Home Care In Garden Valley, CA

Residents are still digging out after some recent snow storms.

GARDEN VALLEY, Idaho — It seems we're in the middle of a break when it comes to the weather and that is good news for Idaho's mountain towns trying to dig out.

After a dry January, the month of February has been anything but. Snowfall the last couple of weeks measured in feet, not inches.

So how have those communities been handling it?

The town of Crouch has a pretty good handle on the recent snowfall.

The Garden Valley area gets an average of a little more than 5 feet of snow per season.

However, when you get almost that much snow in just a week's time, you kind of have to step up your snow-removal game.

Winter in Idaho's mountains is usually a permit to play, but this year, in places above Garden Valley, it's also meant a little more work.

Laura Hill, who lives in Terrace Lakes, could see her driveway a week ago.

“Just a week yeah, and we had this thing totally cleared. It was like 'oh my God,'” said Hill.

Which is why a morning workout with the snow shovel was in order.

“So I said it's a good thing I didn't renew my gym membership,” remarked Hill.

Down the hill at Terrace Lakes golf course, Tyson Wardle takes an easier approach. But it's been an almost daily attack.

“It's been a crunch, it's hard to keep up,” said Wardle.

That's been the difficulty. Not so much the tally, but the timing.

“This is about a normal year for us, it just kind came all at once, with some rain in the middle of it, didn't get break days, it was just constant,” said

There isn't an official count in this area, but according to some anecdotal snow totals, higher elevations have seen almost 7 feet of snow this season, with 40 inches falling in just the last week.

“I don't measure it I just deal with it I guess, you know, it is what it is,” said Fire Chief Jon Delvalle.

He says those are numbers that make locals look back on the record setting winter of 2017, as some call it "snowmaggedon."

And with more snow expected, it's just what mid-winter mountain dwellers should expect as well.

“They should, if not they're fooling themselves,” said Hill.

Garden Valley schools have been closed for a week because of sickness and power outages, but mostly because of snow.

They expect to be back in session Tuesday but by Wednesday morning they are expecting more snow.

When I looked at the garden Christian Douglas Design created for a couple in Mill Valley, California, it was easy to focus on the purple palette, the undulating garden path, and the shady trellis—but then I found out there were surprises in store. Namely, that this garden is not only well-composed; it also produces a surprising variety of fruits and vegetables. Think kale tucked in among lavender, and citrus hedges that do double duty. There are so many edibles, in fact, that the easiest way for me to tell you about it is to break the garden up into three zones, just like the designer did when he was creating the space.

Zone One

First, let’s talk about the path that leads to a roundabout. In the center, a Corten steel planter is filled with everbearing strawberries, and around the outside of the area, blueberry bushes grow from May to August. Non-edible kangaroo paw gives a vibrant pop of red next to deep purple salvia.

In the background of this space is a seating area. “That’s our tranquil, shady spot,” says Douglas. “We wanted to do one space that was cool, where you could sit and read a book at any time of day.” You can also pluck Concord and Flame grapes while you read, since they drape the trellis, or you could visit the nearby mission fig tree.

Zone Two

Next, let’s talk about the plants near the kitchen, which are just outside the door. Near a Fuji apple and a persimmon tree, kale, tomatoes, and peppers thrive. “It’s one of our design philosophies to put vegetables next to the house, and we get pushback on that,” Douglas says. Why? “It’s a common theory that vegetables are ugly, but what we’ve observed is that the further you put vegetables away from the home, the less people look after them. Then they get messy, perpetuating the idea that vegetables are unattractive.” In this case, the clients can see the vegetables from the kitchen window, which means they know exactly when they’re ready to pick.

Zone Three

The third zone is the custom, U-shaped lounge area next to a lemon tree, with a lime and tangelo hedge behind. The hedge hides the fence and gives the feeling that you’re in an outdoor, green room. In front of the citrus trees are the herbs—oregano, marjoram, thyme, and purple basil, with still more strawberries. A water feature is carefully placed for the bees and hummingbirds. “There’s a lot of intoxication here when it comes to scent,” Douglas says. “The basil and the citrus come in when you sit down—it’s so important to think of scent when you’re doing a landscape, not just color.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Douglas is the founder of The Backyard Farm Company, which teaches clients how to farm at home via in-person and online classes. “We mentor homeowners on how to grow their own food, much like our forefathers and -mothers would have done, but has been lost in our culture,” he says.

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Nevertheless, when it comes to this garden, there’s more to talk about than just the food it provides. To make the garden feel bigger, Douglas added the curved pathway (he was inspired by a natural stream with boulders and rocks), then mounded the soil on either side to give a sense of contour.

Meanwhile, one of the clients is a therapist, and patients are invited to explore the garden while they wait for a session. The garden is low-water, while the pathways and the front driveway are permeable. A rain chain leads to an underground swale that disperses the water underground. This way, the garden keeps as much water in the soil as possible.

In all, the garden is a stunning achievement that the homeowners—and the designer—appreciate. “We packed a lot of vegetables into this one,” Douglas says. “We did kind of nail it, I have to say.”

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As a teenager, I was too scared of God’s wrath to step a toe out of line. It’s a shame, because your teenage years are supposed to be a time of crazed banshee-like behavior. Committing minor acts of vandalism! Smoking that sweet, sweet dope! Wearing fingerless gloves! Unfortunately, one California burger joint has fallen prey to a string of ill-advised teenage acts, leading the restaurant to ban customers under 18 unless they’re accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Business Insider reports that the owners of Red Rooster Burgers & Brew, located in Garden Valley, California, claim they’ve tolerated wild teenage misadventures for two years. The owners announced the decision to ban unsupervised teens in a Facebook post on Friday, describing the young customers as “kiddos” and stating that “it’s very clear to us that the bad behavior is not going to end.”

In the post, Red Rooster Burgers & Brew outlined the sorts of teenage incidents that have occurred at the restaurant in recent years. The list includes:

The list also mentioned “kiddos sitting on the baby changing table in the bathroom making out” and “marijuana being smoked in the bathroom.” (Cool!!!!!) Finally, Red Rooster claims that the same teens have defaced residential Halloween displays on surrounding neighborhood streets.

Ah, teens. I’d like to think that this string of mayhem was the result of one wild Kenickie type. Just a solitary, leather-jacket-clad adolescent bent on mass destruction. Either way, the offending punks are way braver than I was at that age, although I do feel for the poor restaurant staff. Patience, Red Rooster—give these kids 10 years and their idea of a wild Friday night will come to involve pickling homegrown Serrano peppers and browsing high thread count sheets.

Just a couple miles north of Truckee, a pristine mountain meadow was bursting with wildflowers, stretching below snowcapped peaks and mixed conifer forests for hundreds of acres. I was setting eyes on it for the first time ever, and it was every bit as beautiful as I had dreamed.

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The meadow was saturated in green. Willows dotted the horizon. A quiet creek bent in horseshoe-like shapes, flowing downstream to the Truckee River. Black bears, bobcats, mountain lions roam this land, as do deer, beavers, squirrels and many species of birds. This valley is habitat for endangered species and hundreds of species of plants. The landscape is unaltered, appearing much as it did before European settlers first arrived in the Sierra Nevada in the early 1800s.

“It literally is a secret garden,” Kathy Englar, the Truckee Donner Land Trust’s development director, told the Associated Press in 2017.

Englar wasn’t exaggerating. Lower Carpenter Valley has been hidden from sight, behind a locked gate, for more than a century. As millions of people arrive in Lake Tahoe every year to hike, bike, ski and recreate all over its mountains, this valley has remained in solitude.

Standing on its edge, I wondered how such a place could even exist.

In 2017, the Truckee Donner Land Trust and the Nature Conservancy, with a handful of other conservation organizations, joined hands under the Northern Sierra Partnership and purchased this land, permanently protecting Lower Carpenter Valley from development.

Knowing how sensitive the ecosystem is, the land trust limited public access for several years. The only way you could visit Lower Carpenter Valley was through a guided docent hike. The hikes were free, but they often booked up fast with long wait lists. I never had the luck or the timing to go on a guided hike.

But now, thanks to a recently completed nature trail, the public has unfettered access to Lower Carpenter Valley for the first time in more than a century. Boardwalks and bridges lead over sensitive wetland meadows, allowing public access to the valley while still protecting the fragile environment.

The boardwalks opened late last summer. But the best time to do this hike is right now, as spring warms up to summer and the rainbow of wildflowers start their seasonal bloom.

There is hardly anyone else in the valley except for me and my friend Heather Adams. I recruited Adams for this hike for her deep, intuitive knowledge of wildflowers. She is a well-known gardener in the Truckee-Tahoe region, teaching local gardening classes and helping aspiring gardeners select native flower varieties for their yards.

I had been hearing about this valley for years and I wanted a wildflower guru to help me understand the small, exquisite details of the landscape. I texted Adams in the morning, baiting her with the lure of the so-called secret garden of the Sierra. It didn’t take much to convince her to rearrange her schedule and meet me later in the afternoon.

I picked Adams up in Truckee and we drove to the trailhead, eventually turning onto a U.S. Forest Service road for a couple of miles. The road was deceptively bumpy with huge potholes and rollers that I had to drive over slowly or attempt to skirt. Eventually, we reached a gate at the end of the road that marked the beginning of the trail. I parked and we set off.

We walked hardly 10 steps when Adams stopped to admire a small fir tree. She inhaled the lemony scent and pointed to the tiny seed cases at the tip of the branch. I love a good tree, but I often miss details like those seed cases. That’s exactly why I wanted Adams along on this hike.

We continued walking up the trail, and with every step, Adams called out a different wildflower’s name.

That’s purple larkspur. That’s yellow arnica. Those are wild carrots. She spotted wild strawberries and forget-me-knots.

“Look how fuzzy those mule ears are,” Adams said.

And then she bent down to inspect a delicate green thing with petals that looked like tassels. Adams looked up at me. Meet meadow rue, she said.

Adams took a botany class in college, but her knowledge really comes from curiosity and also John Muir Laws’ "Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada." For hikers in Tahoe, this book is almost as essential as a good pair of hiking shoes. Detailed illustrations help you identify different species of wildflowers along the trail. Adams has nearly memorized the book, and since I had her as my hiking partner, my copy stayed in my backpack.

The dirt path meandered through the forest for a little bit, above a winding creek. Then it dropped down to the edge of a great meadow.

The Washoe Tribe were almost certainly the original inhabitants of this valley. Likely, they spent time here in the warmer summer months as part of their seasonal migration through the Sierra Nevada. But the Washoe were driven from their homelands when settlers overtook these mountains during the mass migration leading up to California’s Gold Rush.

In the summer, these verdant meadows are a land of plenty. But come winter, deep snows make the mountains inhospitable. Not far from this valley, the Donner Party was stranded for the dire, fated winter of 1846-1847.

A dairy farmer named William Carpenter and his wife settled on this valley in the late 1800s. They would travel to the Sierra Nevada from the Central Valley in the summer to graze their livestock. In the mid-20th century, a group of recreational fishermen, including newspaperman James B. McClatchy, bought the property as a private fishing retreat.

In 1999, a survey identified the Lower Carpenter Valley for conservation, but the opportunity to protect it didn’t come until 2017. That year, the land trust and the Northern Sierra Partnership raised $10.24 million in 60 days to finalize the deal. Perry Norris, co-executive director of the land trust, said the Lower Carpenter Valley was a “key piece of the puzzle” in the greater Truckee River Watershed.

The expanse of green seemed to go on forever. I hadn’t seen anything quite like it. Mountain meadows this beautiful, unaltered by development, are rare. There was no golf course. There was no ski resort. There was no monstrous hotel.

The reason why this habitat is so pristine is because it has been so untouched by humans. And the irony of opening it up to the public for recreation is not lost on anyone.

I asked Greyson Howard, communications director for the land trust, about the ethics of promoting such a sacred place to the public. He told me it’s the land trust’s responsibility to build infrastructure that will make recreation sustainable in such a sensitive environment. Public land is public. Anyone with a desire should be able to access it.

That’s why the land trust and the Truckee Trails Foundation took such great care to build a nature path that weaves between boardwalks and bridges. Before the trail was built, an environmental assessment was completed in 2019, under the National Environmental Policy Act. The document notes how invasive and damaging recreation can be on the environment. The solution, it said, was to concentrate recreation onto a singular multi-use trail.

The trail stays on the southern edge of the meadow. No dogs are allowed and hikers must stick to the path. At one point, the trail pops onto a private dirt road and signs ask hikers to respect the private property the road passed through. Then the trail picks back up and leads into the quiet expanse of the meadow.

Every now and then, at the exact moments when I felt like pausing to take in a view, a picnic table sat just next to the trail, courtesy of the land trust and its brigade of donors. Clouds rumbled overhead, playing with the light, illuminating green then gold. At the end of the meadow, the trail veered north. It ended in a 1-mile loop, resembling a lollipop stick. In total, the whole thing was about 5.5 miles round trip.

We crossed a bridge over the stream when Adams stopped suddenly to point at a small bird flitting on the water. She thought it was the American dipper, a bird that’s evolved to essentially fly in the water. It’s one of her favorites. Lower Carpenter Valley is also known habitat for the threatened willow flycatcher and it is nesting grounds for northern goshawks and bald eagles.

Evening sun turned the creek into liquid gold. We stared at the bird, perched on a branch, for a long while. And then we followed the trail, dipping back along the edges of the meadow, all the way back to the car.

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Students in two southern Manitoba school divisions will move to remote learning starting Tuesday as COVID-19 caseloads continue to rise across the province, officials say.

The shift will affect all 14 schools in the Winkler-area Garden Valley School Division and all 13 in the Red River Valley School Division, Education Minister Cliff Cullen said on a call with reporters Saturday.

Students in those divisions will join pupils in Winnipeg and Brandon — who already moved to remote learning on Wednesday — in learning from home until May 30.

The move means 373 of the province's 820 schools have now shifted to remote learning, said Cullen, who was joined on Saturday's call by Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba's deputy chief public health officer.

The two divisions had a combined student population of more than 6,800 in the 2019-20 school year, according to the province.

In addition, the Franco-Manitoban School Division says three of its schools in the area are affected by the announcement and will move to remote learning — Sainte Agathe School, Réal Bérard Community School and Saint-Jean Baptiste Regional School.

A spokesperson for the province couldn't say if those schools were in addition to the ones announced, but said "schools may make their own decisions."

With more than half of Manitoba adults now vaccinated with at least one dose against COVID-19 and everyone 12 and up eligible to book appointments, Cullen said he's optimistic that students will return to classrooms to finish the year.

But the sudden switch demonstrates that the pandemic is always evolving, he said.

"This just serves as a warning for other areas around the province that this indeed could could happen to their school as well. So try to be prepared as much as you can."

Manitoba reported 430 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, including 27 in the Southern Health Region, which includes both the Garden Valley and Red River Valley school divisions.

The province also reported four more deaths linked to the illness — three of which were people who contracted the B117 coronavirus variant first identified in the U.K.

Highly transmissible variants now account for nearly 60 per cent of Manitoba's active COVID-19 cases.

Cullen urged Manitobans to follow the province's most recent set of pandemic rules, which were tightened again last week.

"This is an important and critical time in our pandemic response," he said, a day after public health officials unveiled modelling that showed COVID-19 daily case counts and intensive care admissions are exceeding Manitoba's most extreme projected scenarios for the third wave.

'Last resort' decision

While Saturday's remote learning update was announced at an unusual weekend news conference, Atwal said decisions like sending students from two divisions home "aren't knee-jerk reactions."

"We just don't look at one number or one case in a school and we say there's risk in a community," he said. Discussions with public health teams happened on Friday but the final call to close more classrooms wasn't made until Saturday, said Atwal.

"This is something we always do not want to do from a public health perspective, is to look at remote learning for schools. But when it seems to be the most viable option to limit that community transmission, then we have to act on that information."

Atwal said it takes public health workers time to complete contact tracing investigations and new data about where COVID-19 is spreading changes hour by hour.

Moving students out of the classroom is "a measure of last resort," Atwal said, and a continued increase in cases — many of which were linked to gatherings outside of school — forced the decision.

The move affects schools such as Winkler's Garden Valley Collegiate, which alone has a student population of around 800.

The Red River Valley division includes schools in communities south of Winnipeg such as Sanford, Starbuck and Morris.