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So much going on this weekend — a double header of the Avocado Festival on Sunday and Earth Day on Monday.

• It’s All Relative – art display at the library (Mission/Alvarado) – paintings by Nina Montalabano and sculpture by David Thor – til May 10
• Winners of the Plein Air competition – on display at The Gallery on Main (119 North Main) until May 6
• Story Trail – Live Oak Park – in honor of Earth Day, story cards will be along hiking trails – April 20 to 27

Friday – April 19

• Live Music – Casa Estrella (3575 South Mission) – 5 to 8 pm
• Live music – Brothers Bistro – 5:30-8:30 pm on their garden patio (beside Major Market) – Ron Ebel
• Harryaoke Friday – karaoke at Harry’s Sports Bar and Grill downtown at 8 pm
• Mission Theater – Pirates of the Caribbean with Johnny Depp – 6:30 pm – arrive early for early bird prices and to get your beer/wine/soda plus hot dogs, natchos and pizza – trailer

Saturday – April 20

• Trails Committee Volunteer Event for Earth Day – Fallbrook Land Conservancy – meet at 8:30 am at Palomares House (1815 South Stage Coach Lane) to carpool OR meet at 8:45 am at Karen Tucker Preserve at Hellers Bend (south end of Heller’s Bend Road, just off South Mission Road)
• NO Farmers Market — CANCELLED — Elder St will host the Farmers Market during the Avocado Festival on Sunday April 21
• Final Downtown Cleanup before the Avocado Festival AND in celebration of Earth Day – 9 am – meet in the parking lot behind the Chamber of Commerce (between the library and the Chamber of Commerce) – kids get community service credits – for info call Save Our Forest / Jackie Heyneman 760-645-3515 or Nancy 973-634-7329 
• Earth Day Walk – Los Jilgueros Preserve – 9 am – led by Susan Liebes, the Chair of the Fallbrook Land Conservancy
• Electronics recycling – Fallbrook High (2400 South Stage Coach Lane) – 9 am to 1 pm
  
• Live Music – Casa Estrella (3575 South Mission) – 5 to 8 pm

Sunday – April 21 – Fallbrook Avocado Festival

• Swirl & Swing Soiree – swing dancing at Monserate Vineyard – 4 to 8 pm – info/tickets

Monday – April 22 – Earth Day

Lots of events around San Diego County — Earth Month // Entrance to all national parks is free

• Earth Day Cleanup – 10 am to noon – Palomar College (35090 Horse Ranch Creek Road) – sponsored by Live Well San Diego – refreshments and supplies provided
  

Elementary school kids are invited to decorate an avocado and enter it in the Best Dressed Avocado contest at the Avocado Festival on Sunday. Prizes for the winners!

If making people out of avocados doesn’t get your kids interested, how about creating a car? The AVO 500 RACE is also open to elementary kids.

One more chance for BIG Avocado Fest clean up on Saturday morning!   Our merchants are depending on all of us to make our town ready for our guests! 

Kids – Get community service credits and help Fallbrook at the sane time. It’s a win/win! 

Meet behind the Chamber of Commerce at 9 am on Saturday April 20.

For info call Save Our Forest / Jackie Heyneman 760-645-3515 or Nancy 973-634-7329. 

Drop by the Main Stage/Beer Garden (Scrappy’s Tire at Main/College). The first ten folks to register will get to test their strength holding a bag of avocados with a straight arm. Prizes for the winners!

Two contests: 12 pm and 2:30 pm

From the Chamber of Commerce:

The Annual Avocado Festival benefits the community of Fallbrook in many more ways than people realize. It celebrates our agricultural heritage while providing an opportunity for entertainment and camaraderie; it brings large numbers of visitors to our town who will one day return to shop, to sightsee, and spend some time here; it provides significant economic benefits to our local businesses and community groups; and it generates enormous exposure of our community, both locally and regionally, through the broad advertising and promotional activities that accompany the Festival.

People come to Fallbrook for this event from all over the United States. The day-of-event zip code research shows an average of 38% of the attendees live outside of San Diego County. Attendees have come from states as far away as the Eastern Seaboard and the Pacific Northwest. Attendees also arrive from many different nearby counties, including Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, and Los Angeles counties. The majority of visitors to the Avocado Festival arrive from San Diego County communities.

Thus year’s Fallbrook Art Association (FAA) Plein Air art contestants did not disappoint. Painters/ artists picked great locations in the Village  to paint areas,  images and points of interest that represent  quintessential Fallbrook. Painters signed in at 9 am, picked a spot, and then painted furiously in order to turn in their finished painting by 2 pm.

The winners of the competition are on display at The Gallery on Main (119 North Main) until May 6.

Here’s the First Prize winner: Susan De’Armond:

Second place went to Francesca Nunez Bailey:

Here’s the third place winner, Debbie Krentz Johnson:

Honorable Mention was also awarded to Patty Mangels:

Honorable Mention was also awarded to Ruth Parker, the co-director of the FAA Gallery:

Photos/text supplied by Nancy Heins-Glaser and Julie Compton

The Avocado Festival will again have a competition for people who dress up as avocados to show their festival spirit. Check out this costume from last year:

Nancy Heins-Glaser interviewed author Patricia Watts at the April 13 meeting of the local chapter of AAUW. The presentation was called: “In Conversation With…” and is part of the AAUW’s focus on the importance of honoring women’s voices.

Watts spoke of her background as the child (and eventually spouse) of military men. She has traveled extensively and she didn’t begin school until the first grade as there was no kindergarten available. As a teen she had notes all over the house as writing was easier for her than talking. She worked as an investigative for the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights as a paralegal and she has also been a newspaper editor in several locations including Texas and Alaska. Attending and completing college at Humboldt State University was complicated by frequent moves, with her husband in the military and having two kids. 

In all Watts has written five books – two as a co-author with a known mystery writing partner, Stan Jones, and three of her own. Patricia is currently active in La Jolla Pen Women and AAUW, San Diego Chapter.  Watts has presented at Liberty Station San Diego Writers Guild and continues to work as a manuscript editor. 

Watts discussed her writing process, the ins and outs of publishing novels and the importance of earnest journalism – now more than ever. Watts also read an excerpt from her most recent novel Paper Targets where she chronicles the lives of two friends – each with a different way of handling injustices and subtle cruelty of the men in their lives 

Text/photo supplied by Nancy Heins-Glaser