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By Harla Jean Biever, from my friend Betty Cox At one of our board meetings we shared a treat that everyone liked so much that they wanted our FLSRV members and friends to enjoy. Here is the recipe: Cream together: 1 cup butter 1/2 cup powdered sugar 1/3 cup flour Spread in bottom of greased 9 X13” pan Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes Beat 4 eggs until light and foamy Gradually add 2 cups sugar Add 1/2 cup lemon juice 1 tsp baking powder 2 cups flour Pour over baked crust and continue baking for 20 minutes at 350 degrees or until set and golden brown. Cool. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Cut into squares when very cool .

The Livingston kids and the walking Blue heron statue helped promote the Friends of the Little Spokane River Valley on July 9th at the gracious invitation of founder Rob Allen with the Farmer’s Market. Many attendees learned about our non-profit community organization for the first time.

By Kirk Neumann The Orchard Mason bee is a gentle insect, native to this area, and pollinates fruit trees, berries, and other crops. It is slightly smaller than a honeybee, with a shiny dark blue color. Mason bees are solitary which means that they do not live in hives. The term, “Busy as a Bee” must have been coined from the Mason bee. Just 2 or 3 females can pollinate a mature fruit tree. This means that only about 250 females can pollinate an acre of fruit trees. They will fly 100 to 200 yards in search of pollen. You can help cultivate the Mason bee population in your yard and therefore increase the pollination of your trees and plants. Please consider installing a bee house on your property. These can be purchased from a nursery or feed store with a series of cardboard tubes placed together inside the “House.” Or you can build your own by simply drilling holes in any kind of wood. These holes need to be approximately 1/4” to 3/8” in diameter and at least 3” deep. An ideal material would be a 4 X 4 post. The best place to install a bee house would […]

By Kirk Neumann The Spokane County Conservation District is looking for volunteers living along the Little Spokane River to per- form water quality testing. If you are interested please contact Dan Ross. Office: (509) 535-7274 Ext. 229 Email: dan-ross@sccd.org

By Dave Maccini Friends of the Little Spokane River Valley had a busy summer attempting to increase membership. We have updated our website (flsrv.org) and made it mobile device friendly to view. We have made it possible to join and/or donate on the website if you have a Paypal account. QR codes have been added to several of our FLSRV signs along the trail. When scanned with a QR reader app, it takes you to our new website. Check it out! You may have also noticed the signs along the trail system that encouraged users of the trail to go to our website and join FLSRV to help us in our goal to build more trails. We are looking for an individual who is interested in helping us to develop and maintain a social media presence with Facebook and other sites. Please contact us at: friendsoflittlespokaneriver@gmail. com

By Tina Wynecoop As most of you know Walking Tours one through six were outstanding. At each site attendees gained closer connections to our Interior Plateau landscape, its geology, native plants, indigenous peoples, and history: Antoine Peak, Nine Mile to Seven Mile, Audubon Lakes, Saltese Uplands, Deep Creek and Hangman/Latah Creek were visited in these hikes. Tour #7 included a large group of us who traveled thirteen miles west of Davenport on Highway 2 in order to walk with Jack among the earliest plants springing forth – plants of such sustenance and importance to tribal people – wildflowers that not only fed the eye with their beauty, also feeding the body following a long season of quiet beneath the scrubby soils of the shrub-steppe. Even the soil, shallow and rocky, yet productive, revealed its own storied connectivity to the Ice Age floods, as we hiked among its hummocks and shallows. Was that a long-billed curlew flying overhead? We were watching for it since it had been reported in a not far-off vernal pond. The red-tails were soaring overhead hunting for newly emerged small mammals. The only reminder that we were still in the twenty-first century was the sight of multiple […]

By Mark Case Progress is slow, last spring we got verbal approval from Spokane County to proceed with the new section of trail upon approval of a detailed design (what ever happened to designing on a napkin?), so we enlisted a surveyor to survey the west side of Little Spokane Drive from Midway Road to Colbert Road. Meanwhile I got bids to complete the remaining 220 feet of trail at the west end of Colbert Road connecting to Little Spokane Drive, bids were high $9500 and $8500 – too rich for my blood – so some of the board members have pulled together to do the work ourselves, we expect to have that completed before the snow flies. The next portion of Little Spokane Drive trail will get designed with more detail and submitted to the County for approval and construction in the spring. The length of completion will depend on donations we receive by that time. Hope you are getting out there and enjoying the trails we have completed so far!

Our annual meeting was a huge success. Nearly 100 people attended and the dinner was outstanding. We thank the following Auction donors for their generosity in providing items the this event. Mrs. Cavanaugh’s Chocolates – Wandermere Spokane Indians Baseball Club Fred Meyer – Wandermere Valvoline Oil Change John Holen Lance Pounder Excavation YogaJoy North Pounder’s Jewelry Kirk and Lori Neumann Wandermere Golf Course The Man Shop UPS Store – Wandermere Alana Livingstone/WanderSpokane – UrbanTours Little Spokane River Garden Club Harla Jean Biever Roger and Corliss Slack Skip Magneson Dr. Richard Yarbro, DDS Yuppy Puppy Wynecoop Hens Wandermere Plaza Car Wash Birdy’s Natural Grocers Huckleberry Chief and Son Spokane Audubon Rancho Chico Mexican Restaurant Kizuri A Taste of Thai Ace Hardware – Wandermere PostNet- Wandermere Starbucks – Wandermere Sandy Mullis Grease Monkey Ty Brown Peggy Ostness Jack Nisbet Susan Holen De Leons Taco and Bar Irene Byrd

by Michael Kennedy Friends of the Little Spokane River Valley held their annual cleanup day for the valley on Saturday, April 27, 2019. This year again we had one outside group to volunteer for the cleanup, Boy Scout Troop 218 with Richard Parish Scout Master. They did a great job covering from Ace Hardware to Hatch Road along Wandermere Road. Thanks again! It turned out to be another big cleanup day with around 30 to 35 people, and we had enough volunteers to cover all the routes. Thanks to everyone who did show up! Our goal each year is to clean up most of the major roads in the valley from Wandermere to Perry; Shady Slope to the top of the hill; Dartford to Hazard Road; Hatch Road to the pool; and Golden Road, Midway, and Colbert Road including some new area along US 395. We collected a lot of paper trash, miscellaneous wood, carpet, bottles, etc. Estimated total trash again was one of the largest hauls we have had in years. We had to move to Moose Park in Gleneden due to Shady Slope construction. We will most likely use Moose Park again next year. We will notify everybody […]