Life

Place mats with panache

From designer looks to DIY styles, mats an easy, affordable way to dress up dining table, trays, more

The place mat is a favorite at many dinner tables: The often-whimsical plastic version catches the slip of spaghetti from a youngster's fork, while a nice cotton place mat elevates the dining experience just a little without having to set down a whole tablecloth.

Garden Life: Garden benefits from regular maintenance

Every year there comes a point in time when we find ourselves juggling an endless list of garden chores. Mine seems to have come early this year. As the growing season kicks in, there's always the need to deadhead spent flowers, fertilize perennials and roses and fill gaps in planting borders with annual bedding plants.

Garden calendar

Clark County

Ask the gardening expert

I used to like the red hedges that grow so big along the back of my dad's place, but they are just a monster to work with. He called it Photinia fraseri and he said he liked them when they were small, but he wished someone would have told him how large they become before he bought 80 of them.

Jolie: From girl with tattoo to woman with a cause

LOS ANGELES — In her bad girl days, Angelina Jolie's body was a billboard for tattoos that said such things as "Billy Bob."

Battle Ground man climbs to cats' rescue

Retiree plucks them from trees after they get stuck

Perched more than 30 feet high in a red maple tree, Tom Croley lowers a squirming canvas bag down a rope to the safety of Jake Bennett's arms.

Relocated endangered deer make the transition

37 white-tail deer adjust to new life at Ridgefield wildlife refuge

RIDGEFIELD — More than a month after an elaborate multi-agency operation moved some three dozen endangered Columbian white-tailed deer to protected habitat in Clark County, the animals are adapting to their new surroundings.

Wind farms get pass on eagle deaths

CONVERSE COUNTY, Wyo — It happens about once a month here, on the barren foothills of one of America's green-energy boomtowns: A soaring golden eagle slams into a wind farm's spinning turbine and falls, mangled and lifeless, to the ground.

Fighting eagles crash land on Minn. airport runway

DULUTH, Minn. — Two bald eagles locked together by their talons in a midair battle survived a crash landing onto a runway at a northeastern Minnesota airport.

Angelina Jolie says she had double mastectomy because she carries gene

LOS ANGELES — Angelina Jolie says that she has had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that made it extremely likely she would get breast cancer.

Bread gets twisted

Pretzel bread elevates any sandwich after a brief baking soda bath

People say beauty is skin-deep like it's a bad thing.

A frittata to sing about

Finally, seasonal vegetables other than winter greens and radishes! Besides asparagus, there's now green garlic and ramps — and soon enough there will be fresh shelling peas. After such a long windup, the sight of my favorite spring vegetable makes me want to break into song — and to break a few eggs. To me, nothing goes better with these young, tender, sometimes wild-foraged ingredients, so my preferred lunch or dinner when I've collected a bounty of them is a frittata.

A leaner take on barbecued chicken

Barbecue chicken is one of my favorite summertime dishes. I like every part of it — the tomato-based sauce (the spicier the better), the crispy skin, even the bones.

This meat loaf fast, not fattening

Pesto Meat Loaf is an updated version of one of America's best-loved foods. This meat loaf takes only 15 minutes to bake. The secret is to bake it on a baking sheet, which allows hot air to circulate all around the meat.

Pasta carbonara gets remade as a delicious summer salad

Pasta carbonara — richly cheesy, creamy and studded with crisped pancetta — is easily one of the most comforting of pasta dishes. The only trouble is, with the onset of warmer weather, we tend to crave salads more than steaming bowls of pasta. So for this recipe, we decided to have it both ways.