July 13 - Restaurant2Garden, Cutiefest

Greetings

Hello! and welcome to the First Ever edition of Waddlin', Business Goose's premiere guide to what is happening in and around Seattle, as reported on via (you guessed it) waddlin [and biking] around the city. This has been the kind of thing I've wanted to do for a while, as both a sort of personal journal and way to highlight incredible people I have met walking around the city. I've had a personal blog for a while, but the upkeep was a bit painful, so I am extremely excited to have the opportunity to have this newsletter hosted by @leaflet.pub!

The Big Picture

I think, and this is definitely subject to change as I settle into my role as part time field reporter, that I will broadly split these reports (such a cute name) into three sections.

(IRL) What I've been up to - This will highlight what I've actually done all week, highlighting one or more businesses / interesting people I've met that I want to call out specifically for being cool.

(IRL) What's coming up - Things that I have on my radar / calendar for the next week, I'll do a bit of sleuthing on local power poles / cafe bulletin boards / online calendars to pull this together.

(URL) Best of the Net - I am perpetually online, so while I want the main bits of this newsletter to focus on local events and people, I gotta throw some internet stuff in here. Putting this at the end so it's more optional for people and because tbh I might just occasionally have nothing to say here. I don't intend for this to reach a technical audience, so will try to refrain from talking about "protocols" or the like.

anyways without further ado...

What I've Been Up To

It's been a pretty busy week, and today is officially the one month anniversary of my move! To celebrate, I have been spending nearly every day biking to the hardware store (Pacific Supply, my beloved) and filling my bike bags with dirt, which I then bike back to my apartment to fill up my various planters. My balcony is starting to look pretty snazzy, with the notable exception of all the bird seed from the bird feeder, which the sparrows quite impolitely scatter all over the ground.

On Thursday, I biked to Temple Pastries to meet an old friend, and on my way back I saw this incredible purple patch growing in between the sidewalk tiles. Google Images say this might be Creeping Thyme (Thymus Serpyllum), but I don't know.

Side Rant: Why did Apple nerf the "plant search" feature in the newest IOS? It used to be that you would swipe up on any photo and it would just find the plant for you. Now the two options are "Ask Siri" and "Search Google", neither of which are what I want to do. Just tell me the plant! Probably a niche feature before, but I loved it, and hate the two replacement options. Never upgrade to iOS 27 if you love plants!

On Sunday, I was waddlin' about the farmers market, when I ran into my good friends Heather, Eli (happy birthday!!), Ning, and Justin! I saw some really cool artists I'd like to shout out here. Tesse Millsap had gorgeous paintings and complimented me on my purple Pikmin, and Chloe Ladwig had some really incredible movie posters reimagined as the "auteur designer". There were so many cool artists there, I am not sure if this was an official "cutie fest" or if it was just a big day for artists at the farmers market, which I think is something that's been happening largely as a result of Cutie Fest's incredible influence! My friends and I also went to Bakery Nouveau, where they got sandwiches and drinks, and I got a lemon tart (the blueberry lemonade is too sweet guys lets be real, even my hummingbird nectar isn't that sugary).

Community Highlight - Restaurant2Garden

On Saturday, some friends and I went to Hoa Mai Blooming, an event run by Friends of Little Sài Gòn at Hoa Mai Park. Oddly, it was my second time at this park in three weeks after not knowing it existed for many years! The community was so nice and vibes were great, I sampled a bunch of coffee and extremely tasty soda drinks, but the highlight for me was this compost demonstration by Restaurant2Garden. They showed how to make something called bokashi buckets, which is a form of fermentation that makes food easier to ultimately compost by pre-digesting it in an anaerobic chamber.

Restaurant2Garden is an organization that goes around the CID to restaurants and collects their food scraps, composts it, and offers the compost back to the community for gardening projects. I found their mission really exciting and the main demonstrator, Amy, was really friendly and knowledgable about composting. I love dirt!! You should all check out their website, and if you, too, like dirt, you can volunteer to help them with composting projects! They are currently working on setting up a new space with an automatic compost machine, which should be huge for them, because apparently right now they can have up to 30 of these bokashi buckets going at a time.

What's Coming Up

The big thing I am personally excited for is the Vashon Strawberry Festival this Saturday! I love the water taxi and am always ecstatic at an opportunity to zip across the sound to one of our incredible neighboring islands.

Other things to check out:

The National Nordic Museum still has their Moomin Exhibit going! I haven't checked it out, but I want to. Last time I tried to go was the one day they are closed (Monday), so check them out any other day from 10am-5pm (or 8pm on THORS DAY).

Tuesday Night, there is Board Game Night at Gearhouse in Capitol Hill. I love this place but last time I tried to go, I came like 20 minutes late and it was COMPLETELY PACKED, come early this one is popular!

Saturday Night is the famous Danny Woo Garden Pig Roast in the CID. They start serving at 7pm and priority is given to seniors and gardeners. This is a tradition going back to 1975!!

Lavender sale at the Interbay P-Patch on Sunday from 10am-4pm. I'm trying to grow lavender at home, but it will take time before my supplies are fully stocked :-)

Best of the Net

To be perfectly frank, I have not been spending as much quality time online last week as I may have liked. I have developed a woeful, perhaps even terminal addiction to Oxygen Not Included (ONI for me and my one other bestie who suffers the same affliction).

There is one thing that really caught my attention online, though. A masterpiece, a magnum opus. Yes, I am talking about @acerola.gg's expansive THREE HOUR-LONG video about Tetris game design. I have been working my way through it in chunks.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/mGuYUEuVDYc?rel=0&start=6293

Thank you for reading!

This is my first field report, would love to hear your comments on what you liked, what works, what doesn't work. Love, hate, send it all my way!