As my younger brother Tim frantically searched the house for his high school history paper due the following day, I rolled my eyes in disgust. This wasn’t the first time the dog ate his homework. It was a habitual occurrence, and, being his older sister who fixed all of life’s mishaps, he tried to make it my issue, too.

“Jackie, have you seen it?” he hollered, rummaging through the papers strewn all over his bed and on the floor. “I need your help!”

I met Stacy and Shay Mulcare more than 30 years ago in Baltimore. They were my older sister’s “cool” friends from Towson State University.

Stacy was pretty, bubbly and vibrant. Shay had long hair in a ponytail and a thin mustache – the ’90s version of Capt. Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp’s character in “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

Use native plants to replace stinkwort

As a professional, I have been converting weedy hillsides in Los Altos Hills back to native grasslands and wildflower fields. During that time, a new noxious weed, stinkwort, started growing along Interstate 280, then its seeds spread off the freeway onto town properties. Currently, Stinkwort grows along nearly every road in Los Altos Hills, and is moving into the fields around homes and soon will be in all of the Peninsula’s open spaces.

To manage this new weed, every plant needs to be string-trimmed or treated with herbicides, including Caltrans and Stanford University hills spraying their infestations, in August and September each year.

For years, the inscrutable gray monolith had loomed over us from the summit of the forbidden mountain. Now the curse has been lifted, the prohibition ended – how could we not hurry to visit the newly opened summit of Mount Umunhum?

When I moved to the Peninsula, Mount Umunhum was an off-limits Air Force base, directing the surveillance of the wasp-tailed submarine chasers flying out of Moffett Field. With the end of the Cold War, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District purchased the summit and its surroundings, but it was still off-limits, poisoned by toxic waste left from its radar and other installations. The Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 damaged the radar tower, making the location still more hazardous.

The Los Altos City Council directed commissions including Parks and Recreation to provide input on the proposed First Street Green. I attended the Sept. 13 meeting, and the Town Crier captured it well.

One thing I didn’t understand then and I still don’t – a call for a cost-benefit analysis of the proposed First Street Green. At a high level, it breaks down to this: (1) development cost to the city of Los Altos – zero, and (2) benefit to public – millions.

With Hurricane Harvey and subsequent flooding in Houston, we have seen how fast an emergency can overtake our lives. Now, before the winter rains, is the perfect time for people to prepare their homes, schools and businesses, and the Santa Clara Valley Water District is doing that as well.

The theme of September’s National Preparedness Month was “Disasters Don’t Plan Ahead. You Can.” The campaign focused on being prepared. Floods are one emergency we could face any year here in Santa Clara County, and as the county’s flood protection agency, the water district takes preparation seriously. In District 7, which includes Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View, two major flood protection projects are well underway.