Ken Graham: FROM THE PUBLISHER

Here at The Times, we love the spring for all the reasons you all do, and for another reason as well: Springtime brings great photo opportunities in the Touchet Valley.

We like to keep this newspaper colorful, and that can be tough to do in February. But once the trees turn green and the the flowers are in bloom and people are out enjoying the weather, we put our cameras to work.

Events in Waitsburg and Dayton are great fun to photograph. In our last two issues, we've tried to convey the wide variety of colorful events happening around here: Waitsburg Celebration Days, the Dayton Days Parade, Mule Mania.

Downtown Waitsburg and Dayton were both looking their best over Memorial Day weekend, with flower baskets hanging and flags flying. Both cities' cemeteries were ablaze with flowers and flags as well. All of this thanks to city crews and veterans' groups and other volunteers.

We'll continue to be on the lookout for great photo opportunities in our region, and we invite readers to send us their photos as well.

I'll end this column here, 200 words shorter than normal, so we can run one more photo, taken directly in front of our office in Waitsburg.