’s time for a major new transportation bill.

The current bill expires Sept. 30, and the Highway Trust Fund, which provides the money, could run short a month earlier.

Obama is going to the construction site of the new structure that will replace the Tappan Zee Bridge, spanning New York’s Hudson River, the same day as Biden’s visit to the new Little Italy-University Circle Rapid Station.

But first, Biden today will go to St. Louis and highlight a pedestrian bridge being built over a highway that separates residents and tourists from the Gateway Arch.  And on Friday, the White House says, Obama will meet with workers to discuss infrastructure around Washington, D.C.

The White House says that 65 percent of the nation’s major roads are rated as being in “less than good” condition and one in four bridges require significant repairs or cannot handle today’s traffic.

But agreement on need is not the same as agreement on where to get the money, or on how to spend it.

Most current federal transportation projects, including money that gets funneled to state highway departments, are funded through a tax on gasoline (18.4 cents per gallon) and diesel fuel (24.4 cents per gallon). Those taxes have not been raised since 1993, although from 1993 to 1997, 4.3 cents of the gasoline tax was used for deficit reduction before being redirected to transportation projects.

The static tax is just part of the problem. Cars also get better gasoline mileage since the last hike, and with inflation, the money doesn’t buy as much steel and asphalt. 

So Obama would replace the expiring transit bill, called Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, or MAP-21, with a $302 billion, four-year bill. Obama’s bill would supplement the gas tax with money from closing certain corporate tax provisions, including one that the White House and Democrats say has led to companies sheltering income overseas.

Republicans such as House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster have their own ideas — both for annual transportation appropriations, which last a year at a time, and for a longer-term road-and-bridge improvement program.

“While Chairman Shuster respects that the Administration has put forward its own detailed proposal, the first time it has done so, he will not agree with it on all the details,” said Justin Harclerode, Shuster’s spokesman. “Thus far, the chairman has not elaborated on any potential differences or areas of agreement as the Transportation Committee continues to develop its surface transportation proposal.”

The last big highway bill, MAP-21, authorized $105 billion over two years, marking the first agreement on a large highway bill since 2005. A series of Band-Aid approaches, as the White House had put it, sufficed in the interim.

Many supporters, including Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, say that spending on roads helps the American economy, not only by providing road-building jobs but also by keeping the economy moving.

“Road and bridge projects don’t just mean safer and less congested roads and construction jobs – they also help attract new employers and economic development,” Brown said in an email this week.

Brown said that more than 8 percent of Ohio’s bridges require major repairs or replacement. He also noted the better known projects awaiting funding, such as Route 8 in Akron and the Brent Spence Bridge in Cincinnati. 

Federal highway spending, however, has become a boondoggle in the eyes of some fiscal conservatives. This is where ideological groups split with those who have interests to protect.

Emily Goff, a transportation and infrastructure policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, noted that MAP-21 funds go not only to build roads and bridges but also to build recreation trails and bicycle paths. These are important to groups pushing for transportation alternatives, but they siphon money that could go for even more roads and bridges to ease considerable traffic congestion, Goff says.

Yet MAP-21 requires states to set aside money for these kinds of alternatives, Goff says, to the tune of $27.5 million this year in Pennsylvania and $78.9 million in Texas.

“Identifying a connection between these activities and a federal highway program concerned with interstate highway system construction and maintenance proves difficult,” Goff wrote in a recent Heritage blog post. “Indeed, there is nothing federal or highway about bicycle paths, landscaping, or any of these local activities.”

The RTA station in Cleveland is a project that could raise a similar question, with its emphasis on meshing light rail with development around University Circle and Little Italy. The existing station, on Euclid Avenue at E. 120^th Street, is considered functionally obsolete, so the new station will be placed several blocks south, at Mayfield Road at E. 119^th Street.

About $8.9 in funding comes from highly competitive U.S. Department of Transportation grants, according to the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.

The grant money did not come MAP-21. Rather, it came from a program created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or the recession-era stimulus act. The transportation component of the stimulus act, called Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER), gets money appropriated annually from Congress — $3.5 billion so far for 270 projects nationwide, including $600 million this year, the White House says.

The TIGER program will end soon, too — unless Obama and Biden get their way.

In that case, TIGER would become permanent, greatly expanded to $5 billion over four years. The Obama White House wants to fold it into the next iteration of a four-year road-and-bridge bill.

House Republicans are unlikely to go along. The House appropriations subcommittee for transportation on May 6 recommended a lower sum of $100 million for TIGER in 2015, and the GOP-led panel would further restrict TIGER grants to “projects that will address critical transportation needs, such as road, highway and bridge construction and improvement.”

In other words, while money for the Little Italy-University Circle RTA station appears secure, future projects like it could go unfunded.

That is apparently why Biden is coming to Cleveland: to highlight what the money has helped build and point out what would have happened were it not there.

The White House would not comment on this in advance of the vice president’s trip. In an email, White House spokesman Keith Maley said, “Members of both parties have put forward their own ideas on the Hill, and the most important thing is that we pass a long-term bill that creates jobs and provides certainty for cities, states, and businesses. It’s time to get the job done.”

To some, Staff Sgt. Aaron Driver is a truth-teller, laying out the hard realities of the toll everything from repeated deployments to Mickey Mouse regulations have taken on rank-and-file airmen and their families.

Others have called him everything from a selfish whiner to a cancer on the Air Force.

Driver’s very public breakup from the Air Force — in a letter published April 21 in Air Force Times — has gone viral, spawning a forcewide debate on issues such as why people enlist, the burdens deployments place on troops and what the military owes people for their service.

Driver, a 24-year-old radar technician, said in his letter that he has decided not to re-enlist in August after six years in the Air Force.

With no money and few options coming out of high school, Driver said, the Air Force at first looked like a great way to gain skills, earn money for college, and receive benefits such as health care and a pension after 20 years.

But repeated deployments to places like South America and Southwest Asia placed a severe strain on his marriage to his wife, Jennifer. Constant threats to cut benefits left him wondering if a key reason he joined the military was about to be yanked away from him. His duties were “mind-numbing and joyless.” And he felt his leadership unnecessarily went out of its way to make life difficult for airmen.

The straw that broke the camel’s back, Driver said, came in March, when his first sergeant read him the riot act at lunchtime over his out-of-regulation mustache. Coming during Mustache March — a forcewide event heavily promoted by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh and celebrating a famed fighter pilot who proudly flaunted grooming regulations — the chastisement particularly rankled Driver and seemed contrary to the point of a morale-building exercise.

“Six years, multiple deployments and several mental breakdowns later, I am ready to put the Air Force in my past forever,” Driver wrote. “The Air Force has given me a lot, but what it took in return was more valuable. I had been held back, limited and sucked dry of all happiness. That first sergeant may have been crazy, but he helped me realize that I was crazy too.”

Driver’s “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore” moment touched a nerve — especially at a time when thousands of airmen worry that force reductions will eliminate their jobs.

And in a May 2 interview, Driver said he thinks the vehement reactions from some against his letter underline the cultural problems he was trying to point out.

“It seems the idea that we have to suffer and sacrifice — it doesn’t have to be miserable,” said Driver, a Savannah, Ga., native who is currently deployed from Hunter Army Airfield to Southwest Asia, but would not say exactly where. “But to point that out is apparently taboo.”

Some commenters responding to Driver’s letter pointed out that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had been raging for years by the time Driver signed up, and said the deployments should not have surprised him.

“What did you think was going to happen?” one commenter asked.

Driver disputed the suggestion he didn’t realize that deployments would be a fact of life or that he would have to sacrifice in his career. The problem, he said, is that high ops tempos strain families — and the “suck it up” attitude only encourages airmen to ignore the problems and stresses they’re having. And at a time when high rates of post-traumatic stress, divorce and suicide are plaguing the military, that’s a dangerous message to send, Driver said.

“I’m certainly not a fool,” Driver said. “I knew what I was getting into. And most people do when they join. But when you try to mention that it’s becoming a problem and you’re suffering, you get told to kind of suck it up, make it work. And it’s even worse when they tell you that as the force cuts continue, the deployments are going to increase, and you’re going to have to do more with less. You can’t help but judge that sacrifice and say, is it really worth it?”

And after airmen have returned home from a deployment, the looming threat of another tour often prevents them from truly relaxing and reconnecting with their families, Driver said.

“Even when you’re home and you’re relaxing, in that dwell time in between, it’s always, when is the next one?” Driver said. “Is it going to happen randomly? It’s just that dread. It had a big part on affecting me mentally. It was even hard to enjoy time at home, because you’ve got the next one sitting right there on the horizon.”

At some point, Driver said, he and other airmen have to start thinking more about themselves and their families than what they owe the Air Force.

“I’ve always said, service before self,” Driver said. “But when there’s no self left, there’s obviously going to be no service. You’re going to have to take care of that self.”

Driver said that, in writing the letter, he wanted to spark a broader conversation about the burdens all airmen are bearing, and didn’t want it to be primarily about his own personal experiences — which he acknowledged are less stressful than those of many other airmen.

“I obviously have not had it as bad as a lot of other people have,” Driver said. “At the end of the day, it comes down to your family. And when your family spends so much time without you, that has a big impact on your life. Some people are OK with that sacrifice, and some people aren’t. But I know a lot of people that, there’s a certain breaking point when it’s just too much.”

Several commenters criticized Driver for focusing so heavily on the benefits when he signed up, and for ignoring that a military career is a life of service.

“Did this guy really think that he was just going to get great pay, benefits, retirement and a career skill without sacrifice?” commenter Dan Gerke said. “Duty, patriotism and an exchange of sweat and equity were apparently not part of his dream.”

Driver said that attitude ignores the reality that many people join the all-volunteer force because of its benefits, which are regularly being threatened with cuts.

“A lot of the people that reacted in a negative way had these absolute ideas in their mind, like, you have to join because of patriotism to be right, and if you didn’t, you’re wrong,” Driver said. “You don’t have to disregard your own needs to be in the military, and you certainly don’t have to deny reality to be a good [noncommissioned officer], as a lot of people accused me of not being. It says a lot when the initial reaction to someone that speaks up is, tell him to suck it up, shut up or get out.”

But for roughly every commenter who criticized Driver, there was another who understood where he was coming from, and said he had made good points that were worth debating.

“The Air Force DOES NOT NEED unthinking, blue-bleeding, pain-enduring, regulation-following cheerleaders,” commenter Mathew Lowrey said. “Listen to this airman’s critique, and ask yourself if he could be right. Face some facts, critics: The Air Force RECRUITS [and] did not only pitch selfless service in its recruitment efforts. And you, dear critics, are proving this airman’s point.”

And while airmen are struggling to maintain their home lives, Driver said, it doesn’t help when leadership unnecessarily picks fights over minor infractions — such as his mustache.

Much of the debate online centered around Driver’s mustache anecdote. In the interview, Driver said it was his attempt to start a discussion about misplaced priorities on the part of some Air Force leaders.

“It was an example — a poor one, I admit — of the style-over-substance attitude that’s become so prevalent,” Driver said. “You’ve got a lot of these [Air Force Instructions] that don’t make a lot of sense at the end of the day. And anytime you try to bring up, what’s the reason behind it? It’s always defended with the argument of the slippery slope, the idea that if you have one thing go, it’s all going to go. But at the end of the day, the slippery slope argument doesn’t make a lot of sense, because I guarantee you, if you let me grow a mustache, I’m not going to just stop doing my job.”

Driver said that he’s worn his mustache for several years, and received an award for serving as his unit’s official monitor for this year’s Mustache March contest.

“So you go from being rewarded for it, and it’s a big morale booster, and I got everyone in the shop to grow one, and it’s something that built camaraderie and we all enjoyed it, and then to have it treated at the end kind of as this big problem, just misses the whole point,” Driver said.

Driver said he was glad his letter set off the conversation he had hoped for, and said he does not regret writing it. He said that much of the reaction he personally received was positive. His fellow airmen were supportive, he said. He showed the letter to his supervisor before it was published, he said, and after it came out, his commander came by and asked him if he was OK.

After Driver leaves the Air Force, he hopes to start his own landscaping business.

“I’ve always been into horticulture and landscaping,” Driver said. “I do a lot of food growing, and fruit trees. Hopefully, we’ll see where it goes.”■

City planners for years have been struggling with how to spur redevelopment in retail areas across Nashville that are long past their prime.

A group of University of Tennessee architecture and design students have been hard at work in recent months studying some of those areas, from Antioch to Bellevue, to come up with ideas for projects that could add momentum to those efforts.

The Metro Planning Department identified about a dozen areas across Nashville for the students in Knoxville and at the Georgia Institute of Technology to develop concepts for bringing economic growth, connections to public transit, and more urban-style affordable housing to the areas.

The students’ projects were showcased recently by the Nashville Civic Design Center, a nonprofit group that promotes public involvement in urban planning and development projects.

Bellevue Mall area

The rundown mall has long been a focus of Metro planners. Student Laura Flores incorporated ideas to redevelop the mall into a mixed-use community and expanded on that idea, focusing on a retail strip south of the mall. The proposal calls for rethinking the retail corridor to the south of the mall, implementing green space into mixed-use parcels that allow easier transition between the retail environment and nearby neighborhoods.

Bellevue Civic

A student called for rethinking the connection between the civic center at Bellevue Middle School and creating a more uniform landscape between it, the new library, and Red Caboose Park. Student Melissa Dooley suggested adding landscaping that tied in all of these components so that they worked together to create a sense of place.

Bordeaux

Student Kyle Nichols proposed redeveloping an underused supermarket retail center on Clarksville Pike at West Hamilton Avenue into more residential housing, revamping the corridor with improved streetscaping and building more roads for better connectivity and to handle traffic from new residents more effectively. The proposal also calls for transit-oriented affordable housing.

Talbot’s Corner

Near the intersection of West Trinity Lane and Interstate 65, student Kyle Jenkins proposed redeveloping an old hotel to establish a mixed-use walkable community, with green space and plenty of square feet for new uses. The proposal also called for adding better transitions and better roads to adjacent neighborhoods.

Wedgewood at Interstate 65

The area that is wedged between the interstate and a CSX rail line is an industrial hub that is quite isolated. Student Dylan Buc proposed forming a creative corridor for this part of Nashville just south of downtown that offers a better transition into the Wedgewood Houston residential neighborhood to the east with better roadway connections into and out of the district.

Reach Josh Brown at 615-726-5964 and on Twitter @joshbrownnews.

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More than 1,000 people showed up despite stormy skies Sunday at Locust Grove for the annual Gardeners’ Fair and Silent Auction.

They browsed flowers, herbs and vegetables, gardening tools, lawn ornaments, handmade crafts and many other locally produced goods on the last day of the three-day event, celebrating its 19th year in Louisville.

“It’s a real community event,” said Locust Grove executive director Carol Ely.

She estimated around 3,000 people visited 80 vendor booths on the historic property since the event started Friday. More than just a place for people and families to peruse the booths, the event also showcased Locust Grove, a national historic landmark where three presidents visited over the years and Meriwether Lewis and William Clark stopped upon the completion of their cross-continent expedition in 1806.

Julie Michael of Louisville and three generations of her family have made a trip to the fair for the past eight years, this year shopping nine people strong.

“We love to support Locust Grove,” she said. “And the local vendors.”

More than 1,000 people showed up despite stormy skies Sunday at Locust Grove for the annual Gardeners’ Fair and Silent Auction. (Arza Barnett/The Courier-Journal)

She was at the fair to browse through the countless flowers set in pots and baskets across the lawn — which was strewn with hay to cover the muddy muck caused by storms the previous two days.

One booth specialized in a kind of gardening supply that isn’t generally available at your everyday nursery: insects used for “biocontrol” of garden pests. The first two that stood out at the Entomology Solutions booth — also called Bugs Behaving Badly — were ladybugs and preying mantises, the “poster children” for beneficial insects, said owner and entomologist Blair Leano-Helvey.

The idea is to use natural predators — or “beneficials” — to kill plant-damaging pests, instead of insecticide, she said. “It’s not a new science,” she said, but as organic produce and plants are becoming more and more popular, people are looking for ways to keep crops healthy in a more earth-friendly way. “You can’t get much more organic than beneficials,” she said.

Nadine Stevens, 85, of Louisville, who has been gardening for more than 60 years and has made a trip to the Locust Grove gardeners’ fair for the past five years, looked at the Bugs Behaving Badly booth with interest, but didn’t seem totally sold on the idea. Any way to use fewer pesticides, though, “is a good thing,” she said.

It’s that kind of interaction, introducing people to new ideas and educating the public about the natural world, that makes the event what it is, Ely said. And even if bugs and plants aren’t your thing, there are so many other booths and products, and even tours of the property itself, that no one should go away from the fair empty handed, she said.

“There is something everyone can relate to.”

Reporter Mark Boxley can be reached at (502) 582-4241 or on Twitter at @Boxleyland.

BRANFORD On Saturday morning, roughly 100 people enjoyed a jaunt through roughly 600 million years of history, courtesy of the Stony Creek Quarry.

At one point in its heyday, the granite pulled from the ground employed more than 400 workers. Today, that labor force has been whittled down to four.

“That was so long ago,” stone mason and former First Selectman Anthony “Unk” DaRos said Saturday. “Look around you. Look at the machines. They do all the work now. It was quite a place in its day.”

DaRos and former Guilford First Selectmen Carl Balestracci, two men whose quarrying backgrounds run about as deep as the vein of granite that run through this region of Connecticut earth, played the role of tour guides on Saturday.

DaRos said the early 1900s marked Stony Creek’s heyday. In 1870 there were roughly 370 residents who lived in Stony Creek. DaRos said that by 1900 that number had boomed to about 1,400. With progress came more businesses, like blacksmiths and carpenters.

“All because of the quarry,” DaRos said.

But quarry life back then was not for the weak. If monstrous slabs of granite or explosions didn’t hurt you, the air could literally kill you.

“You were going to get hurt sooner or later,” DaRos said. “The stonecutters called it consumption.”

The truth was that men cutting stone did so inside enclosed buildings. Silica, a mineral found within the rocks pulled out of the quarry, entered the air during the stonecutting process.

“Actually it was silicosis,” he said about the lung disease that claimed the lives of most stonecutters before they reached the age of 45. “This quarry was noted for it.”

DaRos said the reason stonecutters worked in an enclosed space was because “the labor department in those days thought it wasn’t nice to have men working outside.”

As he spoke, standing at the foot of the now-defunct old quarry site, his voice could be heard echoing off a series of towering, pink granite walls. DaRos spoke for roughly an hour. The former first selectman is a stone mason himself by trade. His grandparents once ran a boarding house at the quarry. Balestracci’s grandfather was a stonecutter himself during the early 1900s.

DaRos explained how in those days nobody knew what silicosis was. He as a boy watching some of the “old-timers” succumb to the disease. There was the relentless coughing, the first sign of the disease’s onset. DaRos said that the only thing the stonecutters had that controlled the coughing was whisky.

“It got so bad that they drank on the job,” he added. “I always say when I look around, thank God the country is already built. Today you would never be able to do what these men did.”

Many of the east coast’s most recognizable buildings and bridges were completed thanks to the granite pulled from Stony Creek Quarry. It can be seen in the base of the George Washington Bridge, the foundation of the Statue of Liberty and in New York City street curbs. In New Haven the granite can be seen in the steps of Yale University’s Woolsey Hall. Further east down the shore, the same granite helps protect the coastline at Hammonasset Beach State Park, courtesy of several breakwater slabs installed in 1955.

DaRos said the last stone was pulled out of the old quarry site in the mid 1980s. Just beyond the peak of the old quarry’s northern wall, a new quarry carries on the granite tradition. Quarry worker Stacy Mancini, who’s worked at the quarry for 10 years, said there’s enough stone left at the new quarry to last for another 350 years.

Mancini led visitors on a tour of the new quarry site, pointing out that excavators are busy digging even deeper. She explained that the quarry is producing two sets of granite product. The pinker, more colorful stone is known as aggregate granite. Today, there are machines scattered throughout the quarry’s upper bowl that are used to crush the aggregate granite into pebbles commonly used in landscaping. The standard dimensional granite is used in everything from countertops to buildings.

“We label it steak and hamburger,” she said. “The steak is the large solid granite. Hamburger is obviously the aggregate that we use in things like our driveways.”

Mancini said the latest granite hauled out of the quarry is being used in New York City’s Battery Park. Last summer, Stony Creek granite was used for the city’s Federal Plaza. Another recently finished project featuring the quarry’s granite is Quinnipiac University’s new Center for Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.

“The quarry is doing a lot of business right now,” she said. “There are always orders on the board.”

Call Evan Lips at 203-789-5727. Have questions, feedback or ideas about our news coverage? Connect directly with the editors of the New Haven Register at AskTheRegister.com.

When Fremont City Gardener Jon Kuddes opens the door to the greenhouse, he opens the door to a world of color.

Reds and pinks dominate, but added to the array are ornamental grasses in shades of green and deep red and a little color in the new plants in plastic containers.

All have been spread across the tops of the many tables lining the greenhouse walls. Even the ground beneath the tables has splashes of color, gifts from the seeds that have dropped there and been allowed to sprout and spread.

Kuddes transplants mature plants, harvests seeds and clips cuttings so Fremont’s city-owned flower beds will be awash with color throughout the growing season. In the greenhouse, the grass table is the first plant table encountered. It holds five different varieties of grasses.

“I do a lot of work transplanting grasses. I dig up a clump from the center of a plant and am able to get four or five plants out of that clump. I keep them here in the greenhouse for a year or two before planting them in the flower beds,” Kuddes said. “I started with three plants of fountain grass and have grown a dozen or more from those.”

Fountain grass is planted in the bigger flower beds.

On another table are canna lilies, seven varieties, all started from a tuber or root of a plant growing in one of the beds and harvested at the end of the growing season. About 200 plants fill the table top. It’s a labor-intensive job to dig up the plants each fall, clean soil from the bulbs, then plant them in pots. This is done in October and November to give the bulbs time to take root, grow over the winter and be ready to replant in the spring.

There is the red, white and blue table with blue and white ageratum and red and white vinca. Kuddes estimates there are about 900 plants on the table. Red salvia, impatiens, marigolds and other plants fill remaining tables.

“Not everything I plant, I grow here,“ Kuddes said. “The Splash Station and the cemetery need color right away. I try to get color at the cemetery for Memorial Day.”

The remaining flower beds are mostly filled with plants Kuddes has grown in the greenhouse. It was not always so. When he started in March 2008, not much propagation was happening in the greenhouse. In 2007, the city spent $10,000 on bedding plants. Last summer, the city spent about $700. That amount includes seeds, plants, plant containers and potting soil that Kuddes mixes himself, a 75 percent savings on soil alone.

Kuddes uses his own design ideas for the flower beds.

“I do a lot of it in my head,” he said.

He has drawn design sheets on his computer for each bedding plot. He saves them so they can be used each year to re-imagine the space based on what he has available for planting.

When Kuddes began college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he planned to be a “turf guy” who would maintain the grass at sports venues like ball parks and golf clubs.

A summer opportunity moved him from that path and into public flower beds. Kuddes grows the plants, designs the flower beds and plants them.

“I am self-taught, hands-on, and learning as I go,” he said.

Flower seeds are saved from year to year.

“I collect the seeds when the blooms get to the place where they are crispy and dried up. I pull off the bloom of a plant like salvia, let it dry, then collect the seeds. It’s the same with marigolds. There can be a million seeds in one marigold bed,” he said.

This season, he will use cuttings grown from plants used in the beds four years ago. He prepares the transplant by snipping off all flowers and larger leaves from a flowering stem. Kuddes will trim the buds as soon as they begin to show color so the plant can focus more of making a good root system. This year will be his sixth generation of cuttings from impatiens. He begins taking cuttings in January for plants used in the flower beds the coming summer.

Hostas and day lilies fill the spaces under the tables. They grow in the gravel below so they can be transplanted easily into the flower beds. Piles of pots and trays fill remaining greenhouse spaces.

“There are about 24 landscaped areas, flower beds and planters throughout the city of Fremont. They are located in the parks, around city building and facilities and in the right-of-way areas,” he said.

Under each landscaped area location is listed the number and location of each bed or planting. For example, under the listing for downtown are 25 cutouts in sidewalks, 45 hanging baskets, the landscaped area in the KHUB parking lot, 12 planters on various corners and the flower bed in “Rump’s Lot.”

Kuddes spent almost 90 hours just watering plants and flowers last year. He uses a tank truck for watering chores and a part-time employee waters hanging baskets in the downtown area.

“When the beds still look good in August, there’s a lot to be proud of,” he said.

Dead plants must be replaced with greenhouse stock and a storm can mean lots of extra hours getting the beds back in shape.

“There are 130 different things I take care of, from small little planters and urns in the cemetery to the big beds like the one in Memorial Park,” he said.

Most of the flowering plants are annuals. Kuddes prefers annuals.

“There are 30 different annuals for color all year long. Perennials give color for a month, then are finished blooming for the season. Annuals can provide flowers for the length of the growing season,” he said.

Kuddes has a list of future landscaping projects like the areas around the Barnard Park gazebo and rose garden.

In the planter outside the greenhouse on South Broad Street tulips are in bloom. The flower beds around Fremont City Auditorium also hold tulips and daffodils. In a few weeks the culmination of a year of planting and propagation will begin to be visible all over the city — Kuddes’ work displayed for all to see.

VIDALIA — Vidalia has a “screaming opportunity” if those who want it to grow will listen.

That was the message Laurence Leyens with the Orion Planning Group brought to a gathering of Vidalia business and civic leaders. Leyens was one of two consultants who were in Vidalia to follow-up on a similar planning session the city hosted in the fall.

Natchez has more than 25 houses on the market right now, Leyens said, while 25 houses have been sold in Vidalia in the last 12 months.

“These houses are selling at $123 a square foot,” Leyens said. “Y’all are paying massive dollars for 50-year-old inventory, and y’all seem to be satisfied for it.

“We need to be building yuppieville. I can take $123 a square foot and build you a to-specification house in Madison that is going to be worth $500,000 when we’re done.”

While people used to follow jobs to choose where they lived, they now choose where they want to live and work in a global economy, Leyens said.

Vidalia needs to find out why people are buying houses there and continue to develop that resource, he said.

When those present told Leyens the Vidalia school system was a draw locally, he said that wasn’t surprising.

“My son’s future is not for sale,” he said. “I am not going to move into a bad economy because it is cheaper to live there when my son’s future is at stake.”

The problem Vidalia faces, Leyens’ partner Bob Barber said, is that it is a “built out” town with no property to develop inside the city limits.

“Obviously there is vacant land just outside the city limits — we know that — but inside there is very little vacant land left,” Barber said.

Leyens likewise said the city does not have a central area that gives it a feeling of place.

“Where is Vidalia?” he said. “Right now, I drive through and it’s all highway.”

The area has plenty of potential to develop as the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale oil and gas play demands more and more from the regional transportation hubs like US. 61 and U.S. 84, Leyens said, but the city also needs to develop some kind of standards to ensure its quality development.

“Developers can come in here and build something only meant to last 10 years, and at the end of 10 years, it’s junk and they’re gone, and you’ve got junk,” he said.

Instead, leaders can adopt codes to ensure a higher standard of quality.

“I go to a lot of small cities like this, and they have this depression-era or 1970s-era mentality of, ‘Thank God we have a grocery store, even if it is a metal building.’” Leyens said.

“If you started adopting standards and expectations that are higher, you are influencing the value of that property and the property adjacent to it. You can say, ‘We want it to have a brick facade, we want it sort of set back and we want some trees in the parking lot, and suddenly it’s a different environment that raises the value not only of that property, but the property next to it.”

The city likewise should standardize its codes so the already developed properties are less disparate in appearance.

“Right now, you have people who have put up a nice front, but they don’t have the landscaping to go with it,” Leyens said. “If you don’t have the standards, all you have is a building with a funny front right next to a metal building.”

Barber worked with the group to discuss further ideas about possible code and zoning changes the city could effect.

“We did some work a couple of years ago, but we are working to develop a new city master plan,” Mayor Hyram Copeland said. “The last master plan was made in the 1970s, and we really need to bring that forward in order to move in the future.”

Copeland said City of Vidalia officials would continue to work on the new master plan in the coming months.

The colder it gets in winter, the bigger the peonies bloom.

A good dose of chill seems to enhance the size of these old-fashioned spring flowers. December’s deep freeze paid off in gigantic, fluffy peonies.

Enjoy that beauty while you can. A spike in Sacramento temperatures in late April doomed Valley-grown peonies to a short but gorgeous moment in the sun. But at higher elevations, they’re just now reaching their peak of bloom.

Starting Friday, Dragonfly Peony Farm near the Sierra foothills town of Wilseyville opens its gates to visitors for its annual Open Garden. The event continues Fridays and weekends until June 1.

Peony farmer Julia Moore has more than 1,000 peonies at Dragonfly, a mostly online nursery about two hours from Sacramento. At nearly 2,800 feet elevation, the farm feels spring’s warmth a tad later than the Valley. But by mid-May, the large, graceful flowers cover the bushes in bushels of blooms.

“People can spend hours here, just wandering around, taking photos – and they do,” Moore said during a prior visit.

Peonies are one of those flowers that refuses to bloom in such places as Los Angeles or Santa Barbara, but thrives in Northern California.

“You need some winter chill to make them bloom,” Moore said. “But if you can grow apples, you can grow peonies. They’re super-easy.”

For foothill gardeners, peonies have another bonus: Deer won’t eat them. Gophers don’t like them, either.

They also are relatively drought-tolerant. Once established, these perennials need little care; just a little bone meal before bloom time. One plant can last 30 to 100 years.

Also long lasting in the vase, peonies make excellent cut flowers. But the show lasts longer when they’re still on the bush. And they smell as good as they look.

Said Moore, “At the peak of bloom, the scent is just heavenly.”

More Greener Gardens

After the success of last month’s Elk Grove Greener Gardens tour, now it’s Roseville’s turn.

Next Saturday, the city of Roseville’s Utility Exploration Center teams with EcoLandscape California for a day full of water-saving ideas. A DIY expo will feature lots of hands-on advice on how to convert sprinklers to more-efficient irrigation, troubleshoot leaks and the easiest ways to take out a lawn.

During the ongoing drought, Roseville (along with many other cities) has asked residents to cut water use by 20 percent or more. In the Sacramento Valley, landscaping accounts for up to 65 percent of residential water use. That makes outdoor irrigation a likely target for potential savings.

Families can sign up now to take a self-guided tour of Roseville front yards where homeowners made the commitment to ditch the turf and switch to unthirsty landscaping.

In particular, Roseville’s Greener Gardens Tour focuses on participants in the city’s “Cash for Grass” program. These homeowners received rebates for lawn removal. But they also had to agree to replace that grass with new water-wise landscaping.

“By removing some or all of their turf, they’re doing their part to reduce the amount of water they use – and you can, too!” said tour coordinator Cheryl Buckwalter, executive director of EcoLandscape California. “The Roseville Greener Gardens Tour is designed to encourage the use of ‘river-friendly landscaping’ techniques and to demonstrate that you, too, can have a beautiful, water-wise garden.”

This change, and water savings, don’t happen instantaneously. Even drought-tolerant plants need water to get growing and become established. But the transformation from a traditional turf-heavy landscape to a more-sustainable alternative is a process.

“Use this time to plan and then start taking action,” Buckwalter said. “Every step taken today to reduce landscape water use will benefit our future supply of water, protect local waterways, and help us be part of the solution to the environmental challenges we all face.”

For more details or to sign up for the tour, go to www.roseville.ca.us/explore.

And what to plant in that water-wise garden? The UC Davis Arboretum’s teaching nursery hosts its summer clearance sale next Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., featuring its “New Front Yard” series of low-water and beautiful alternatives to traditional turf and landscaping. Also find many of the popular Arboretum All-Stars, more water-wise choices to replace that soon-to-be-brown lawn.

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Call The Bee’s Debbie Arrington, (916) 321-1075. Follow her on Twitter @debarrington.

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