Since moving into our rental in 2021, I’ve been wanting to start a little garden in the yard for my mom and I, and as soon as it hit May, ready or not, I made sure to follow through with my intentions. With a few bags of soil, a variety of flower and vegetable seeds, a shovel, cultivator, and gloves (of which already has holes), I got my hands dirty and began my gardening journey.

If you build it they will come but if you offer high school kids a hefty bonus for going to college, many won’t come. Such is the rather amazing finding that despite a state scholarship program dangling upwards of $5,500 a year to attend a four year university, 62% of last year’s high school graduating class found something else to do rather than pursue a higher education.

Spring at last. The county has erupted in beauty.

Imagine you are on a new job for three months when the boss calls you in strongly suggesting that you need to perform a certain function which is against everything you stand for. As they say on the TV broadcast, “What would you do?” Say hello to Dylan Wegela.

Curiosity is the essence of a good interview. That’s why I left the Scott Craig and Carol Bawden home with a feeling of inadequacy.

On this Earth Week, we are busting out the hiking shoes, and hitting a few of our favorite spots. Earlier this month, the landscape of one of the most magical trails in Leelanau County saw the effects of an ever-changing landscape.

By the time our next weekly hits the stands on Thursday, it will have been one year since I moved to Traverse City and started my run at the Leelanau Enterprise. This prompted some reflection — not just of my time with this newspaper, but also in the events that led me here — as has the recent death of an elected official who I used to report on extensively.

If you give two hoots about the quality of education for your children or grand kids, as they say in the biz, this one’s for you. It’s difficult to use the word “silver-lining” in the same sentence with the term “COVID 19” but if there was one, at least on the education front, it would have to be the $3.7 billion avalanche of emergency federal government money that cascaded into every school district in the state.

For the last five years the Lake Leelanau Lake Association (LLLA) and the Grand Traverse Band (GTB) of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians have worked to eradicate Eurasian Water Milfoil (EWM) within Lake Leelanau. While not all milfoils are invasive, EWM is.

It was not a dark and stormy night. (Sorry.