o this is fun.

I keep getting to pose for photos and say cheese.

What is with the orange things?

Moo

Halloween is pretty cool. 

Oly Ost with the answer:

Ever wondered where your yard waste and now hopefully, your food waste goes after it's picked up? If not, stop reading.

It goes to Silver Springs Organics, LLC, near Rainier, Washington. I was inspired to write this post because I recently emailed a couple of questions via their website and not long thereafter, I received a call from the founder of Silver Springs, Greg Schoenbachler.

Greg let me pepper him with questions for about 10-15 minutes before I let him go. My questions began with, what is done with the compost? According to Greg, Silver Spring's currently sends much of their compost to soil remediation and flood mitigation for the I-5 projects in south Thurston, north Lewis counties.

Post includes this hopeful note:

Greg also mentioned that that the compost facility offers tours a couple of times a year for interested parties. I am a compost freak so I was eager to take him up on it.

Read the whole post here and give Rolandovich some comment love, as they're turned off here.

Two days ago I passed an October kidney stone.

Shockingly, my kidney stone was made of candy. Specifically -- Candy corn.

Damn you national confectioners Association! 

You wondered where it came from. Now you know. 

SATURDAY, NOV. 1 - 5pm
Hosted by Camp Quixote at
St. John’s Episcopal Church - 114 20th Ave SE in Olympia
With speak out and potluck to follow.
There is no charge to get in. Free childcare available.

Willie Baptist is a formerly homeless father who serves as the Scholar-in-Residence for the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary where he is responsible for the new Poverty Scholars Program training dozens of low-income leaders to become Scholars-in-Residence for other seminaries, universities, and religious institutions. Coming out of the Watts uprising and the Black Student Movement, Willie has worked as an organizer and leader of the United Steelworkers Union and the National Union of the Homeless. He is former Education Director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union and currently serves as Coordinator of the University of the Poor.

These events hope to encourage dialogue on issues facing poor and low-income people in Olympia and around the US and on building a movement to unite the poor and their allies to fight for an end to poverty.

There is no charge to get in. Free childcare available.

Another note from the tribe's new blog this morning:\

As of 9 AM Sunday October 26, the Squaxin Island Tribe suspended all directed salmon fisheries to ensure that Totten Inlet meets its escapement goal. 2008 Escapement goal for Totten Inlet is 14,400 chum. On Wednesday October 29 Squaxin NR staff walked Kennedy Creek and only counted 1922 live and 55 dead chum.

More details at the blog.

(And yes, this post is work related for me).

We've been working on creating a blog at the Squaxin Island Tribe's natural resources department for awhile now. And, earlier this week we finally put it out for the public to see.

Yesterday I wrote up a piece about habitat restoration on the Deschutes. Have a look:

On the wall of my office is a photo of one of my co-workers, Joe Puhn taken during a habitat survey on the Deschutes River. He’s standing in a few feet of water, hanging on to his float tube. What’s interesting about the picture is the width, depth, and curviness (sinuosity) of the river.

We were doing the survey in the summer when most of the Deschutes runs wide and straight, shallow and hot. Someone, probably kids looking for a better inner tubing experience, piled up rocks and gravel to narrow, deepen and add sinuosity to the channel to speed the river.

What is good for inner tubing is also good for fish — faster water makes more interesting tubing and sweeps out the fine sediment in spawning gravel (fine sediment can choke salmon before they ever emerge from the gravel). Added sinuosity lengthens the river and allows the water to interact more with the cool, underlying gravel....

Here's a fun spooky one for Halloween!