PORT ANGELES — Local horticulturist Gordon Clark will kick off the 2015 Clallam County WSU Master Gardener “Green Thumb Garden Tips” series with tips for spring pruning in the home garden at noon Thursday.
He’ll present in the county commissioners’ meeting room at the Clallam County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth St.
Clark will demonstrate basic pruning techniques to remove dead, diseased and damaged limbs, and to manage growth and production of landscape trees and shrubs.
He also will explain ways to maintain non-woody plants, bamboo, ornamental grasses, ground covers and vines.
Clark is the owner of Clark Horticultural, a local organic landscape management company.
The “Green Thumb Garden Tips” brown bag series, sponsored by the WSU Clallam County Master Gardeners on the second and fourth Thursday of every month in Port Angeles, consists of educational programs designed to help home gardeners establish or improve their
gardening practices.
Attendees can bring a lunch.
The presentations are free and open to the public; however, donations to help offset copying costs for handouts are accepted.
For questions, phone 360-417-2279.
Open Stage scheduled Wednesday in Port Angeles
PORT ANGELES — Lovers and players of music, comedians, poets, dancers and other performing artists are invited onto the monthly Open Stage at Studio Bob, the event space at 118 1/2 E. Front St., this Wednesday night.
Doors will open at 7 p.m. and there’s no charge to perform, watch or listen.
The Loom, the bar adjacent to Studio Bob, will be open with refreshments for sale.
Studio Bob owner Bob Stokes and musician Doug Parent coordinate the Open Stage every third Wednesday of the month, offering performers an opportunity to share their original work or other pieces that hold particular meaning.
A sound system is available for use.
For more information, phone Stokes at 415-990-0457.
Poet to read Friday in Port Angeles
PORT ANGELES — Prize-winning poet Sally Albiso will be the featured writer in the next Fourth Friday Reading at Rainshadow Coffee Roasting Co., 157 W. Cedar St.
Admission is free to the event at 6:30 p.m. this Friday, though listeners are encouraged to come around 6 p.m. for good seats and to buy beverages from the coffee bar.
At 7 p.m., after Albiso’s set, other writers can step up to the open mic for five-minute readings.
Albiso, a former college instructor, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and received the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award and the Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award for her chapbook, Newsworthy, among other honors.
She’s published her work in journals such as Crab Creek Review, Floating Bridge Review and Poetica.
For more details and guidelines for open-mic readings, contact Ruth Marcus at 360-681-2205 or Rmarcus@olypen.com.
Clallam libraries to host talk by author-historian
Washington author and historian Janet Oakley will appear at all North Olympic Library System (NOLS) locations this month as part of NOLS’s ongoing Adult Winter Reading Program.
Oakley’s free presentation, “Timber Rose: Women Climbing Mountains in Skirts,” will address her fiction and research on topics such as wilderness, ecology, the Civilian Conservation Corps and more.
On Wednesday, Oakley will speak at the Clallam Bay Library, 16990 state Highway 112, at 2 p.m. She will then speak at the Forks Library, 171 S. Forks Ave., at 6 p.m.
On Thursday, Oakley will speak at the Sequim Library, 630 N. Sequim Ave., at 2 p.m. and then at the Port Angeles Library, 2210 S. Peabody St., at 6 p.m.
Oakley, author of several award-winning historical fiction works — many of which take place in the Pacific Northwest — lives in Bellingham.
In addition to her novels, she contributes essays and nonfiction articles to blogs and magazines, and occasionally provides live demonstrations of 19th-century folk traditions.
Her latest novel, Timber Rose, is set in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the century. It is the prequel to her award-winning 2011 novel, Tree Soldier, and weaves the history of logging, ecology, conservation and women’s suffrage into the narrative.
For more information about this and other Adult Winter Reading Program events, email librarian Sarah Morrison at smorrison@nols.org, phone 360-417-8500 or visit www.nols.org.
Camera club talk slated for Thursday
SEQUIM — Olympic Peaks Camera Club will welcome Roy Kropp to its monthly speaker night at Dungeness Community Church, 45 Eberle Lane, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday.
All are welcome to the free lecture.
Kropp will discuss “Autumnal Variation,” showing his images contrasting autumn in Michigan with autumn on the Olympic Peninsula
For more information, phone Witta Priester at 360-565-6655, email witta@aol.com or visit www.olympicpeaks.org/news.
Pancake breakfast
SEQUIM — The Sequim Prairie Grange, 290 Macleay Road, will host a pancake breakfast from 7:30 p.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 25.
The menu includes pancakes, ham, eggs and beverages.
The cost is $5 for adults and $3 for children 10 and younger.
Proceeds will be used for grange maintenance.
Meeting set for shelter providers
PORT ANGELES — The Shelter Providers Network of Clallam County’s first meeting of 2015 will be held Wednesday in Holy Trinity Lutheran Church’s downstairs fellowship hall, 301 Lopez Ave.
Sign-in begins at 8:45 a.m., with the meeting convening at 9 a.m.
Megan Hoover and Melissa Thetford of the state Department of Social and Health Services will introduce Family Assessment and Response program changes.
Serenity House program director Kay Walters will report on preparations for the 12th annual Point in Time count of homeless people, to be conducted Jan. 29.
Also on the agenda are the Feb. 17 Housing & Homelessness Advocacy Day in Olympia, plus reports on services, housing and funding issues.
The group also will discuss altering the Shelter Providers meeting schedule.
The meeting will adjourn at 10:30 a.m.
Shelter Providers meetings are open to everyone who is interested in ending homelessness in Clallam County.
For more information, contact coordinator Martha Ireland at 360-452-4737 or shelterprovidersnetwork@gmail.com.
Dove House play
PORT TOWNSEND — Dove House Advocacy Services has cast its production of Eve Ensler’s “A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant and a Prayer.”
Scheduled to be performed Feb. 13 at Wheeler Theater at Fort Worden State Park, the cast includes Consuelo Aduviso, Anika Pearl Avelino, Heather Dudley-Nollette, Mahina Gelderloos, Ciara Halligan, Michelle Hensel, Camille Hildebrandt, Karen Hogan, Jodie Knowles, Scott Nollette, Sequoyah, Jennifer Sies, Velda Thomas, Don White and Patricia Willestoft.
“I was quite honored to be asked to direct this production in collaboration with Dove House Advocacy Services,” director Dudley-Nollette said.
Tickets for the performance are available online at www.dovehousejc.eventbrite.com for $30 per ticket. Groups of five tickets are available for $20 per ticket.
For more information about the production, contact Karen Hogan at 360-683-4670 or karenlhogan@me.com.
Chain gang busy
PORT ANGELES — The Clallam County Sheriff’s Office Chain Gang between Dec. 15-19 hand-brushed and chipped the county right of way on Black Diamond and Hoare roads.
Between Dec. 29 and Jan. 2, the chain gang removed 1,220 pounds of garbage from illegal dump sites on Fisher Cove, Mount Angeles and Quillayute roads.
In addition, scotch broom plants were removed from Mount Angeles, Angeles Ridge, Gravel Pit, Mount Pleasant, Edwards and Fischer roads, adding to the 2014 annual removal total of 42,900 plants.
Crews also brushed and thinned the entrance to Herrick Pit Road.
The chain gang was responsible for cleaning up 99 miles of roads over the past year. Their efforts removed 7,330 pounds of litter and 49,125 pounds of illegal dump site trash, plus 12.6 miles of brushing and weed abatement.