| Shade, soil are important factors
Every gardener plants with success in mind. How to achieve optimum results with a bountiful vegetable crop and abundant flower blooms is what every gardener hopes for with each new gardening season. Some things we have no control over. Mother Nature may give us an unexpected frost at the beginning of the growing season as well as periods of either excessive rain or drought throughout the summer months. But there are some factors that should be considered to help ensure a successful gardening season. As you decide what to plant, keep in mind the needs of shade or sun for each species. This can vary from full sun to deep shade. I usually make this assessment each year as the landscape changes. For example, removal of a tree or shrubs may create more sunny areas.
CJ: At Pleasant Hills, lush lawsuits are growing among the roses
A gazillionaire claims he got clipped but gooooood by a landscaper, who counters that the caretaker did it.All is not well at Pleasant Hills, the Wayzata estate of Edward H. (Ted) Hamm, who is suing John Vieau, owner of the Golden Valley gardening service Final Touch Inc. for a bill in excess of $7 million run up from 2001 to 2004.In lawsuits scheduled for trial in September, Hamm alleges that Vieau and his co-defendant, a former Final Touch G.M. named Karen Howells, "fraudulently schemed" to obtain "many millions of dollars" from him.The globe-trotting Hamm, of the Hamm's brewing family, arranged for his Florida bank to pay invoices submitted by Vieau. Hamm is a Florida resident who lives part time in Minnesota.Vieau does not like to be called a landscaper, and in his suit against Hamm is characterized even more humbly: "This is a case about the self-centered business practices of Hamm, who over the course of four years treated [Vieau & employees] as more or less his indentured servants as they fulfilled his gardening wishes and transformed his visual landscape ideas for the Trust's 21-acre Orono Estate."There were gardens devoted to cutting, raspberries, wildflowers, sunflowers, herbs, a statue, a yellow garden that included black-eyed Susans and parterre filled with rose bushes and rose topiaries.There were others.
Publisher’s Notebook
Because I have worked with video security cameras, people have often asked me what I think of red light cameras. I know there are a lot of you out there who thrive on rules and want to make sure everybody follows them, but I simply do not like these cameras. I know that most people deserve the tickets they get. When I went to traffic school 20 years ago because I had one too many, the teacher asked everyone there which of them were there because of speeding. About 80 percent said they were. Then he asked how many were there because of going 10 miles an hour over the limit. All raised their hands. The police are there for public safety reasons, and with 35,000+ Americans a year dying in car accidents, I am glad for their presence. For me the general rule of automanship is safety.
Volunteers changing news media landscape
While South Korea's OhmyNews has been the most successful citizen journalism effort so far, online startups in the Bay Area and elsewhere, as well as old-line media, are getting into the game. NewAssignment.net seeks to create "open source" reporting, via the Internet, with volunteer writers and professional editors collaborating on stories. "We don't know how it will work yet but we don't have to know," said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University who heads up the project. "It's a fruitful hybrid of the discipline of professional journalists and the animation of volunteer participants. We think it will be productive." NewAssignment is backed by a $10,000 contribution from the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to open government and community site guru Craig Newmark of San Francisco's Craigslist, as well as $100,000 from Reuters.
|
