Leaves

Looking for something fun and safe to do this summer? Take your family and friends on a trip back in time aboard The Virginia Truckee Railroad in Virginia City, Nev.

Powered by a vintage steam locomotive, Virginia Truckee Railroad will be running roundtrips from Virginia City to Gold Hill on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays this summer.

May 28, 1961 to June 30, 2020
Misty JoAnne Buttner, our sister, aunt,daughter, and friend has left us on her journey to the spirit world at the age of 59 years old.
She is preceded in death by sisters Jody Efford and Cathy Jo Buttner, and father Jack Buttner; she leaves behind her mother Geraldine Buttner; brothers Dick Buttner (Debbie), Bob Buttner (Diane), Tony Buttner, and sister Mary Jane Ostrander (Chris).

Gov. Steve Sisolak has released a proposal ahead of a special legislative session slated to begin Wednesday in Carson City that would slash and shift hundreds of millions of dollars from agency budgets and other programs to close an estimated $1.2 billion shortfall caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

I’m not a fan of toiling in the heat. I do very little yard work when it’s hot. Sure, I could get up at dawn and garden for a couple of hours or stay up late and work in the yard at sunset, but I rarely do. After our COVID19 spring where I put in long hours doing yard maintenance, I have succumbed to the heat and taken my gardening, such as it is, indoors.


Our landscape is fairly wild, partly because we like it that way for the birds, but also because it simply gets away from me. We love the space of our two and half acres, but sometimes I get discouraged that our yard will never be pristinely groomed. I have to stop and remind myself how much we do accomplish.

I am fascinated with German bearded irises with their frills, color combinations and scent. I’m also interested in the changes that occur to the flowers after a number of years. I have had deep goldenrod ruffled irises lose their ruffles and fade to a lovely light yellow after years in the same location.

The Carson City Sheriff’s Office received numerous calls in the past month in reference to an online dating and extortion scam.

For more than 15 years, Lisa Davis served as the DARE officer for Carson City. Her last day is Thursday as she and her husband Bob will be relocating to Oregon. She leaves Carson City with many accomplishments in providing children guidance and away from falling into the trap of alcohol and drugs.

The Coronavirus has made many people want to grow their own food. At the Foothill Garden, a partnership with The Greenhouse Project and Carson Tahoe Health, Will Pierz, the garden manager and farmer, is growing some unusual, but hardy edible plants.

My friend Millie is a plant explorer. She experiments getting groceries to grow. When she told me she was growing celery from the butt-end of what you buy from the grocery store, I was fascinated. How? In water? In soil? She went on to say she also grows sweet potatoes. I had tried that in high school, so that didn’t surprise me. But when she showed me a picture of her sweet potato plant I was impressed.

Just after 1 p.m. a fire was reported at the old Sears building on North Carson Street in Carson City in between Parkway Plaza and the old Sears building.

I have been a grass warrior lately. Grass persists in exploring and establishing in areas I don’t want it: under shrubs, twined in flowers, out of the edges of the lawn, under the trees, in the field and so on. As a grass warrior, I have employed various attack strategies from hand-digging, weed-whacking and mowing with three different mowers — a riding mower, a small area electric mower, a rough area mower and finally, a tractor.

Yes, we all love the nice weather. However, with the sun and lovely temperatures come weeds, the plants we all love to hate. For a weed is simply a plant out of place, or better yet, a plant you wish was any place other than your place!

RENO — The forest of the Sierra Nevada mountains is an important resource for the surrounding communities in Nevada and California. Thinning the forest by removing trees by hand or using heavy machinery is one of the few tools available to manage forests.


Seriously, “lasagna gardening?” Readers may remember my article on hügelkultur last year, a centuries old Eastern European method of no-dig raised beds made out of logs, branches, leaves, grass clippings, straw, cardboard, petroleum-free newspaper, manure, compost and/or other organic matter. Topped with soil and it’s ready to plant.

My friend Roni is redoing her vegetable garden and asked me if corrugated metal materials were safe for building raised beds for vegetables. Since I had no idea, I started doing some research.

Spring has sprung and new green leaves are starting to push through, along with the first flower buds on fruit trees, and the always too-early daffodils that pop up before first frost ends. Soon the pastures will be green again and Spring and Summer flowers will come through and liven up our region.

Cecilia Gonzalez made her first call to Nevada’s unemployment office last Friday at 7:59 a.m., hoping that she might snag an open line the minute the agency opened to resolve a sticking point in her claim about her work history and eligibility.


My gardening clothes stink and I’m a happy woman! I’ve been pruning a Rhus trilobata, commonly called skunkbush sumac. Its name tells the story. I should have left my malodorous garments outside rather than carrying that pungent scent into the house. Oh well, I don’t care. I’m happy because I’m pruning. It takes so little to put a smile on my face.

After spending over a week in horrible pain, a local quad-county resident was finally able to secure a COVID-19 test. However, the situation became all that more complicated when the test was administered incorrectly by Carson City Health and Human Services (CCHHS).

CCHHS admitted to the error, and has rescheduled a second test to be performed today.


I’ve been watching the apple buds, waiting to see swelling begin, waiting for color to start showing. Last week I was excited to finally see a bit of color. Then, snow and overnight lows in the low twenties hit, which is just like last year, when we had no apples. I hope the cold doesn’t kill the blossoms and my apple crop again this year.

They told us the C-rations they were delivering to us leathernecks in Vietnam were prepared and canned for troops fighting long before us in Korea.

Successful Nevada gardeners know that Nevada soils are worth the toil to ensure a great garden. Our native soils are low in organic matter due to low rainfall amounts. In addition, they are more alkaline than soils rich in organic matter. The alkalinity of a soil often interferes with micronutrient availability causing nutrient deficiencies in plants. The good news is that by adding organic matter, our soils can support healthy plants and yield good harvests.

Shirlee Leah Boyer Veverka, age 84, passed away Sunday, February 9, 2020, from complications of Parkinson’s disease, at her daughter’s home in Carson City, Nevada, surrounded by her four children.

Editor’s Note: The following is from Chief Dan Ingram, who is is head of the Naval Science Department at Carson High School.

The CHS, NJROTC Orienteers competed in a weekend long orienteering festival in Anza Borrego State Park, Calif., Jan. 17-18. During the festival, team members competed in three different races over the two days.

Roots Raconteur Ray Bonneville returns to Silver City in February for a one-night performance accompanied by acclaimed instrumentalist Richie Lawrence on keyboard and accordion.

We often call many of our spring perennial flowers bulbs. However, botanically speaking, not everything we call a bulb is a true bulb. For example, is an iris a bulb? A corm? Or something else, such as a rhizome or tuber?

Red wriggler worms are decomposing work horses. They eat paper and food scraps turning them into compost, a nutrient-rich material for plants.

I asked Cory at The Greenhouse Project to share a worm composting method. He suggests a 3-bin method, starting with plastic bins approximately 1-1/2 feet by 2-1/2 feet. The boxes are shallow, because worms are surface-dwellers and prefer to live in the top six inches of bedding material.

Winter sun and drying winds can damage not only our skin, but the bark of trees and shrubs. It seems obvious that plants might get sunburned in the summer, but less intuitive that it also happens in the winter when it is called winter sunscald.

With a weekend of Christmas holiday events across the Carson City region, it looks like Mother Nature will be active with valley rain beginning late Friday and feet of snow in the Sierra through Sunday.