Sweet smell's not just java at Bellevue coffee bar, where everything's coming up roses

The fragrance of roses in small vases on the tables blends with the heady scent of espresso at the Main Street Tully's Coffee in Bellevue. On the counter stands a large vase, filled with branches of pink dogwood.

Jinda Rosmann lives a few blocks south of the store and delivers fresh flowers to the popular coffee bar twice a week. She stops at the store more often, watering the arrangements and trimming stems.

"My flowers feed my drug of choice: coffee," Rosmann said. "I approached the manager a little more than a year ago, asking if they'd trade coffee for flowers. She said yes."

Professionally she works at Highland Middle School as a special-education instructional assistant. Gardening has grown on Rosmann since she and her family moved to Bellevue 2-1/2 years ago. Her husband came to the Northwest to start an Internet business. They bought the house and the huge, already established garden at the urging of their two teenage daughters.

"Our daughters said if we would buy this house, they'd help an hour a day on the garden," Rosmann said. "They're learning with us. My oldest daughter, Andrea, correctly diagnosed a black spot on roses."

The garden includes rosebushes, irises, peonies, lilacs and lilies.

For Rosmann, the garden has been an educational process.

"I'm a ignorant girl from Chicago, and the only roses I knew were red ones from a florist," she said. "We have 100 rosebushes, and not a one is red."

Carisa Hammons, manager of the Main Street Tully's, doesn't care what color the flowers are.

"We get nonstop compliments from our customers," she said. "Everyone loves them."

Atten — hut! The Eastside Babes for Boobs team has its own drill sergeant.

Brett Thompson of Bellevue, an Army reserve sergeant first class, joined the more than 50 women training for the Avon 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk. In August, participants, who have raised at least $1,900 each, will walk a 60-mile route from Enumclaw to Seattle.

Volunteer trainer Jill Kosty of Bellevue wasn't sure how a senior drill instructor used to yelling at military recruits would mix with her team of mostly middle-aged walkers and talkers. But when Thompson volunteered to help train, she accepted his offer. The women, she said, love having him in the group.

Thompson leads the stretching and warm-up routines on Saturdays when he's not pulling reserve duty.

"I heard about the walk last year," he said. "My first thought was, they don't know what tough is. Then my mom got breast cancer. It was a humbling experience to discover the network of support and to watch her go through it. I decided to walk for my mom."

He has immense respect for the group of women. "We don't have to yell or anything," he said. "These women have the discipline. If anything, they're intimidating in their dedication. Most of us have already logged 500 miles in training.

"I do tease them that they're more pleasant to the eyes and easier to train than the Army troops."

Popular topper: Jacqueline Sorensen Pinch of Redmond discovered the way to make an impression at a luncheon: wear a show-stopping hat.

She attended U.S. Sen. Patty Murray's fund-raising luncheon at Seattle's Westin Hotel recently wearing a big white straw hat accented with a melon-colored scarf that matched her silk dress and jacket.

"It was hilarious," she said. "People kept coming up to compliment me on my hat. I was the only one wearing a hat at the luncheon.

"Even when I was leaving the hotel and going down the escalator, a man coming up said, 'Oh, my, what a beautiful hat.' It made this old girl feel good."

Bellevue eyesores: With the announcement that Lincoln Square construction will be put on hold, downtown Bellevue has become an economic war zone.

Residents and nearby businesses suffer along with the developers when the partially built structures are abandoned.

In addition to Lincoln Square, there is the plastic-wrapped yellow building called Ida Terrace Condominiums at the corner of Bellevue Way and Northeast 12th Street. Construction halted so long ago there that the weeds are waist-high. And then there's the big hole-in-the-ground at 108th Avenue and Northeast 4th that was supposed to be the Bellevue Technology Tower.

Now wouldn't that make an awesome skateboard park?

Sherry Grindeland's column appears Thursday and Saturday in the Eastside edition of the Seattle Times. She can be reached at 206-515-5633 or sgrindeland@seattletimes.com.