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Saturday, June 15, 2013

Saturday Library Rummage Sale At The Park

Garden City Library Rummage sale 9:00 A.M. to  8:00 P.M.  Friday & Saturday June 21- 22 at the Garden City Park. Bring good items for the sale to the library or directly to the park on Saturday. No clothes or mattresses.




67 at 67 Run

Burke Christensen has been running every week getting ready for his big marathon around Bear Lake. He is doing this run to raise money for the Garden City Library.
 
Let's cheer Burke on by contributing or pledging for our Library at the Library, by phone 435-946-2950 or at www.gctl.org.
 
He plans to start running at 9:00 PM on August 2, 2013 and finish before noon at the Garden City Library Parking Lot. Join him and pledge!

Friday, June 14, 2013

Phosphate Mine In Paris


Idaho phosphate mine to open in 2015

Published: Wednesday, May 29 2013 9:56 p.m. MDT in The Deseret News
 
 
PARIS, Idaho — Officials with Paris Hills Agricom say plans for a new underground phosphate mine near Bear Lake are moving forward as expected and that the company could begin extracting ore in early 2015.
Dave Kramer, Paris Hills vice president of operations, said the company recently obtained mineral leases from the state for the project, which covers nearly 2,500 acres west of the small towns of Paris and Bloomington.
"The permitting process, which began last fall, is proceeding as planned. We have finished the drilling of wells related to the collection of baseline water information and we will be submitting formal applications to the appropriate Idaho departments concerning water use and other permitting matters in the months ahead," said Mark Ashcroft, president and CEO in a story published this week by the Idaho State Journal.
The Canadian-based company already has also negotiated the rights to mine off private properties in the area, but it still must submit formal permit applications to several state and local departments.
The project has a projected life span of 19 years and unlike many other phosphate mining projects in the region, will be done entirely underground.
If approved by the state, the mine is expected to bring more than 350 jobs to the area with wages ranging between $28 and $32 an hour.

Only a fraction of the ore deposit is on federal land and the company is currently not planning to develop those areas, meaning for now federal agencies have no role in the permitting process.

We've worked with them to allow limited exploration drilling out there," said Jeff Cundick, minerals chief with the Bureau of Land Management. "But for now, the project is almost exclusively on private land."
The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality has oversight for the project on water quality issues.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

The Muddled Male


Weed War

By Bob Stevens, the Muddled Male

         Ann and I are in the middle of a disagreement about weeds.  Actually it is kind of a pitched battle that begins each year as the snow disappears.  The battle doesn’t end until the snow appears again in the late fall.  Ann is of a mind that anything green in our yard, even a weed, is better than dirt.  When we first moved here Ann was carefully tending several green plants with pretty yellow flowers not realizing that we were harboring criminals.  We might have been thrown in jail had a friend not warned us that we were nurturing Dyers Woad, a notoriously noxious and illegal weed.  Dyers Woad is so hated that some counties offer a bounty and will pay a reward to anyone bringing in a Dyers Woad plant still attached to its root.  In honor of the green plants with pretty yellow flowers that I then had to execute with 2-4-D, Ann had me transplant sprigs of sagebrush around our yard in an attempt to at least have something growing that would cover the dirt.  And boy did they grow.  Sagebrush is not only hearty, it is prolific.  Now I have to do something to get rid of the sagebrush, when Ann isn’t looking. 

            I admit that we have lived here a little more than six years and we still have no landscaping.  The reason is that I am not done planning.  Engineers, you see, have this uncontrollable need to develop a plan and then hone it over and over and over in an attempt to account for every variation and possibility that does or might ever exist.  I recognize that an engineer’s approach to a job can sometimes be irritating, especially to a wife who is in a hurry, but I am also a husband who hates landscaping and I have discovered that if I never get done planning I will never have to landscape.  Remember, now, this is our little secret.  You have to promise that you will never breathe a word of my ploy to Ann, my wife. 

            Now back to our current disagreement.  Ann, you will remember, thinks green is good but dirt is bad.  Now I don’t mind green, but I hate unevenness and I have been trying to convince Ann that I need to mow our weeds to give them a uniform, sculptured look.  Ann, on the other hand, thinks that cutting the tops off weeds causes them to yellow then turn brown.  In her mind that is worse than dirt.  If the truth were known, Ann’s problem is that she just doesn’t trust my weed identification skills and is hesitant to trust me to cut the weed-weeds and avoid those she calls flower-weeds.  A weed weed, by the way, is a weed that looks like a weed and even Ann thinks it should be executed.  A flower-weed, on the other hand, has the pleasing look of a flower blossom for a brief period of its life cycle just before it begins to shoot seeds out into the air in an attempt to engulf the neighborhood.

And so I am now proposing that we remove the weeds altogether and cover the yard with artificial turf, since that will always appear sculptured and we will never have to water, fertilize, or mow.  The best part of all is that I have to start my planning all over again.  If I am lucky I will be able to make the planning last until our youngest daughter takes our car keys away and moves us into a care center where someone else will tend the landscaping.

Maureen's Makings

FRESH STRAWBERRY PIE
by Maureen Gale
Check Out Past Recipes & Articles at  http://richcivictimes.blogspot.com/


1 9" baked pie shell (see "No-Fail Pie Crust" previously in RCTonline)

4-5 cups fresh strawberries

1/2 c. water

1/2 pkg. strawberry Danish Dessert

1/3 c. sugar

3 Tbsp. cornstarch

dash salt

1/4 tsp. almond extract

1 Tbsp. butter

Whipped Topping, as desired



Directions:  

Cut up half the strawberries in halves or thirds into the pie shell.  Put the rest of them into a blender and "rough cut" them with 3/4 c. water.  In a separate bowl, stir cornstarch and salt evenly into the sugar and Danish Dessert.  Pour mixture into saucepan and heat on medium, stirring constantly, until bubbly and thickened (and kind of clear red, like glaze).  Remove from heat and stir in almond extract and butter until melted.  Let mixture cool a bit, stirring occasionally, then pour over strawberries in crust shell ("shake" down the sauce by flat dropping the pan a short distance for a few times).  Refrigerate until cool and set.  Add whipped topping to individual slices and inhale!  Oh.  Yum.

Maureen Gale

The Marina At Bear Lake

Photo by Lauriann Wakefield. Little Starling Photography