The life just creeps onto the sidewalk and over the asphalt at 311 Puyallup Ave.

Heuchera, nandina, sage and an artichoke jostle up against the outside walls of Sue Goetz’s Urban Garden Company, a bright emporium of garden books, tools, decorations and, yes, plants.

They are proof, she says, that, with a base of good soil under the pavement or in a container, plants can transform urban Tacoma’s throw-away places into attractive spaces. Just add water.

“I think about what I wipe off my windows,” Goetz said, “But those plants are happy. That’s a learning curve for me. Those plants are happy and thriving on the surface they’re in.”

She’s killed enough plants in her life as a gardener to know what will enjoy nights of warmth stored in asphalt and concrete, and what will survive hot times during summer in the city. Rosemary has what it takes. So does lavender. So could corn and tomatoes.

“They’re tough stuff,” she said. “I don’t know why there isn’t more of this stuff going on. Find what works, and give it what it needs – water, soil and sun.”

With that, she headed for Tacoma’s Link Light Rail to case the route for garden spots.

The first sloped down from the Tacoma Dome stop to a vacant industrial building and parking lot.

“Somebody loved this place once,” she said. “Somebody tried at this place once.”

Somebody planted rock roses, sweet peas and a dogwood. There’s still a patch of nandina – heavenly bamboo.

Goetz sees it revived as a meadow.

“Can you see swaths of lavender, rosemary and rock roses and grasses?” she asked.

Yes, you can, at the next stop, by the Elephant Car Wash.

“See, there’s a nice meadow of blue grass,” she said.

It will look lovely through the seasons with its flowers and seed heads.

“Sometimes I see planters that are well done, and I think they should get a ribbon,” she mused.

It’s a swell idea. Imagine Pothole Pig bestowing Streetscape awards…

Moving on to the Convention Center stop, she mourned for the warty barberries pruned to a shape they would never choose in nature. She lamented the downtrodden grasses swamped by roadwork of some kind.

“When they design those spaces, they should design a maintenance plan for them,” she said. “It’s a maintenance issue, not just a growing issue.”

She had free advice for the planners working on the Prairie Line trail: Go with the curve. Don’t scatter individual plants that no one will notice. Instead, mass like-minded plants to beckon walkers to venture down the path.

Plants do that, she said. They invite people to come see them – and the businesses behind them.

As we’ve seen with Tacoma’s community gardens, they involve residents in their neighborhoods. They get them digging and watering and sharing conversations and food.

That’s what got Goetz excited as the Link glided toward the end of the line.

All along Commerce Street are the makings of a community garden for the people who live downtown in condos and apartments. The street is, in technical landscaping terms, littered with planters. Round and low and rimmed with blue, they were attractive when the city had the money to plant them. That money’s not there any more, and neither is the irrigation system broken during light rail construction.

Now they’re ashtrays. Lots of ashtrays.

Some of them still have hardy evergreens living in them. Some 40 are just containers of weedy dirt along the street, with a cluster near the Winthrop.

Goetz sees a community garden in them. She sees gathering them by the transit station and the Winthrop – she would be happy to work with the city to design the layout. She envisions some of the people who live and work nearby taking responsibility for the planning, watering and tending. Sure, she also sees people picking stuff they didn’t help grow, but that’s garden life.

If those low planters can’t be moved, there’s a stash of other types lying fallow after they were removed from Pacific Avenue.

Imagine a real community garden in the concrete heart of Tacoma.

Goetz does.

Imagine reviving the abandoned planters along the unlovely street.

The materials are there, waiting for people to, as Goetz says, “commit random acts of gardening.”

Blossom end rot happens to tomato and squash. It is caused by a lack of calcium, but this year there is a spray that you can spray on leaves and fruit and it will fix it, and save all your fruit!

For future years it is very beneficial to add garden lime to your vegetable beds once per year in the spring to prevent calcium loss. It, however, is granular and does not work fast enough for this year.

TAGRO is miraculous stuff, but unfortunately calcium is soluble in water and TAGRO originates as a lot of water, which leaches that vital nutrient out. The salmon have strong bones though.

We've got another pop trivia challenge for you this week. And this time it counts, people!

On July 19, “American Idols Live” will bring the top contestants from the last season of Fox-TV's hit show to Kent's Showare Center. So we thought, “What the heck? Let's give away some tickets. No, better yet, let's give away a frickin' frackin' suite!”

That's right, y'all. We're giving one lucky Tacoma Weekly reader and 17 of his or her new “besties” suite access to the tour launch of “American Idols Live” in Kent. Wooooooot!

All you have to do to be eligible for our drawing is to send the correct answers to these questions to ejasmin@tacomaweekly.com; or you can use snail mail and send us them, highlighted in this article to 2588 Pacific Highway, Fife, WA 98424. Also, don't be an employee or the family member of an employee of Tacoma Weekly. Duh!

Use the subject/attention line American Idol contest and make sure your answers get here by Tuesday, July 16 since we'll be announcing a winner on our Daily Mashup blog (www.tacomaweekly.com/dailymashup) on July 17. And did we mention you shouldn't just cheat and Google all this stuff? Oh, we'll know! Plus, you won't feel very good about yourself in the long run.

1. Kelly Clarkson’s debut single ____ was also recorded by British “The X Factor” winner Leona Lewis. 

A) “Jesus, Take the Wheel”

B) “A Moment Like This”

C) “Miss Independent”

D) “Since U Been Gone”

E) “My Life Would Suck Without You'

2. South Sound contestant Sanjaya Malakar made 13-year-old audience member Ashley Ferl cry – a moment spoofed by “Saturday Night Live” and a gang of other shows – as he sang ... 

A) The Beatles' “Hey Jude”

B) Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”  

C) Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”

D) Boyz II Men’s “I Can’t Say Goodbye to Yesterday”

E) The Kinks “You Really Got Me” 

3. Which of these country stars did not get his or her big break from “American Idol?”

A) Miranda Lambert

B) Kellie Pickler

C) Josh Gracin

D) Bucky Covington

E) Carrie Underwood

4. This “American Idol” contestant starred alongside Whitney Houston in “Sparkle.”

A) Jennifer Hudson

B) Kristy Lee Cook

C) Jordin Sparks

D) Allison Iraheta

E) Fantasia Barrino

5. Adam Lambert may be the guy we remember most from season 8, but he actually finished second behind __________|_

A) Allison Iraheta

B) Lil Rounds

C) Carrie Underwood

D) Vicci Martinez

E) Kris Allen 

6. Season 2 contestant Clay Aiken’s fans are known as _________.

A) Claymores 

B) Claymates 

C) Claypals

D) Clayhawks

E) Little Monsters 

7. Which of these big shots has never been an "American Idol" judge?

A) Ryan Seacrest 

B) Neil Patrick Harris

C) Randy Jackson 

D) Jennifer Lopez

E) Quentin Tarantino

8. This region has produced an overwhelming majority of “American Idol” winners.

A) New England

B) The Midwest

C) The Pacific Northwest

D) The South

E) Canada

9. The only “American Idol” alumnus to score both a Grammy and an Oscar is ________

A) Jordin Sparks

B) Jennifer Hudson

C) Fantasia Barrino

D) Carrie Underwood

E) Ruben Studdard

10. Which of the following did not finish in the final four in season 12?

A) Candice Glover

B) Kree Harrison

C) Amber Holcomb

D) Angie Miller

E) Phillip Phillips

11. Which seemingly delusional contestant parlayed his or her lack of talent into a record deal, a Christmas album and even an appearance on “Arrested Development”?

A) Sanjaya Malakar

B) Mary Roach

C) William Hung

D) Kevin Covais

E) Jasmin Trias

12. Sanjaya released a memoir and 5-song EP in 2009, both called __________|

A) “Simon Cowell Can Bite Me: My Story”

B) “Ponyhawk Power: How I Briefly Became the Most Famous Person in America”

C) “Federal Way Firebrand”

D) “The Sanjayanator”

E) “Dancing to the Music in My Head”

We all talk about honoring and supporting our veterans. Now PCMARVETS is giving us the opportunity to give tangible help that changes lives.

For a year and a half they have been driving their mobile field office throughout Pierce County, connecting veterans to the benefits they earned, but don’t know they have.

So far, the PCMARVETS team has brought $4 million in benefits home to Pierce County veterans.

Now they need our help.

In December 2011, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians awarded them a $125,000 grant. With it, they bought their field office – a 1997 Ford Fleetwood motor home. It costs $100 to fill the tank, and they drive from 300 to 500 miles a week to reach veterans in Morton, Eatonville, Enumclaw, Key Center, Gig Harbor, Bonney Lake, Buckley, South Hill, Yelm and Chehalis. They invested in a computer and other start-up equipment.

They hired Erica Westling, an accredited services officer, to interview veterans and file their claims.

“She is the smartest, most diligent and aggressive woman we can find,” said George Hight, a retired Marine Corps master sergeant and PCMARVET’s vice chairman.

He volunteers with chairman and CEO Kelley Byers, who retired from the Marine Corps as a lieutenant colonel. The two vets embedded their branch of the service into their non-profit’s name, shorthand for Pierce County Marine Veterans. If you’ve heard the name before, it might have been at a Toys For Tots, ROTC or Charlie’s Dinosaur event. The crew volunteers for all those organizations.

But its focus is on serving veterans who live a ways from veterans’ service centers.

It’s shocking, they say, how many veterans, especially those who served in Korea and Vietnam, don’t know they are eligible for benefits.

“We started outreach beyond the normal stops,” Hight said.

They’ll set up at shopping centers, grocery stores, senior centers, set out a table with coffee and water, and raise the flag. With the pictures of planes, service members, and service emblems on the mobile field office, they hope the scene will draw folks over for a chat.

“We’ve been suspected of being a fireworks stand, a spay and neuter clinic and selling fish,” Hight said.

Sometimes that helps.

Hight recalled one man who stopped by just to see what was up. He mentioned that he served in Vietnam, and when they asked, he said he had received a Purple Heart and was exposed to Agent Orange and had some of the symptoms of that.

“Yeah, but you can’t do anything for me, because I was drafted,” the vet told them. “I was told by my sergeant that since I was drafted, I’m not a veteran.”

Other vets have told Westling that they were told they were ineligible for benefits because they did not serve full stints in combat zones. Some said they asked after benefits but were told their records were destroyed in a fire, so it was no use.

Westling accepts none of that. She is a tiger for her vets.

“There are a lot of elderly vets who are entitled to a lot of money,” she said. “We’ve had vets crying with joy. We help a lot of widows and low-income people.”

If she hears there is a bed-bound veteran at home or in a care facility, she’ll be at that bedside, filing that claim. She’ll be at any hearings, standing up for her client.

All of this is free of charge to the veteran.

All of this is, as the PCMARVETS motto says, “Meaningful and Measurable Good in Pierce County.”

This past year of service has been a bargain for that initial $125,000 grant. It’s still a bargain if you count the $1,250 they have gotten in random contributions.

That money is next to gone, and they need to buy gas to keep going.

This is where we come in.

For the next few months, The Tacoma Weekly will run a donation drive for PCMARVETS. We will introduce you to some of the veterans they have served. We’ll meet donors who back their convictions with donations.

We’ll update you on your progress.

Here’s how you can give:

Visit http://www.pcmarvets.com and click on the “donate” button.

Bring to Tacoma Weekly at 2588 Pacific Highway, Fife:

Keurig coffee pods

Bottled water

Tea

Hot chocolate

Paper coffee cups

Paper towels

Printer paper

Tacoma Fire Department crews were kept busy during the July 4 weekend. Even though fireworks are illegal within the city limits, there were too many brush fires to tally according to reports.

Firefighters responded to a prohibited bonfire along the 200 block of North “G” Street.

Firefighters responded to reported garage fire along the 3900 block of North 13th Street. The first arriving company found a fully involved detached garage fire. Crews worked quickly to contain the fire and protect nearby structures. A fire investigator determined the cause of the fire was an electrical malfunction resulting in $12,000 in damage to the garage and a nearby vehicle. There were no injuries to report.

Firefighters responded to a reported fire in Point Defiance Park. Upon investigation they found and extinguished an unattended campfire deep in a wooded area.

Firefighters responded to a reported house fire along the 2000 block of East 36th Street. A neighbor saw smoke and used a garden hose to extinguish a small siding fire prior to firefighters’ arrival. Crews removed a portion of the siding, applied water to the area, and used a Thermal Imaging Camera to confirm the fire was out.

Firefighters responded to a large bonfire on the beach along the 8400 block of Sixth Avenue. Citizens were burning driftwood, and they extinguished the fire upon request.

Firefighters responded to a reported fire on a 33-foot sailboat at 5618 Marine View Dr. Fireboat Destiny's crew arrived to find no fire on the vessel. The sailboat was towed back to an open dock and there were no injuries to report.

Firefighters responded to a reported house fire along the 3200 block of 44th Street Northeast. The first arriving engine company found smoke and flames showing from the exterior and gable roof area of the two-story residential structure. Crews attacked the fire that had started at the base of the structure and burned up the vinyl siding to the roof. A fire investigator determined that the cause of the fire was a large aerial rocket firework. There were no injuries to report.

Americans are learning as a nation the truth about security. In the era of Julian Assanges and Edward Snowdens, we have gone through a checklist – spying does not make us secure and even fails to warn us that entire regions are imminently in revolution; foreign wars do not make us more secure but instead more hated; a war on terror does not make us secure but rather breeds even more terrorists; operating drones does not make us more secure as it spreads hot conflict across numerous borders and angers entire societies; increasing our military spending does not make us more secure as it means we have dwindling budgets left for bridges, education, protection of our food/air/soil/water and so we become more insecure.

Our retributive prison system does not make us more secure with no rehabilitation and instead gives us ranks of recidivists; our police forces do not make us more secure when entire communities are afraid to call them; electing new people to office who speak of the promise of security turns out not to make us more secure and indeed strips us of the securities guaranteed in the endangered Bill of Rights. Alas, it seems, even a Bill of Rights does not make us secure.

Shopping does not make us secure; a new line of clothing or makeup will not make us secure; controlling women’s bodies, disenfranchising people of color, creating new, violent games for our youth do not make us more secure. What will make us more secure?  We will, and it is time for a radical shift in the way we think not only about security but about who we are.

The genius of Gandhi, and the attractive force that he embodied during the Indian Freedom Struggle for people around the world was that he was a secure person. More than that, he was secure in the midst of doing everything that the dominant paradigm would say would make him insecure, and he did so in a very simple way.

When he realized that passivity was not an answer to solve the problem of foreign domination, he upheld nonviolent creative action. When he realized that untruth was the order of the day (even back then!), he upheld the principle of truth; instead of maintaining a vision of “the greatest good for the greatest number,” or a utilitarian approach to social uplift that required sacrificing some for the good of all, his motto was “the uplift of all,” sarvodaya. And he struggled to uphold these values in his personal life. This is the secret of security: like love, at its highest, it is not something that we receive; it is something that we do. And in doing security, in being secure and promoting the security of others, we find our own. It starts with the spirit, not the spy game. It takes a shift toward altruism, not a shift toward shutting down others and others and others and finally ourselves.

Of course, in times of insecurity, the secure person threatens the status quo. It is not without risk that we are called to live our truth. Gandhi was one of many who lived the consequence of speaking truth to power: like Dr. King, he was assassinated; yes, but his goal was not to save his life, rather, to use his life for a higher purpose. He wanted to use his life to challenge the underlying story of who we have come to believe we are. He knew that to do so, taking risks was a part of the package.   

Security is risky, but the paradox arises from our belief that we can be secure at others’ expense, separate from them – from our belief that our physical well-being (as opposed to our meaning) is the locus of our security.

We do not necessarily have to be willing to risk our lives--what if we risked our egos, instead? What if we risked our sense of separation from one another, our institutionalized alienation? What if we took bold action for a more peaceful world, just by shifting the way we see ourselves?  Insecurity is contagious, and so is deep security. It’s risky to believe in what we cannot see with our eyes, yet this isn’t unnatural to us. We listen to fear all of the time and let it dictate our actions and the nature of our relationships to others.  Julian Assange and Edward Snowden may be afraid for their lives right now, but they are not afraid that they’ve wasted their lives.  Are they not the secure ones in that sense? 

We can enlarge what they have announced with their sacrifice (and not necessarily by going that far). The Buddha once said, “of all relationships, the best is trust.” The NSA revelations have shown that we have tried to build a world of distrust in a mistaken search for security. Let’s begin by dismantling that.

How do we start? In earnest… 

By holding ourselves to a higher standard of what we can achieve with our lives: challenging ourselves to become more forgiving and willing to negotiate; more fearless and unwilling to humiliate; more generous, with all of our resources; more constructively empowered to do right by ourselves and others; more willing to learn from our mistakes without allowing ourselves to feel degraded in the process, we will slowly, steadily build a more secure world, from the inside out. We are not working in isolation – the children in our homes and neighborhoods, the inheritors of this world and our states of mind, are watching us.

Stephanie Van Hook is executive director of the Metta Center for Nonviolence in northern California and writes for PeaceVoice. Contact her at Stephanie@mettacenter.org.

Tacoma City Council faced a sprinkling of development briefings Tuesday that suggests, if not outright shows, the local economy is on the mend after years of being – pardon the pun – bottled up.

One development involves waterfront housing while another means Tacoma water will soon be bottled and sound around the region.

The most obvious development greenlighted with a councilmatic nod was the Henry, a seven-story, mixed-use apartment building in the works for 19333 Dock St. along the Foss Waterway. The site is next to the Albers Mill Loft development. The sale of the a 51,647-square-foot site itself was handled by the Foss Waterway Authority, which issued a request for proposals from developers, netting only one offer, The Henry. The sale price comes to $1.2 million, or $25 a square foot of land, which is market rate for the land.

The council approved the concept, environmental issues and scope of the construction as well as a tax break for the developer, Henry Foss Group. The tax break is an eight-year Multi-Family Housing Property Tax Exemption for the 167-unit building.

The $31 million building will offer market rate, rental units that range between 500 and 1,200 square feet, have two levels of parking totaling 255 stalls and commercial spaces. The housing will consist of approximately 21 studio units, 95 one-bedroom/one-bath units, 15 two-bedroom, single bathroom units and 30 two-bedroom-two-bath units. Rents will run from about $975 per month for the studio space to about $2,250 for the larger units.

The roof will have a dog-walking area with trees and shrubs. Public park space and connective “corridors” to the waterfront Esplanade are also parts of the deal. Henry Group, LLC gained its name from the site. Henry was the son of Andrew and Thea Foss, the matron of a Tacoma-based boat rental company that grew to be a Puget Sound maritime legacy. The development group is backed by Carino& Associates and Rushforth Construction Co., the builder behind Thea’s Landing elsewhere on the Foss.

Construction is set to start this fall and span about 14 months, supporting some 930 construction trades people, according to city reports.

A tentative deal between Tacoma Water, the city’s water utility and California-based Niagara Bottling LLC is the latest step in what is projected to be a $50 million, 311,000-square-foot bottling plant in the Frederickson Industrial Area that would mean Tacoma water would be bottled and shipped around the region, and under various brand names, as early as next year.

The Tacoma City Council is set to approve a Tacoma Public Utilities-negotiated contract next week for the wholesale of a about a million gallons of water a day to the bottled-water giant, making it the third largest customer.

Simpson Tacoma Kraft, uses 16 million gallons a day, which is about half of what it consumed before conservation measures were installed 20 years ago. The entire City of Fife is the second largest customer, at 1.41 million gallons. All totaled, the deal would add about $800,000 in new utility revenue each year for water that is well within the utility’s future “surplus.”

All of TPU’s customers consume about 55 million gallons a day, while the system has a capacity of about 110 million gallons a day. The sale of unused water to a commercial customer will fewer rate hikes for residential customers.

The TPU board has already approved the deal, and the City Council showed no signs of doing anything but welcome the deal, making next week’s vote largely a formality.

Lost in the big news about the Henry and Niagra was a contract award to replace the pool at People’s Community Center. The pool was closed in 2005, when need for substantial upgrades were found and no money was available to do the work to the 35-year-old facility.

Seattle-based NAC Architecture was awarded the $746,000 contract for a new pool and activities facility. People's Community Center is a city-owned facility that is operated by Metro Parks, which has allocated $1.6 million toward the facility. Design work will begin later this summer, with construction to be completed in summer 2015.

At seven years old, I was apparently too young to see the New Kids play the Puyallup Fair in 1989, according to certain adults in my life who I haven’t quite forgiven yet. But I was old enough to tag along to drop off my older sister at the show, tears streaming down my face as I peered through the fence to catch a glimpse of the boys. The giant Joey McIntyre button/consolation prize was a futile attempt to distract me from this traumatic moment that would surely follow me for the rest of my life…at least until Tuesday’s NKOTB reunion show, unsettlingly called The Package Tour, when all became right with the world. Thank you Live Nation!

This man-band put on a show with so much energy that it’s hard to believe some members may or may not be pushing their mid-40s.

Leading up to the New Kids’ two-hour headlining performance were iconic R&B group Boyz II Men and 98 Degrees. Boyz II Men’s all-too-short set included some of their best-known hits, such as “On Bended Knee,” “River Runs Dry” and “I’ll Make Love to You.” The only thing missing from the performance was the memorable, deep-voiced, spoken-word sections of the band’s biggest hits, performed by former band member Michael McCary, who retired due to health problems. Aside from that, the epic vocals of remaining band members Wanya Morris, Nathan Morris and Shawn Stockman were incredible in spite of the Tacoma Dome’s less-than-ideal acoustics. The six-song set was over far too early.

98 Degrees was next, performing an eight-song set that included a few of their hits, such as “The Hardest Thing,” “Because of You” and “I Do (Cherish You).” As band member Nick Lachey stated, the band focuses on ballads, and songs with meaning and substance. Reading between the lines, he must have meant that as an excuse for their less-than-stellar choreography. Stick with what you do best, boys!

Then came the moment all the soccer moms in the audience were waiting for...the grand entrance of Jordan Knight (quite the diva), Jonathan Knight (who seemed at times less than thrilled to be a man-band member), Donnie Wahlberg (still the bad boy), Danny Wood (quite the breakdancer) and Joey McIntyre (who looks exactly the same as he did 25 years ago). As famous as they were 25 years ago, they still know how to put on a show without taking themselves too seriously. It was a good mix of making the audience swoon with old-school hits “Please Don’t Go, Girl,” “Cover Girl” and “Baby, I Believe in You,” while still throwing in songs from their latest album “10,” released last April. Even decades later, the New Kids are recording fun, high-energy songs. And with surprises throughout the show, such as an appearance by Sir Mix-a-Lot (which was beyond words) and Joey-Joe bringing his young son on-stage for a song, they know how to deliver an epic performance. It’s no wonder these guys are still around.

See more of Bill Bungard's photos at: http://www.billbungard.com