| Dalliance with dahlias blooms again
I feel like I have come full circle in my garden remembering my first attempts at planting a few wax begonias among my permanent landscape plants and anxiously waiting for my dinner plate dahlias to bloom. That was 30 years ago. Since then I have cycled back to a sturdy shrub-filled landscape again and I am eyeballing the latest and greatest dahlias on the Web. There was a time when I wouldn't be caught dead with a dahlia in my garden. Too easy to grow and too ostentatious, with loud screaming colors and gaudy forms. All I wanted for two decades or more were fussy perennials and weird rockery plants that were difficult to grow and impossible to find. Yet looking back, there was a lot of bloom there for that dahlia buck. And they can't be beat for their heat- and drought-tolerance.
Your Triangle guide to outdoor-concert venues
Coolers allowed: No; but guests can bring small snacks and picnic foods in clear plastic zip-lock bags plus one sealed bottle of water per patron.Lawn chairs: Low lawn chairs (9 inches or less off the ground) are allowed in; or they can be rented for $5.Ticketing: Variable service charges, assessed at Ticketmaster outlets and the venue box office.Details: The Triangle's largest (20,000 capacity) venue only has about half its dates on the books. More dates in August and September are coming.* Note: A new Wal-Mart, at Rock Quarry and Sunnybrook roads, has taken a space Walnut Creek used for overflow parking during sold-out shows."We're working on repurposing our parking areas within the facility," says general manager Emma Bennett. "Finding 25 more spaces here or 50 more there. We'll have to sharpen our pencils on that."Koka Booth Amphitheatre at Regency Park (KB)8003 Regency Parkway, Cary462-2025www.boothamphitheatre.comSummerfest (www.ncsymphony.org) (shows designated in grid by **)Parking: Included as part of ticket price.
Aerate first when reseeding the lawn
Q: I am going to try to renovate my lawn by reseeding. I have heard you say how important aerating is but I'm wondering about the order of things. Should we sprinkle seed first and then aerate to push the seeds into the ground? Fertilize first or second? Please spell it out as my husband and I have been disagreeing on the proper order. -- M.B., Olympia M.B.: Always aerate first. Poking holes into the turf allows the seed, fertilizer and dolomite lime to get down to the grass roots as well as improving drainage and air circulation. Think of it in alphabetical order: aerate, fertilize, lime, new topsoil, reseed, water. If you don't take all the steps for lawn improvement every year, the most important two are aeration and fertilization. Just don't lime and use a fertilize the same day as these two can hook up and slow the nutrient movement into the grass roots.
Penn College Competes in Student Career Days at Michigan State
A dozen students from Pennsylvania College of Technologys School of Natural Resources Management recently participated in 16 horticulture-related events at the Professional Landscape Networks Student Career Days competition at Michigan State University. Two of the students finished near the top of their respective categories during the March 29-to-April 1 event: Anthony S. Moyer, Strausstown, was fourth out of 78 contestants in Safety Management, and Eric M. Sauers, of Williamsport, placed sixth among 47 entries in Exterior Landscape Design. Both enrolled in the colleges landscape/nursery technology major, which since has been revised into ornamental horticulture with separate emphases in landscape technology, plant production and horticulture retail management.
Sauers also competed in the Annual and Perennial Identification category, while Moyer was a team member in the Arboriculture Techniques and Paver Installation events.
Provost wife opens gallery of watercolor landscapes
What's the secret to making art that stands out? For Alix Travis, the answer to this question lies in simply looking around.
The artist and wife of interim provost Frederick Travis is featured in "Luminosity," a new exhibition at the River Winds Gallery in Beacon, N.Y.
"Luminosity" collects 42 of Travis' watercolor landscape paintings, featuring traditional landscapes at home and abroad. Travis said she uses watercolors due to the way the light interacts with the image – the luminosity for which the exhibition is named.
"The reason why there's that glow (in the painting) is because you're painting on white watercolor paper, and the paper shines through that color," she said. "So you can get very luminous paintings, and that's what mine are known for."
Painting, Travis said, was the logical "second career" she decided to take after spending 30 years working as a librarian and raising a family.
|
