Today we celebrated the birthdays of Carrie T, Community Outreach Manager, and Kyla B, Sustainable Business Accounts Manager (at right). The Organic Martinelli's, white wine, and mini cupcakes made for a Friday afternoon party! That's Eric L, Director of Business Development, pouring the bday wine.

Happy weekend from Chinook Book!

The sign post that read “I’m an Oregon Native” was the first thing that caught my eye as I drove up to the Oregon native plant nursery, Bosky Dell, located at 23321 SW Bosky Dell Lane in West Linn, Oregon (about 25 minutes southeast of Portland). 

I am a self-confessed city girl who like thousand of others heard the “Portland calling” and moved here on a whim. It’s now five years later and I’m starting to understand the concept of “native” as I appreciate all of Oregon’s natural surroundings.

I was curious about what plants and vegetation were native to my current home state and in my quest for learning, I decided to head over to Bosky Dell, an award winning, full service native plant nursery that educates and supports people who want to grow native plants for both small and large projects. Bosky Dell’s clients range from schoolyard gardens to back yard landscaping designs. The organization also contributes to native restoration projects like the Tualatin Watershed and Field’s Creek – a stream that feeds into the Tualatin River - for which they were honored with the Green Heron Award.

Lory Duralia, the creative entrepreneur and owner of Bosky Dell, purchased the property twenty years ago with the intention of becoming a farmer. As fate would have it, the previous owners passed their love and knowledge of native plants and their relationship with local wildlife to Lory in a unique business collaborative. As Lory describes, “Aside from the land, everything else was given to me. Everything Doris [former owner Doris Jewett] chose to grow I sold for her.  Bosky Dell today, is the evolution of that collaboration and Doris’s dream.”

Lory continues, “My first employee knew more than me and gradually it evolved into a full time business.” Over the years Lory taught herself about native plants through reading, experience and learning from others and is now passionate about educating others in an intimate setting in one-on-one and small groups. “People come here and they want to introduce natives into their projects whether it’s a school project or in their backyard. We help them figure out what’s appropriate for their site. We help them figure out what is the best plan for the best space. We look at the conditions and plant accordingly.”

Native Plants

When Lori introduced me to the native plant Trillium Kurabayashii Freeman (at right in a small planter), I wondered why a customer suddenly came over and gaga-ed over it as if it were some prized possession worth millions.  It turns out that the medium-sized plant is ten years old and rare. As Lori shared, “The first people that ordered these waited 15 years.”

Bosky Dell currently has a handful of Trillium Kurabayashiis for sale and will get more next year. They grow very slowly but they are very easy to grow. A customer originally gave this plant to Lory. All current species are babies propagated from the original plant. Retail price for a one-gallon baby is $25.00.

The native Oregonian beauty at left is officially known as Oxalis Oregana and is an under-story woodland plant that spreads. It is also edible and tart to the taste. The common name is Sourgrass and is high in Vitamin C.  You can simply eat the leaf or put it in a salad.

The plant is also very drought tolerant, stays low to the ground, grows an inch tall, and looks beautiful when placed in with ferns.

Retail price for a four-inch container is $3.00 and a one-gallon container is $6.00.

The last plant that Lory introduced me to was the Red Currant (at right)– a native tree that grows in sun or shade.

Legend has it that the day the migrating hummingbirds come home to Oregon is the day the Red Current blooms.

It is a super easy tree to grow. Retail price for a one-gallon pot is $6.00, a two-gallon container is $10.00 and a five-gallon is $25.00 – $30.00.

For more on Bosky Dell visit their website at: www.boskydellnatives.com. Save 10% on your native plant purchase at Bosky Dell with your Chinook Book coupon.

Are you ready for more sun and more fun in the great outdoors? So are we. To launch into summer, we're sending our June newsletter soon with free printable coupons for outdoor recreation and reminders of all the great deals in our book.

If you aren't signed up yet, enter your email in the box at upper right. We only send newsletters monthly.

Here's a sampling to get you interested. This Tizzi bathing suit by Kelly B is 65% bamboo and 25% organic cotton (with 8% spandex), and USA made. Order online ($130) from Nimli.

Image via Nimli.

Several years ago, when I first got a call about working here at Celilo Group Media, I had just torn the Zipcar coupon out of the book that very day (it was Flexcar then). Had I heard of the book? Of course I had! Did I ever redeem the coupon…er, no.

It wasn't just calculating the cost of gas, insurance, and upkeep that finally made me take the leap and sell my car–it was realizing that I drive so infrequently that spiderwebs connected the window to the steering wheel like something out of a cartoon. My bike was carrying me a dozen miles a day for free while I paid for spiders to practice tightrope walking between leather and glass. I sold the car and patted myself on the back (plus bought a pair of new shoes). And then, immediately, I missed an opportunity because I didn't have wheels.

That very weekend a friend's birthday BBQ was held at a park that was too late to bus to and too far (and vertical) to bike happily (6.6 mi, if you must know, up Barbur Blvd.). As a big fan of biking for transportation, I felt very, very lame. As a newly liberated car free person, I had failed. When people worry about selling their cars, it's situations like this that they think about. My new shoes hadn't even arrived yet and there I was, with orange ginger carrots (make them!) all ready to go, staring at Google maps in dismay.

And then I had to send a note on Facebook, admitting to all invited my lack of foresight and wimpy calf muscles. Tsk tsk, me. In order to live a smart, car-less life, I had to do better.

So I signed up for Zipcar using–yep–the coupon from our book. Unless you can get yours through work, this is the best deal I've found. The $25 application fee is waived, membership is $35 annually instead of $50, and you get $50 in driving credit (be warned, you must use it in the first month, which is not initially disclosed). That all makes me happy because I loathe paying application fees (I'm applying to pay you for a service, let me do it for free!) and because I suspect it will take me $50 worth of use to get the hang of making reservations for the correct amount of time (running over can cost you $50 if someone is waiting).

The online application was simple (you can't have more than two traffic incidents in the last three years, etc), and the very next day I trotted three blocks from our office to Zipcar and picked up my card. I admit, it's a relief knowing I now have the option, should I need it, to use a car.

There are more than 10 cars within 10 blocks of my house, with cutesy names to boot. The MoshiMoshi (how some people in Japan answer their phones) turns out to be the blue Mini Cooper convertible I've had my eye on, but it's one of the more expensive cars to rent hourly ($11.50). A few blocks closer is a Honda Civic Hybrid named Chehalem ($7). The Subaru Outback called Origami ($11.50) looks like just the thing for a Goodwill run this weekend, but I'm not telling my friends about Thaddeus ($11.50), a perfect-for-moving truck. The hourly cost covers gas (there's a card in the car) and insurance (unless you're at fault, at which point you pay up to $500). All are available right now, so if I need to dash out the door, I could. Carefully.

One more perk of membership is discounts at local businesses and with national partners, such as 30% off from Chronicle Books (perhaps buy yourself the book of Commuter Waiting Games or The Bad Girls Guide to the Open Road).

My next tasks: Scanning my card to open the car, and finding out if I can drive in other Zipcar cities including Seattle and San Francisco, and…London and Toronto.

Moshi moshi, carsharing!

Anyone who can relate to the recent cell phone commercial about “butt dialing” knows how our dependence on technology can sometimes get in the way of our best intentions.

Beyond the inconvenience of dialing or answering some unintended calls, there’s an energy cost as well.

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons

I recently changed cell phones and quickly noticed that I was not getting a battery charge to last as long as I expected. That got me to pay a lot more attention to what my phone was doing when I wasn’t using it. I discovered that the holster I carry it in would often get bumped by my arm, jacket, or something else. That caused the screen to light up in preparation for activity, if it wasn’t already trying to dial “brrvdsd” or some other incoherent phone number.

Cell phones, even the latest smart phones that act more like mini mobile computers, have gotten much better on the energy consumption side. A typical phone uses about 50 watt-hours of electricity to charge. But draining that battery with unintended dialing or texting–by any body part–increases the number of times you have to recharge.

That part of the equation amounts to pennies. Unplugging the charger when it’s not in use saves about $3.50 a year and that’s a way bigger energy vampire.

Multiplied by the millions of people who own cell phones, even those pennies would add up, but there’s a hidden cost to consider. And it’s big enough to make most of us take notice.

Rechargeable batteries have a lifespan built on a number of charges. Double the amount of charging you’re doing to keep your phone running and you cut its lifespan in half. Even with the discount for signing up on a new two-year contract with my wireless provider, my new Blackberry still cost $99.

That’s real money.

Fortunately, there’s a handy fix for most of us. It’s the “lock” button on your gadget. Once I started locking the keypad on my phone, a battery charge started lasting for 2-3 days, depending on how much I called. That’s in line with what I expected based on my previous phone. The same goes for my iPod.

So THIS SPACE encourages you to discover the lock function on your electronics as the ONE THING you can do this week to save electricity and keep a little more cash in your bank account.

Your planet and your wallet will thank you.