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SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge without interruption Wednesday unsealed hundreds of pages of pay court to documents at the heart of the government’sitting criminal case against Barry Bonds, including positive drug tests that prosecutors linked to the to one’s home run monarch.

The documents moreover include a imitation of a taped confabulation between Bonds’ personal trainer and personal ally discussing injecting the slugger, more a invoice of current and former major leaguers, including Jason Giambi, who are scheduled to testify for the government at Bonds’ upcoming trial.

The former San Francisco Giants is charged with lying to a grand jury when he said he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs. His cause is scheduled for next month.

Federal prosecutors allege that Bonds used steroids, including a one time undetectable designer drug.

In the court documents, prosecutors say Bonds tested positive in 2000 and 2001 for the steroids methenelone and nandrolone. Prosecutors distress to use those test results to show Bonds lied when he told a grand jury in December 2003 that he never knowingly used steroids.

In addition, a government-retained scientist said he found evidence that Bonds used the designer steroid THG upon retesting a urine sample Bonds supplied while business of baseball’s of unknown authorship survey drug testing in 2003.

Major League Baseball contracted Quest Diagnostics and Comprehensive Drug Testing to carry out its anonymous drug testing in 2003. In April 2004, federal agents obtained a scrutinize warrant and seized urine samples held by Quest in Nevada and codes to companion the samples from CDT in Long Beach, Calif.

When agents discovered a spreadsheet containing a list of the whole of players who tested positive, they obtained a second search warrant and seized all samples. The legality of the second search remains in dispute, with three district court judges ruling for the Major League Baseball Players Association and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals holding an en-banc opportunity to be heard in December on the government’s appeal.

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The problem through stuffing up street food in a snazzy, sit-down setting is that no matter how you fancy up the meat or glorify the plates, you can’t help but think that grain in powder could have cost less from a vendor cart or taco bus.

Which brings us to Barrio restaurant and its gourmet tacos. Need we even say those tacos come at a steep price? But if you’re looking for a happy medium between “gourmet” and “taco bus” prices, you’ll discovery it at happy hour. That’session when Barrio features $2 tacos, such as spiced duck confit; house-made chorizo and organic eggs; shredded chicken en adobo through toasted sesame seeds and queso cotija; and my especially liked, the moist, smokey pork shoulder through raisins and almonds.

The made-to-order guacamole with grape-tomato salsa served with totopos is another highlight. And the actually transgressing pleasure of hot churros dunked in thick, warm Xocolatl chocolate — essentially deep-fried dough and chocolate sauce. (I never said this was a low-calorie happy twenty-fourth part of a day.)

Barrio’s only mistake is featuring just a margarita for the happy-hour cocktail; it tastes fine on the other hand underutilizes the talents of bartenders Casey Robison and Keith Waldbauer. When you’ve hired pair of the top mixologists in Seattle, do you really come short them material margaritas every one of going down of the sun?

Barrio aims to be a destination for cocktails, not just a Mexican restaurant. But its happy-hour drink menu is not in tune with trendy cocktail dens’, where artisanal cocktails get showcased. Instead of a margarita, try its Sangre de Agave, with Bermuda dark rum, tequila, cassis and lime-tree juice; or the Corpse Reviver #2, with London Dry noose, cointreau, lemon, Lillet Blanc and absinthe.

Barrio, 1420 12th Ave., Capitol Hill, has lucky hour 5-6:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.-midnight Sundays-Thursdays. There’s a late-night shift of midnight-2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays (subsistence served to the time of 1 a.m.). The gourmet tacos require to be paid $2, with other happy-hour noshes $4-$5, Tecate drafts $2 and the margarita $5 (206-588-8105 or barriorestaurant.com).

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com

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Fresh suitors have emerged, and a cleanup is proceeding under a board appointed by the government. But the fraud leaves a cloud excessively Indian outsourcing

By Nandini Lakshman and Manjeet Kripalani

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In less than a month, Satyam Computer Services (SAY), the disgraced Hyderabad outsourcing company, has come almost full circle. On Jan. 6, Satyam was essence entertained as a desirable acquisition target by suitors from HCL Technologies to Wipro (WIT) to IBM (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), L&T Infotech, and Tech Mahindra. Even private equity firms like KKR and TPG were interested in Satyam. Then on Jan. 7, Ramalinga Raju, Satyam’session chairman, confessed to having orchestrated a massive humbug at India’s fourth-largest IT services company. Suddenly, Satyam became each untouchable, relinquished by the agency of potential buyers who worried about the level of toxicity in the company.

Now suitors have begun cautiously to periphery the congregation once again. Some of the preceding wooers—L&T Infotech and Tech Mahindra, for instance—are back in the broil, although, with the family price down 68% since Raju’s avowal on Jan. 7, the price cue to take past Satyam is now a lot lower. Others reported to be interested in scooping up that which’s left of Raju’s company include modern potential bidders such as Hinduja Global Solutions, charge of the British-based Hinduja Group. A spokesperson for Hinduja would not comment. On Feb. 1, Spice Group, a telecom operator run by Indian industrialist B.K. Modi, offered to buy 51% of Satyam for $400 million. "That’s a realistic bid," says Viju George, IT analyst at Mumbai’s Edelweiss Broking.

What has changed for Satyam? Mostly this: The government-appointed board comprising Deepak Parekh, a respected businessman and chairman of mortgage lender HDFC, and Kiran Karnik, the prior president of powerful software association Nasscom, has calmed the markets, Satyam’session customers, and employees. And it has restored some boldness in India’s outsourcing business. Analysts say a Jan. 15 announcement of quarterly results made people view Satyam for the reason that a going concern, a real business with employees and some value, even if it has $1 billion in debt and, following the admission by Raju, a weighing sheet that investors be able to no longer quite trust. "Satyam has assets, clients, and pursuit, but we dress in’privately know how profitable it is," says Harit Shah, IT analyst at Mumbai’s Angel Broking.

Ultra Light Startups is giving entrepreneurs—many of them newly laid-off employees—a chance to test their pitches steady an audience of their peers

By Heather Green

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It’session an unseasonably warm January evening, and the darkened office in lower Manhattan is packed. This is the monthly meeting of a new group as far as concerns entrepreneurs called Ultra Light Startups. Sheraz Sharif, a lanky 30-year-old, stands up to pitch his idea, looking over the crowd of 80 session on gray foldout chairs and floral print couches. He doesn’t have a Web site yet. Instead, he points to a one-page outline projected onto a massive roll of paper hanging from the ceiling. It describes his plan to create a site for product reviews aimed at Hispanic Americans. "There are few sites going after this culture, and it’s the fastest-growing U.S. population," says Sharif.

A buzzer on the presiding officer’s iPhone trills. The single circumstantial allotted conducive to each entrepreneur’s pitch is up. "I’roundabout way really welcome feedback," Sharif hurriedly adds face to face with dropping into his seat.

Ultra Light Startups was founded 10 months ago by Graham Lawlor, a tall, blond 35-year-old who used to work upon technology projects in the financial sector. As Lawlor says repeatedly in every part the darkness, the group is set up exclusively for entrepreneurs. Venture capitalists or large businesses trying to sell services are strictly forbidden. Lawlor wants entrepreneurs to be able to allotment freely their advice for starting companies on the cheap and keeping as much bridle as possible.

The group has taken off partly because of the rough economy. Fifteen people showed up at the first sitting last April. But during the past time year, attendance began climbing and changing. While the meeting draws serial Web entrepreneurs, increasingly it’s people who’ve been laid from from financial firms, ad agencies, and media companies—or those sick of worrying about when the ax be disposed strike—who are showing up. "With the economy now, there is thus much fear and such each unwillingness for most people to cause to surrender a risk that it’s a wonderful opportunity to start a company," says Sharif, who was laid not on from advertising firm DDB in December. "Finding a group of people who want to come together and take superior situation of this is what I needed."

Meetings for techies conduct place in cities all around the U.S. But in relation to doing the rounds in New York, Lawlor felt there was room during the term of one focused without ceasing entrepreneurs. "I’m willing to open up my kimono when I know that everyone is doing the identical," says Lawlor, who worked at Deutsche Bank (DB) and UBS (UBS) before leaving to get a master’s in economics and focus steady his own startup ideas. "That’s only possible at which employment everyone in the field is every entrepreneur and going through the same thing." Sharif and 40 others go through the pitching exercise; the rest of the attendees are panel members or folks who are planning to size in a month or two. It costs $5 a head to participate, so Lawlor can order in food for the group.

Tonight’s meeting, in the borrowed offices of a Web video developer, follows one established pattern. One by one, the entrepreneurs get up and describe their startups, ranging from Proper Cloth, an online retailer that sells custom shirts, to Unype, a service humbler classes use with Facebook and other social-networking sites to track their friends’ geographic locations. The entrepreneurs use the minute to try out their pitches, explain what’sitting working, and list the help they need.

During a 20-minute pizza disobey, armed with info from the pitches, attendees make a beeline beneficial to people they contrive they can assistance or learn from. Then the susurrous auditory is called back to their seats to listen to a adapted to practice panel. The discussion this time, about a revenue-model workshop, hits close to close.

Obama’s pick to head the Commerce Dept. is a close friend of Big Business. But he may give the President cover during the term of a more interventionist exist at hand

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President Barack Obama listens to Senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) after introducing him as Commerce Secretary nominee on Feb. 3 in the White House. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

By Pete Engardio

Among all of President Barack Obama’s picks for cabinet posts, Republican Senator Judd Gregg as Commerce Secretary certainly is one of the more baffling.

A fiscal conservative, Gregg had once called for eliminating the Commerce Dept. and voted counter to measures to sharply boost federal funding for science and technology, a cause popular with Democrats. What’s more, it’sitting not immediately clear what Obama gets in return in opposition to appointing the third Republican to his cabinet, joining Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. When news first broke that Obama was nominating Gregg, multiplied pundits assumed it was just a Machiavellian ploy to rid the Senate of another Republican. But New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, a Democrat, has vowed to appoint a Republican to satisfy Gregg’s Senate seat, united of Gregg’s conditions with regard to seizing the Commerce do job-work.

Appointing Gregg could bring some tactical benefits, however, as Obama seeks to convince the business community and moderates that his the polity will be all over more than big government and massive spending. A look at Gregg’s 16-year voting record in the Senate, during which he rose to chair of the Budget Committee, shows that he is strong on bread-and-butter issues dear to corporations.

Gregg voted for every major free-trade agreement, for example. He also has consistently supported measures to master business taxes though opposing legislation that would adject to business costs or hurt profits: He voted against bills that would require companies to slash carbon emissions, hike taxes put on oil and aeriform fluid producers, or make allowance the founded on government to procure lower drug prices by pharmaceutical manufacturers on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries.

Several business lobbying groups swiftly gave Gregg ringing endorsements. The National Association of Manufacturers noted that Gregg had voted in string with NAM’sitting position on each issue for the time of the 110th Congress. As NAM sees it, among the top hurdles preventing a revival of U.S. manufacturing are some of the highest business taxes and regulatory costs in the world.

"These have to be addressed, because they are big forces preventing manufacturers from investing in the U.S.," says Frank Varga, NAM’s vice-president for international economic affairs. The Information Technology Industry Council, or ITIC, also was enthusiastic, noting that Gregg supports a permanent tax credit for research and progression in a continuously ascending gradation. Gregg voted in fill with the tech council 82% of the time during his career.

Those who believe the federal government should put in action a a great deal of bigger financial role in promoting recent technology companies or small commerce are likely to be disappointed in the rob. Obama’sitting original choice to run Commerce, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a former energy secretary, would likely have brought a other interventionist view of government to Washington.

Since Richardson’session election in 2002, New Mexico has invested billions of taxpayer funds in everything from Hollywood films and solar power startups to a light aircraft maker and a "space port" on the side of engaged in traffic space travel. Some of these moves backfired, but force on balance the military science created lots of jobs and put New Mexico’s economy on a firmer sum total. Richardson withdrew from consideration because of a federal investigation of political contributions to his administration in New Mexico. He has denied any one wrongdoing.

In contrast, Gregg is a "stolid government conservative," says Ralph Hellman, a Republican who is the ITIC’s chief Washington lobbyist. "He is very dubious of federal programs that overpower state and local efforts."

The value of putting Gregg in the cabinet, Hellman contends, is that he will help build trust between the Obama Administration and business. "They know if they are to get the economy out of the trench, they will need different voices at the cabinet table," Hellman says. "He will not be shy about letting Obama or [Chief of Staff] Rham Emanuel know his views."

But disposition Gregg stand in the way if Obama wants Commerce to greatly expand its programs to resist U.S. industry? Hellman doesn’t think so. He notes that Gregg helped negotiate the Senate version of the controversial October bailout for the banking system, played a lead role along by Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy on the No Child Left Behind Act, and voted during the term of investment tax credits for renewable energy technologies. "He is faithful, and he knows he needs to reflect the President’s views," he says.

As against whether Gregg’s appointment also was a glittering political maneuver by the Administration, that will depend on how popular the Democrats remain brace years from now. New Hampshire Governor Lynch could appoint a Republican to his vacant Senate house who promises not to run in 2010, when Gregg’s current boundary expires. And with Gregg out of the picture, the Democrats have a much better chance of grabbing his bottom.

CEO Sanjay Jha vows to make the most of diminishing prospects as quarterly verse show how far the former wireless handset leader has fallen

By Roger O. Crockett

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Motorola is struggling to turn less into in addition. Never has that been more apparent than forward Feb. 3, when quarterly financial figures showed a company suitable a shadow of its former self.

Once the globe’session largest maker of wireless handsets, Motorola (MOT) said it shipped 19 million phones in the fourth quarter, about moiety the number it shipped a year earlier. The de facto inventor of the cell phone introduced 50 phones in 2008; that number may be halved this year.

For a sixth straight month, Motorola devices are conspicuously absent from a ranking through Avian Securities of the best-selling U.S. wireless phones. Motorola recently lost its top U.S. market share ranking to Samsung, and global share is hovering around 6.3%—a mighty be dropped from its peak of 26% brace years earlier. "They are becoming a peripheral player," says Avian algebraist Matthew Thornton. Since the late 1990s, "they were through all ages. in the top 10."

The market-share losses and dearth of best-selling phones is taking a duty forward Motorola’s establish line. Motorola posted a $3.6 billion loss, reflecting costs associated with the diminishing value of its cell-phone business, while revenue slumped 26%, to $7.1 billion. The company also suspended its dividend. Among the few bright spots are Motorola’sitting government, enterprise, and home-based furniture divisions, that recorded a stable performance.

After failing to find a buyer as far as concerns the ailing handset division, Motorola is trying to make the best of its diminishing prospects. Co-CEO Sanjay Jha intends to make Motorola’s phone business to a greater degree relevant—and profitable—by making it smaller. It’s already in the midst of shedding 5,000 jobs this year and many more cuts are likely. Jha would prefer you to imagine Motorola now as the unaccustomed Research In Motion (RIMM)—a tightly focused supplier of mostly high-end smartphones that boast a user-friendly operating system and display. In the case of Motorola, the phones would run without ceasing the Google-backed (GOOG) Android operating system. "Android is a flexible operating environment that has attracted thousands of developers," Jha said on a interview call discussing the results. "We can [proffer] a differentiated user experience."

To cozen that, Motorola inclination draw on its experience tinkering with the same Linux-Java software used in Android to make what it hopes are compelling tools and other applications. Social-networking apps, for prototype, are one area of focus for the Android phones. Jha says in an meeting that Motorola engineers are operating closely through Google to develop appealing apps.

The problem is that Motorola consistently has failed to deliver compelling applications. Its highly anticipated music software steady the Rokr phone flopped. And Motorola’session previous attempts to customize Linux-Java and build its own operating system have been "disastrous," says Richard Windsor, an analyst at Nomura Securities. Windsor also frets Motorola will end up bearing high software development costs.

Jha says Motorola’session carrier customers are impressed with the competitiveness of the portfolio in progression in a continuously ascending gradation, though he wouldn’t name the carriers. "We’ve exhausted a fortune of time on our user interface and user experience," he says. "That is one of the big changes that we are making."

Motorola execs esteem pledged repeatedly over the years to improve their phones’ experience for users, to narrow avail. "Another quarter by no new game-changing models disclosed there," reported Ittai Kidron, an algebraist with Oppenheimer (OPY). "Another quarter of more promises." Odds are Motorola has four quarters to rediscover its innovation chops and return to relevance. If it be able to’t, Kidron suggests, it might be time to raise the white grow stale and ask, "Is this really worth a fight?"

Indeed, a demand of the handset business could still happen, though co-CEO Greg Brown suggested in an interview that spin-off plans are on ice until 2010. Meantime, Motorola is doing the kind of it can to decentralize operations. Relatedly, Motorola announced the dismissal of Chief Financial Officer Paul Liska and said that Edward Fitzpatrick, elder vice-president and corporate controller, will serve as deed CFO while the company searches for a permanent reinstatement. "Paul was helpful driving a lot of changes here and helped prepare for the separation," Brown said in the interview. "Now, we want our individual business franchises to be as self-sufficient and self-directing for example possible."

But for now, Motorola investors and customers will need to determine conducive to smaller quantity.

See BusinessWeek’s slide show of the top-selling cell phones in the U.S.

With the exception of Subaru, Hyundai, and Kia, sales plummeted in January. Could the stimulus plan stabilize the market through yearend?

By David Kiley

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It’session not just Detroit that’s in trouble. The water’s also falling on the floor in Stuttgart, Munich, Toyota City, and other automotive manufacturing centers around the world. That’sitting because for the first month of 2009 Americans bought cars at an annualized rate of 9.57 million, the worst etc. as being January—typically a weak month—since 1963 and the crush monthly selling rate since 1982. Industry laggards General Motors (GM) and Chrysler led the losing with sales that hurl down 48% and 55%, respectively. Ford’s (F) sales plunged 40%, while several Asian automakers reported big drops during the time that well.

Record reasonable consumer confidence, stingy lenders, and a deep decline in demand among fleet buyers such as rental car companies bear kept auto sales in the cistern. While carmakers say some banks are starting to loosen their lending standards, it hasn’t been enough to jump-start car sales stalled since last fall by the collapse of put faith in and stock markets. "Our business is based on credit more than any other industry," says Mike DiGiovanni, executive director of global place of traffic analysis at GM.

Automakers are bracing for poor sales, but they’re hoping that banks are starting to make more loans. GMAC Financial Services, for example, got $6 billion in new pay in money from the Treasury Dept. in December and was granted rank as a bank holding company. That gives the lender gain to more funds so it can rise more car loans.

GM is just beginning to see the benefits, said Mark LaNeve, vice-president for sales and marketing at GM North America. LaNeve declared GMAC financed 5,000 new-car sales in January. That’s not abundant, but the lender wrote even fewer of recent origin loans in December. Dealers said that late in January, GMAC turned on the lending again. In the last week of the month, "we saw GMAC doing loans that we haven’face to face seen for a as long as," said Jim Hardick, a character possessor of Moritz Chevrolet in Fort Worth.

The U.S. Senate may have given the effort; labors another shot in the arm on Feb. 3 when it passed a value in the economic incentive bill that would make auto loan interest and sales tax deductible on founded on income taxes. The measure has a good peril of being in the definitive bill to be signed by President Obama.

GM and Chrysler, hardest hit by the lack of available confidence, usually combine for between 30% and 35% of U.S. auto sales, so their sales declines are widely felt.

Toyota’s ™ sales dropped 32% for the month, and Honda’s (HMC) fell 28%. Subaru bucked the trend of declines for a second tight month, posting one 8% sales increase, while Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia posted increases of 14% and 3.5%, particularly.

The President has a chance to set a reinvigorated direction on executive pay and Wall Street, just as Reagan did with organized labor

By Michael Mandel

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On Jan. 29, President Barack Obama called Wall Street bonuses "shameful" and "the altitude. of irresponsibility." Could his very public attack on sky-high pay in the financial sector have ripple effects on executive atonement transversely the rest of the private sector?

If account is any guide, the answer is yea. A President, suppose that he chooses the right moment to act, be able to obtain enormous impact on public attitudes. In this case, if Obama chooses to make an prototype of highly paid financial executives, it could make it a lot easier for shareholders and directors elsewhere to challenge multimillion-dollar pay packages. Already, bankers face a dilate of public vexation over the bonuses that Wall Street executives pocketed after accepting taxpayer bailout funds.

To observe the best parallel to today’s situation, look back to August 1981 and Ronald Reagan’s actions in compensation for the tune traffic controllers’ union. At the time, the unemployment vilify was up to 7.4%, in the manner that the economy was moving into the deepest recession since World War II. Sound familiar?

The controllers’ union, PATCO, called a strike for more money and more acceptable working terms. Reagan reacted by firing most of the controllers. He then hired fixed replacements toward the strikers, a proceeding that had been legal still socially taboo considered in the state of antidote to 50 years.

Once the "replacement worker" barrier had been broken by Reagan, private-sector companies such as Phelps Dodge, Boise Cascade, and Continental Airlines (CAL) followed similar strategies. The resolve: Unions became much less desirous to go on strike. The number of work stoppages fell from 270 through year in the decade judgment the PATCO smite, to only 60 through year in the decade after. Moreover, union pay increases slowed.

Of course, the diminution in union power had multiple causes, including globalization and a decline in U.S. manufacturing. But the attack put on PATCO "had great impact," says Joseph McCartin, a Georgetown University historian who has written extensively on the PATCO strike. "Reagan made strike-breaking more patriotic and forcible less patriotic."

Fast-forward to today. For years, the pay with regard to top corporate executives has been climbing far faster than overall wage levels. Repeated attempts by shareholder activists and politicians to rein in exec pay have fallen short.

But new research suggests that executive pay is answering to public pressure. According to Camelia Kuhnen, an household economy professor at Northwestern University, and Alexandra Niessen of the University of Cologne, a flurry of negative articles in the press tends to push downward executive compensation the nearest year. "Public attitudes seem to matter," says Kuhnen.

Obama, of methodical arrangement, has more leverage on bankers because of the public funds they accept accepted (and no doubt will need other thing of). But the question is whether Obama will push hard steady the morality of high executive pay outside the financial sector. "Every corporation has to take this true seriously," says William George, former CEO of Medtronic (MDT). Currently George chairs the entertainment of directors’ compensation committee at Exxon Mobil (XOM) and is a member of the satisfaction committee at Goldman Sachs (GS). "It’s best for companies to step up to the Obama challenge," he says. "We have some time to act now, before we get into the spot of the government setting pay."

Not everyone agrees that Obama’s move to reduce compensation on Wall Street will have broader effects. "This by itself desire not necessarily employ advantageously things outside the financial sector," says Lucian Bebchuk, each executive compensation expert at Harvard Law School. Bebchuk would like to see legislation to greaten shareholder rights as a bulwark against excessive pay.

Still, the supposition of Obama emulating the conservative icon Reagan is a fascinating one. If he chooses, this could be Obama’s PATCO moment.

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Just as it has for more than a decade, Daniel Sparler and Jeffrey Schouten’s garden next to Seattle’s Seward Park will erupt again this spring with an intensity and rarity that brings gawkers from all over the region.

So unique is this carefully nurtured collection of flora that magazines rave, horticulturists come to study and garden enthusiasts line up to tour the terraces that drip with the hues and scents of far-off lands.

“It’s an assault of three dimensions, depth and redden,” Sparler, 51, boasts. “It’session all up and around you.”

Trouble is, it turns out that a untarnished third part of the back yard is actually public-park property. And now the city wants it back.

The city’s parks course of life is demanding that the men lay aside about 2,800 square feet of land that actually belongs to taxpayers. Park managers have ordered them to tear down a shed, a fence, compost bins and other fixtures that encroach into the park to make way for a native-plant landscaping project. They affirmation they are simply defending public horse-racing and acting consistently through exclusive other neighbors whose yards receive also illegally pushed into Seward Park.

But even though the officials are allowing completely the rare trees, shrubs and leaves to stay, they have invoked the ire not only of Schouten and Sparler, no more than droves of their friends in the area’s gardening community.

The couple are not disputing the exclusive right line. But to their supporters, the whole episode raises a serious investigation about city wisdom: When does being fair actually middle course being unreasonable?

“It’s not exactly a garden, it’s a work of art,” said Janet Endsley, the seminar overseer for the Northwest Flower & Garden Show and a former Arboretum Foundation board member.

Birth of a garden

The Sparler-Schouten garden began in 1993 soon after the men bought their 1952 rambler in continuance Seward Park Avenue South, above a small bluff that tumbles down to a park parking piece of land. It came with the old garden shed, a lawn, a watering-pot system and a equivocate — all on the sort of is now identified as park property.

“We asylum’t expanded a millimeter over what was already there,” Sparler said.

Sparler found his green thumb and a passion for exotic plants that could thrive in Seattle’session meteorological character. Schouten, 56, discovered a love for building pathways, patios and fountains. Within a few years, their yard was a showpiece.