Disney Land for Bambi

This morning I went wandering around the property looking for a place to build a little tree stand to have a second spot to deer hunt.  Everything here is dry.  The grass is dying and none of the small branches that flow through our property have any water in them.  I guess this is going to be more and more common if the summers have longer dry spells.  When we used to just come here to visit they were never completely dry.  At this point they aren't even mud holes just dry sand.  When I went to the branch that flows along the south side I heard the deer making their weird noises to warn each other as they took of through the woods. I know they are close which made me wonder how far they have to go to find a pond or creek that still has water.  The creek that flows into my wife's grandmothers place has water, but its a couple miles from here. I thought they might like a little drink along the way.  So I filled this plastic turtle that used to be the girls sandbox when they were little with about thirty five gallons of water.

This means that in this little area is a mineral lick, a feeder full of corn and this smiling turtle full of water. This starts about sixty yards from the house at the feeder and extends about another twenty yards,  just beyond that is one of the dry branches.  This tripod feeder that my wife's cousin put out is about another twenty yards and puts out like ten times as much corn as mine.  He is going to put a chair up one of the nearby trees and go bow hunting in this spot.  If Bambi doesn't like all this something will.  So far I have seen lots of squirrels and rabbits visiting both feeders, but haven't seen a deer stopping to munch a little corn.  I was hoping they might apperciate the water, but of course as I write this I can hear the thunder coming so we will probably have an epic rainstorm tonight that fills everything up.

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Fall Chores

The unbearable heat has finally lifted in East Texas and we will hopefully have nice fall days for at least a month or two before it starts to be freezing all day long.  The weather here is unpredictable and last year all of December was cold with a very small amount of snow. Since that was the first winter I spent here since we moved out here five years ago I thought it would be warmer.  Sometimes is it 72 degrees on Christmas day.  During this short time of pleasant weather I have a big list of things I want to get done.  I have another couple of weeks before rifle hunting season starts, but my shooting lane is pretty well cleared out.

In the next four weeks I need to:
Clear all the down limbs from around the pump house:
        These have been down since Huricane Ike and this will make the third time I have cleared this area                 because both times before were followed by Huricanes that knocked down a bunch more tree limbs.

Clean out the cistern and the pump house.
      The concrete cistern  holds about three hundred gallons and gets  a layer of silt that comes up out of the         ground with the water and needs to be cleaned out from time to time.

Clear the area next to the old garage for a goat area.
      Around Easter it looks like we are going to be adding a rabbit because our youngest is not gonna let up,          but I want to get a couple goats in the early spring.  It should cost around three to four hundred bucks and       I need a good spot to put them in.

Build some type of green house.
     This will probably be a 4x4's framing out a base, a metal canopy that we already have and some plastic           sheeting.  Hopefully, it will be enough to let us have tomatoes in the winter.

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Begonia-Induced Laryngitis at Edhat.com

“If I see one more #%@*?~ ________________ [insert name of overused, hackneyed, bored-to-death-with-it plant] in one more garden, I swear, I’ll SCREEEEAAAAMMMM!!!!.”
I’m a lying. It’s an empty threat. There are so many plants I’m stupefyingly weary of, I’d be struck mute by chronic laryngitis.

All you’d hear is a raspy sound -- like when you’ve waited 10,000 too many miles to get new brake pads. So I just shake my head, weep silently and write this column to vent my frustration.

As I started to say two weeks ago (read I’m Sick of These Plants, Aug. 14, 2010), there are a lot of plants I’m truly sick of seeing in gardens, but what can I do? They’re ubiquitous because they’re workhorses. They show up and clock in every day, they don’t ask for a raise, and they do the job you hire them to do.

See all the plants and comments at Edhat.com

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2010 Not So Beautiful Awards

Dateline: Dallas, TX, Wednesday, September 8, 2010

I'm sitting in room 511 at the Hyatt Regency, air conditioning set at a comfortable 72° while the remnants of Tropical Depression Hermine blow through. This is the week I attend the annual symposium for the Garden Writers Association, a professional organization dedicated to communicating the beauty of gardens in words, pictures, television and interpretive dance (good, you're paying attention).

I'm paralyzingly freaked out about the hot, muggy weather ahead. I spent much of last year's symposium touring gardens in Raleigh, North Carolina, feeling like a wet sponge in a microwave oven. At the end of the conference they announced that this year we'd be in Dallas, where it would be "hot, hot, hot! But it's a dry heat." Sure, and armadillo road kill tastes like truffles.

I tell myself that I'm just delaying the inevitable, but for now I have a good excuse for not leaving this vegetable crisper of a room: Ed needs this article by noon, tomorrow.

Why Now?

September is when Santa Barbara Beautiful gives out their annual awards for exemplary architecture, landscaping, public art and signs. Since 2008, I've been giving out my own Santa Barbara Not-So-Beautiful Awards to help balance the ledger. Aside from the delirious endorphin rush I get from taking sarcastic shots at the f'ugliness that some people pass off as gardening, I also seek to enlighten readers to a better, smarter path that leads to more sustainable landscaping.

Category I: The Sisyphus Award

He's the mythological dude who spent his entire life (including federal holidays when lots of people get three day weekends) pushing a big muthuh of a boulder up Mount Ararat, only to have it roll back to the bottom, ad nauseum.


That's what's going on in this Chapala Street parkway strip near my house. Like clockwork, the plant janitor teaches the plants who's the boss, after which the lantana flips him the single digit salute and grows back to its intended size.

On the bright side, someone is getting a paycheck and putting shoes on their kid's feetsies for this perpetual dance. On the dark side, it looks really stupid. If you want to grow lantana (or any other woody ground cover that grows four feet across) in a narrow planter, space them four feet apart and at least two feet from the edges. They'll actually end up looking like plants and you won't be in a perpetual, fruitless struggle.

It gets better, a lot better and a lot weirder, too. Right this way...

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Calling On The Capitol - DC Revisited

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but something's up. Why would those tricky devils at the Garden Writers Association derive so much pleasure from watching me perspire?

A little background: I joined and attended my first GWA annual symposium in 2008, when it was held in cool, drizzly Portland, Oregon. Since September is usually a hot month for Santa Barbara, I looked forward to traveling north, splashing in puddles and maybe having to wear a scarf!

What a great organization. Not only was I welcomed with open arms by the members and given the tools to launch my newfound career as a "real" writer, but they even provided a climate suitable for a banana slug like me.

Last year, it all changed - they had lured me in, then sprung the trap. My second GWA symposium was in Raleigh, North Carolina. The weather was gummy -- that's "muggy" spelled inside out. It wasn't all bad. There were lots of great people and great educational sessions, but then we'd get on a bus, tour a garden and I'd be reduced to a whimpering puddle of sweat.

But there was lots of good stuff going on in DC, too.... click and read on:

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Scotts-MiracleGro Stole My Ammo!

As you know, I'm not a big fan of water-sucking, fossil fuel-dependent, stream and lake-polluting lawns. My design practice is in Southern California where growing lush carpets of turf is as natural as Trump's comb-over. My distaste for strictly decorative lawns is one reason I'm a founding member of LawnReform.org, a nationwide group dedicated to silencing the siren song of the perfect lawn.

And since I also love taking pot shots at those who I perceive as bad guys, imagine my delight when I saw that the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company was sponsoring breakfast at the annual Garden Writers Association symposium in Dallas last week. I mean these are the folks whose very existence has been built upon putting-green-perfect yards where weekend warriors get their NASCAR-meets-John-Deere jollies.

Eggs, taters, sausage and downright drinkable coffee were served, followed by a pitch from Jan Valentic, Sustainability Officer for Scotts. "Great," I thought, anticipating fuel to top off my next Molotov cocktail rant, "another corporate PowerPoint ‘greenwashing' indoctrination."

More at Fine Gardening...

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Jury Duty: My Horticultural Inspiration

Dateline: September 21, 2010; Santa Barbara County Courthouse - Jury Assembly Room
A few weeks ago, the U.S. Postal Service delivered an all-too-familiar, neatly folded brown and beige mailer. JURY SUMMONS. I get them every year; I'm special that way.

Perverse as it might sound, I used to look forward to jury duty. At least, that was the case when I was a municipal government employee. I've been called at least a dozen times, served on two local and two federal district court trials while receiving my full pay, playing hooky and spending many fascinating hours listening to testimony about international kidnapping, racist police abuse, brain surgery and a very twisted foster mom. I enjoyed using my Spock-like mental acuity to balance the scales of justice (I'm a Libra, after all).

This year? Not so much. In my post-layoff, Billy v2.0 life, I pretty much spend all my waking hours working, networking and engaging in shameless self-promotion.

If I'm not writing for Edhat, Fine Gardening Magazine, 805 Living, or putting the final edits on my Trader Joe's shopping list, I'm prepping for and teaching City College and adult education class, creating landscape designs for clients, shooting a TV show, or banging on my drums with King Bee. (I have people who eat and sleep for me.) So the prospect of eight days of testimony and who knows how many days of deliberation for an assault, battery and lewd conduct in an adult bookstore trial, for $15 a day plus mileage was about as attractive as the south end of a northbound peccary

The jury selection routine proceeded throughout the day without hearing my name. Though I tried paying attention to the interview questions thrown at the other prospective jurors, I was preoccupied thinking about my Thursday noon deadline for Edhat. What if I'm selected? What could I write about off the top of my head, in the scant two evenings I might have at my disposal?

Day one was almost over when I heard "William Goodnick." Taking my seat and grabbing the microphone, I was straight up with the Honorable Judge Ochoa. Name, rank, serial number, occupation, etc.

Lovely pics and more words at Edhat.com

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A Free Lunch

So I decided to buy a sack of corn this morning and set up my feeder even though I have a full month and a half until rifle season opens, but I figured I see if they will come this close to the house or if I need to move my feeder a little further down the line.  The corn cost 5 bucks for a fifty pound sack and this year I am going to try to keep track of what I spend on hunting season so I can see if it is cost effective.  Bow season opens in a couple weeks and I am tempted to pick up a bow on Craigslist and give it a shot, but so far I haven't been able to bring myself to spend the money.  A new bow goes for a minimum of two hundred fifty bucks  with the average around four hundred and the top end around a thousand bucks.  You gotta put up a lot of meat to make a thousand dollar bow pay for itself.

The feeder has a light sensor which will set it off about a hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset.  The little metal plate spins around allowing the corn to flow out and be scattered around the feeder.  The black box holds the light sensor, a six volt battery and a controller that allows you to test the motor as well as set the amount of time the feeder spins.  I have it set to the minimum so that I won't have to fill the five gallon bucket as much. I know the deer are out there so really I am just trying to lure them a little bit closer and hopefully at a convenient time.  Apparently they have never gotten the message that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
The main reason I put it out now was to see if it draws the hogs into the area.  On the the east side of the creek where Luci's cousin bow hunts all he seen are hogs, at her grandmothers place a little ways down the road they have trapped ten or twelve this year.  If the hogs come I will have to take the hunting more seriously.  You can't have them to close. They tear up gardens and can be dangerous.

This feeder has to wait a full twenty four hours to set its internal timer for sun-up and sun-down so it wont be until the morning after next that I will hear the clinking of the corn and I can start watching to see how long it takes for them to go for the snack.

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MegaMuffin

East Texas is covered in mushrooms.  These big boys were waiting in the yard this morning.  They were huge.  Enormous, bigger than the muffins you get at the nine dollar muffin shop.  The inside had the texture and the look of chocolate cake, but without the flavor.  Ok, I didn't try to eat one because I have no idea if is safe  or not.  About five or six of these were scattered across the yard.  If you knew for sure that these were safe to eat you would have quite a meal.           

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Fall Planting

Here in east Texas there doesn't seem to be much of a fall because it is just as hot now as it has been for the last four months.  I know carrots will grow because I tried them last year and even though they didn't get huge they did produce.  If it was slightly cooler I would try a bunch of salad greens, but I think I have to wait a little while.

Today I got carrots, radish, turnips, and green beans in the ground.  Tomorrow I hope to get some cucumbers planted I think I can get some to grow before it gets to cold. Somehow we didn't get enough jars of pickles put up to last the girls until next summer so this is a big priority. I am pretty sure I might be able to get some Zucchini as well. With Garden in disrepair not nearly enough veggies are going from yard to table.  It surprises me how much I miss being able to just wander out and pick something to fix for dinner.  The availability helps with my cooking decisions as well.  Instead of having to decide what sounds good or what the family might want I just have to go see what we got.

I could see how if you were producing your own food for a long time how hard it would be stop and just go to buying all your food at the store. I know I really didn't think that there would be much difference in what I could grow and what I could buy.  I thought that modern agri-business with all it's years of experience and science would be able to get better produce to the store than a guy who had never planted anything before.

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WD-40 contest and fanclub

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of WD-40. All opinions are 100% mine.

WD-40 has created a new fan club section on their website and to kick if off they are having contest to give away three awesome prize packs each consisting of  the Now & Then WD-40 twin pack, a Smart Straw can wall clock and a Nostalgic can wall clock.  WD-40 has been around for fifty years and the classic WD-40 can is an american Icon, but the new with the new smart straw you lift the straw up to aim it or you flip it down to use a wider spray so that you never lose the straw.  I use to take  the straws and chuck em in the top of my tool box in case I lost the next one, but I guess I will have to use those to stir my coffee now.

By joining the fan club you will get exclusive promotions and you can share your uses for WD-40 and check what others are doing with WD-40.  It's free and you can get the WD-40 badge which looks great on your blog, myspace page or as a sweet tattoo.  Ok, maybe you think twice about the last one, but you should definitely sign up for the fanclub. Follow the link below to join the fan club.
Join the fun in the WD-40 Fan Club


When I started my blog I was beginning my battle with my tiller and my ten year old craftsman mower which hadn't been touched for five years.  WD-40 was high on the list of tools to get them running again.  When I first changed the back tires they were locked tight and I use it to get everything unstuck. East Texas is humid and every thing metal rusts so  fast  I have come to rely on WD-40 to keep everything  around the homestead clean and protected. There are thousands of projects that can use some WD-40 and it tastes great on pancakes.  Ok, please don't put WD-40 on your pancakes, but let em know how you do use WD-40. Need some inspiration check out the latest video release from WD-40: Watch the latest WD-40 video release

To enter this contest you have to leave a comment on this post and tell us what you do to save time and money on your DIY projects. I know anyone could use the WD-40 around the house and two count em, two WD-40 wall clocks that would be a great addition to any shop, office, or home. For anyone who is a stickler for details you can find the contest rules right here: contest rules

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Small Town Entertainment

When we lived in Las Vegas we lived right down town about five minutes from the strip on the West side right off Valley View.  We both worked for casino's and didn't want the long drive into town just to go to work so we picked a smaller house in a old neighborhood instead of going for the cookie cutter house out in north Las Vegas. With both us working in the entertainment business we got a fair amount of free tickets to shows, at some point or another went to most of the casino attractions, we liked to go out to dinner, on rare occasion we went gambling and never drove more than twenty minutes.  I love the movies and Vegas has great theaters with huge screens, great new seats, and amazing sound systems.  It is pretty hard to find a foreign film or independent movie because people in Vegas don't like much  culture in their entertainment, but that can be said for this place too.  Besides the occasional fair or rodeo, a night out with the kids is most often a trip to the movies.  Normally we go to the Jasper twin cinema, but since they were playing the Last exorcist and no one wanted to watch the kids freak out for a week we settled for Nanny Mcphee at their sworn enemy the Fain Theater in Livingston.  This was my first trip to the Fain so I had to take a picture of the fantastic sign which I could just imagine looking all super shiny back when it first opened.  I do miss the super comfy seats and selection of the Las Vegas movie theaters but when I  can take two adults and three kids to the movies on a Saturday night, load up on popcorn and drinks for only forty bucks I feel a little less deprived.

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I don't think I really understood where the story for Jack and the Bean Stalk came from until I actually planted some beans.  Last night I went out to see how everything looked because we were about to get hit with nasty thunderstorms and pounding rain.  I thought everything would be smooshed or washed away, but was very pleased to see that the rest of the cucumbers had come up and the beans are two and half inches tall!!!! From a half inch yesterday.  They grew two inches over night.  It would be easy to see how that quick growth would work its way into your stories when your life was in the fields.  Nothing else I have planted grows even close to that fast.  I wish could have a time lapse film of it, but probably it has been recorded for jr. high science classes films many a time. 

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My first Mulch

Everyone has different natural resources on their homestead and one of the resources we have is a forest covered with a thick blank of pine straw that keeps everything, but the trees from growing.  I finally decided to take advantage of this and do my first mulching on the cucumbers I just planted.  I know now that if  I am watering it this small dead spot it will quickly come back to life and be covered with five foot tall grass shoots.
If this works well I imagine I will end up doing this in my regular garden because weeding has to be the worst part of gardening.  I would never buy mulch.  I just don't think I could bring myself to fork over the money to buy something to cover the dirt, but I will definintly wander out back and grab a load.  I don't own a wheel barrow, so I had to adjust and used the girls radio flyer to haul my loads from the dark forest out back to the spot where I have my cucumbers planted. 

After spreading it out I sprayed the whole thing down so that the mulch wouldn't blow away in the massive windstorm which is been ready to fire up all day.  I am not sure how close to the plants you are supposed to get so I left a good bit of space for watering.  I have enough I might try to dig up a left over bubbler valve from my sprinklers in vegas.  Then I can bury everything except the actual plant under the mulch and it will still get water.  I was hoping that this would start to make my garden beds look better, but when I uploaded this picture I realized that I am going for practical, not pretty.

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Walnut Harvesting in East Texas

Inspired by a post on the Homegrown.org social network about walnuts I decided to go to the walnut tree outside our  yard and gather as many as I could find.  Rarely does anyone go to this part of our property except for my occasional mowing which keeps if from turning into mess of thorny vines and small trees.  I also wander past once and while to a check a section of the branch to see if it has flowing water.  I have seen a fair amount of snakes right under the tree and when I got under the cover of the tree I scanned the open area  for fallen walnuts and snakes.  Being so vigilant about these things I failed to notice that I was standing in a pile of ants. The worst part of standing in a ant pile is that your boots will be covered in ants before you feel the first bite. East Texas is full of bugs that bite or sting.  Growing up in California I never appreciated the lack of fire ants. 

I have no idea what kinda of bug this is in my picture.  I had reached up and grabbed a branch to pull it close enough to get at the walnuts and when I pulled it in front of my eyes I saw this guy.  Not paying attention I had almost wrapped my hand around it.  I guessing some type of caterpillar and I don't think it would have a bite, but around here everything else does.  It was while I was trying to take his picture when I felt the first ant bite and saw them crawling all over my boots.   I had to go the kids from school in a minute so brushed off as many as I could and finished filling my bucket.  I will have to back tomorrow to fill another bucket.  Since they are black walnuts they will take a good deal of work to get the nuts out, but like most things out here it is worth the a couple ant bites and a little extra effort.

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The New and Screwed up HughesNet

I just paid five bucks to have my internet service turned back on.  Why is that you might be wondering?  Well, because some dill hole came up with a new way in which our service works.  Living in the middle of nowhere you have pretty limited internet options.  Dial-up blows even in a city with good phones and out here with lines put in in 1962 it blows even harder.  Cable and DSL are not going to come this way.  There is just no way they are ever going to bother running lines just so the four of us who live on this particular dirt road can have service so pretty much your stuck with HughesNet Satellite service if you want your pages to load when your try to open them.  There use to be one competitor AgriStar which oddly enough had exactly the same pricing and services as HughesNet, but they were recently  purchased by HughesNet.

For a long time I was pretty happy with the service.  The dish is pretty tough and didn't even need to realigned after either hurricane Rita or Ike.  We pay the minimum of sixty bucks for their base level of service and the speed has always been sufficent. They have always had what they call a "fair access policy" which is a download limit of 200MB which doesn't sound like much, but  I am online quite a bit blogging, selling on Ebay, using Quirky, surfing around etc and my wife finished her college degree by taking classes online through Lamar University. Basicly we have always found that we could do anything online except watch videos. Which of course means that I have missed out on all the great joys YouTube has to offer. If you download software you can do it at two in the moring when they give you a free time. If all the years we have had this service we had maybe gone over this limit five times, about once a year. 

It used to be that when you went over they would slow your service down so much that you could maybe get your email to open, but that was it.  If you called they would sometimes let it go and reset it and other times you just had to wait twenty four hours.  Recently they came up with a new system where if you go over you could pay five bucks and bingo your speed has been restored or you can wait twenty four hours.  Since they started two months ago we have somehow gone over our limit around ten times. A few days ago I spent an hour on the phone trying to get the tech support guy to tell me what the hell they had changed so that I could avoid this. He of course assured my that nothing had changed and as a sign of good faith reset my service without charge, but I know they messed with something.  Somehow they changed the way they count the megabytes in order to get customers to pay  a little more.  Right now I have no options because they have a monoploy on the market.  I don't really miss living in the city, but I can't explain how much I miss my cable modem right now.

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This little piggy

I had intended to write about our trip to the county fair this afternoon, but on our way home this evening we came across my wife's cousin who was just about to head home from his evening bow hunt.  Archery season opened on Friday so we expected he would be out here hunting.  When we pulled up we asked the typical did you get anything question and he said he had a killed a pig so we had to have a look.

This area is right on the fence line of a fifty acre track that the owner doesn't use.  Since it is one of the few places that is total secluded and has not been logged tons of wildlife uses that land for their home base.  On his trail cam he has seen up to forty of these at once so it really is time to thin out the ranks.  pigs can be dangerous as well as  using  up resources and space that could be taken up by more deer. We are hoping to take a pig or two this winter and butcher them, but right now it is warm enough this little thing would be spoiled before we got it cut up.  Tonight it will be food for the coyotes that have been howling like crazy the last couple nights.  I thought I was going to have to load up the shotgun and hangout on the porch last night because they were so close, but I think tonight at least some of them will be munching on this little piggy.

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By The Sea :: Edhat.com July 18, 2010

I don’t know about you, but whenever I see Rhynchelytrum nerviglume ‘Pink Crystals’ nodding in the breeze, I wonder if there’s a simple and sensitive procedure for enzymatic assays in single cells that can be applied to the measurement of beta-glucuronidase in single parenchymal cells of liver.

That’s because Linda Wudl hung up her career in biotechnology and, along with Fred, her organic chemist husband (I don’t mean her husband is organic, though I’m sure he is—I mean he is a chemist who works with optical and electro optical properties of processable conjugated polymers [but you probably would have figured that out for yourself], so I’ll finish off this sentence that’s already gone on WAAAY too long and has probably tempted you to click over to Ed’s story about that pinstriped, double breasted albino puffin that was spotted in a palo verde tree near El Pollo Loco last night…But I digress), founded Seaside Gardens, a one-of-a-kind nursery in Carpinteria, CA.

Read the rest...

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Masses of Grasses :: Edhat August 1, 2010

Gimme grasses. Gimme blades of green, gold, silver, striped, speckled, ghostly gray, purple. Grasses that fury in the wind and nod in the rain. Enchanted grasses that capture first and last light of day. Grasses of every size: ground cover types to walk on, giants to get lost in.

Grasses fit into every style of garden from Tarzan-meets-Gilligan's-Island-tropical to Muffin-Mouse-cottage.

And the flowers! No, not like your great granny's geraniums, all lipstick red and showy. I'm talking about delicate, smoky puffs of soft purple, or stiff, quaking stalks that sound like a prairie rattler.

Use them in big drifts or pop just one into a perennial bed for an explosion of contrast. Group different types of grasses together to create tapestries of subtle color shifts, or mash them up for high-contrast impact.

Get the idea? You need some ornamental grasses in your garden. If you find that when you're done reading this article, your pulse has quickened (or you've overflowed your drool cup) get these books (preferably at a local independently owned book store): Grasses-Versatile Partners for Uncommon Garden Design by Nancy J Ondra (Storey Books), and The Encyclopedia of Ornamental Grasses, by John Greenlee (Rodale Press).

There's more to read...

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I'm Sick of These Plants! :: Edhat, August 14, 2010

Landscape designers can get a little full of themselves, me included. We know so many more plants than you do and can recite polysyllabic botanical names like Parthenocissus tricuspidata without coming up for air.

Discovering a cool, new Heuchera with crinkled, copper-colored leaves and chartreuse polka dots is like a crack head's deep toke smacking the brain with a dopamine two-by-four. Then comes the roller coaster ride - cosmic sensations of euphoria and empowerment, then the inevitable crushing crash. The story endlessly repeats as we find ourselves down some sketchy alley, peering over the nursery wall, scouting our next fix.

The trouble is, some of the shiny new plants designers get all throbby about haven't been around long enough to reliably know what happens ten years down the line.

Sometimes it's safer to work with the plants we see every day. There's a reason they're so damn ubiquitous. They're everywhere because they'll grow anywhere, whether you're a Master Gardener or a nursery newbie.

Sure, I would love to design every project as an artistic and botanical adventure, but that's not realistic. For many clients, it is preferable to create a garden filled with common, but thriving plants that require minimal resources, than to create a short-lived masterpiece of exotica that demands constant life-support.

I've got more to say here...

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Garden Design - A Dog's Eye View :: Fine Gardening, June 15, 2010

Guess what? Dogs aren't actually colorblind; they just have a lot less chromatic sensitivity than humans. That's why I don't let Biff the Wonder Spaniel pick my outfits. On the other hand, he might have a leg up on me (dog pun) when it comes to designing gardens.

When I start a new design, I picture the plants the same way Biff probably sees them. I imagine they will never bloom—that I'll have to rely on something other than floral color for interest. I select and combine plants using all their other visual qualities—the silhouette of the plant, its foliage shape, leaf size, density and surface texture, for example. The flowers ice the cake.

So I got to thinking. What if Biff took after his old man and created a garden blog for dogs? How would he describe the two most fundamental design principles that dogs and their bipedal slaves should master?

Cool images, thought-provoking words follow...

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The American Meadow Garden by John Greenlee :: Fine Gardening, July 11, 2010

I couldn't wait to get my hot little hands on The American Meadow Garden: Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn (Timber Press) written by grass and meadow madman John Greenlee, and seductively photographed by Saxon Holt. The book promised tools for my landscape architect's bag of tricks-philosophical reassurance, design inspiration, a new palette of plants, how-to details.

I just read it. It delivered.
Trade In Your Old Lawn...
You know I'm no fan of traditional lawns. They're stultifyingly boring and often serve no useful purpose-anybody seen the neighborhood kids playing in the front yard lately? They consume too much stuff and foul our precious nest. NASA photos put the collective national lawn at upward of 30 million acres. We can get by with a lot less.

John Greenlee is a dynamo of energy and passion when it comes to ornamental grasses. I won't take up space with his bio. It's all in the book, starting with John's childhood memories of "the field", the only wild space in his SoCal cookie-cutter neighborhood.

John doesn't insist that everyone plow up their existing landscapes and blanket the continent with meadows, but he does make a compelling argument for meadow gardens in more landscapes.

More about this book...

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Five Step Program for SMS - Help Is On The Way :: Fine Gardening, July 30, 2010

Do you suffer from SMS? Saturday Morning Syndrome is common among gardeners, but frequently goes undetected. The effects of SMS manifest as a garden filled with plants that appear to have been randomly catapulted from a speeding train, then smashed together into an undifferentiated mass of jumbled foliage and clashing colors.

Take this painless diagnostic test to learn if you are among the many gardeners who suffer from this embarrassing and expensive condition.

Do you find it impossible to resist the mysterious power that overtakes your steering wheel as you drive past a nursery?

Does your blood pressure shoot up like a bottle rocket on the 4th of July as you approach the shiny new plants cleverly arranged by the nursery's sorcerer, er, I mean merchandizing specialist?

Have you found yourself waking from a dreamlike state, driving home with dozens of strange plants lovingly strapped into the back seat of your car?
Do you find yourself stumbling around your yard, arms extended zombie-like, a plant in each hand, mumbling "Where can I put these?" as you search unsuccessfully for three square millimeters of bare space where you can squeeze in just one more plant?

Wait, there's more...

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UC Berkeley Botanical Garden :: Fine Gardening, August 13, 2010

Saturday was the big deal, horticulturally speaking. I've heard for years about the legendary 10,000-plus species collection ensconced at the 34-acre University of California Botanical Garden (UCBG) on the Berkeley campus. The main focus of the collection is on plants from the five Mediterranean climate regions: California, South Africa, Chile, southwest Australia/New Zealand, and the Mediterranean basin. But the UCBG also does a heck of a job with plants from eastern North America, Mexico/Central America, Asia and desert regions of the New World.

Lin took off with her camera and I headed into the wilds of the Garden with mine. These images are just a handful of the hundreds I snapped. There's no theme to the pictures - they're just the ones that jumped off the monitor.

Come tripping along...

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the only thing left

After work, vacation, strep throat and the ridiculous heat a air of neglect has settled into the garden.  The majority of stuff is crispy toast either starved for water or choked out by other weeds. The peppers, however, seem to not only still be alive, but actually thriving.  The same goes for the two water melons which are twice the size we got last year.  The patty pan squash are the diameter of dinner plates and probably taste as good as a piece of 2x4 covered in garlic and olive oil. Bigger doesn't usually mean better in the squash/ zucchini family.

  That is the one problem with gardening or any other agricultural enterprise: There are no sick days. We have disscussed getting a milk cow, but you have to milk the dang things everyday.  Even the I feel like I am going to die days or the I have to work fourteen hour days, everyday.  I can deal with being sick and I can deal with it being freaking hot, but you put them both together and I am out. 

With convergence of my illness being over, my census work ending and the kids going back to school I am hoping to do some late summer planting next week along with getting ready for hunting season.  That's right large pallets piled high with 50lbs sacks of corn have begun popping up all over town.  From Wal-mart to the quickie mart there is few places you can't buy a sack o' corn as the season comes near.  I need to clear my spots and get set up so that I am not disturbing it when it gets closer to season open. 

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Got Salmonella?

Nope.  Thanks to Brewster the rooster and his flock of egg laying beauties we are salmonella free.  For now. I hope. I am not positive where the outbreaks and recalls have been because we don't buy eggs. The new flock has really started laying in the last few weeks and it won't be long before we are over run with eggs. Chickens are probably the easiest way of providing your own food that we have found so far.  You don't have to feed them much if you give them enough room to forage for bugs and such.  Throw a rooster in the mix and you will end up with chicks.  You also end up with fertilized eggs for breakfast which is nasty so I recommend keeping the rooster separate if you have one.

 If you were trying to get ready to hole up and wait out the next global disaster then a bunch of birds of one the first things you want.  If you look at stuff survivalist talk about you would think you need lots of ammo and some sort of concrete bunker, but really if you can't eat that doesn't do you much good so really you need a way to get water; either a way to pump from a well, a spring or stream although streams can easily be damned up by the a-hole with a ammo and the concrete bunker.  I would think the best thing you could have is a small flock of a chickens including at least one rooster, a couple of goats both boys and girls, and some seeds to start growing stuff from which you could save more seeds.

Twenty chickens provide a lot of food if they are all laying.  The eggs will be piling up soon even using the eggs for three households we will have way more than we want.  I may try to sell some, but selling is not my strong point.  That is one thing about any kind of farming; no matter what you grow in order to make money off it you have to have basic business skills like selling.  Almost all businesses live or die on the quality of salesman ship.  Even bad business can make money with a good salesman.  I am not a sales guy, just don't have those natural people skills.  That's probably also why I will end up in a feud with a a-hole who stocked up on ammo and I will find my self locked in a basement for food like those people in The Road.

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Deer Season 2010

Last year my few weeks of deer hunting effort did not go well. I was only able to get a clear shot once and clicked my safety off so loudly the damn things bolted off into the woods without my bullet lodged inside.  Last year I waited until deer season had already started before I did anything much, but this year I am going to try to up my odds by laying the ground work.  On the actual ground.  On my birthday I got a couple blocks of deer cane as a gift.  They are blocks, about the size of a brick, made of compacted salts and minerals that supposedly deer like to chew the dirt to get at. 

This year I picked a new shooting lane to focus my efforts on.  The place I laid my corn last year was right along side the road and we had to drive past it several times a day.  This year I am going to use an area beside the house down the powerline.  It is a big clear gap between a very thick grove of pasture pines and the area that was replanted a few years ago.  The area is rarely disturbed and I can get a decent view of it from the laundry room window so I can get an idea of the times the deer might be out there before I wait on the porch or in a blind a little bit closer.  I have two months now so the idea is to get them as comfortable as possible crossing that area and give them reasons to linger about so that I can get a shot. 

I know the deer come through here anyway because it is the path they follow in order to get to the peach and pear tree as well as to drink from the branch that runs across this area.  I haven't decided if I am going to hang my corn feeder back here or simply put corn out on the ground.

This is what the block looks like after sitting for a couple of days during the rain.  Your supposed to put it out and let it dissolve in the rain and soak into the dirt.  I will probably go out pour some water on it to get it to dissolve sooner.  I went out about a month ago when I first got it an laid out an old plastic green turtle sandbox that the kids have outgrown and let the grass under it die off.  Right now the deer tracks are about ten feet way from this spot, which is where the directions say to put it.  If they don't seem to notice I will pour out a little corn right around it because I know they will find that.  I may try going to buy some fertilizer which would make the grass in the area more interesting to the deer. 

I shall find out if this is a more effective strategy or not.  The only problem I see it that is puts me slightly closer to the Blue Bonnet Investment Group land that is leased out for hunting to a large group that come up to hunt every year.  These would be the very nice people that I frequently refer to as the dill holes.

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The Mystery of the Missing Sunflower

This is what the most of the sunflowers in the garden look like right now. Beautiful bright yellow being explored be a swarm of big black  happy bees.  They are coming along nicely although not as huge as the ones that grew last year.  If all goes well I should be able to get a couple a bags of seeds out of these, but there is a problem.  The problem, besides me being able to take a properly focused photograph, is that something is eating or in some way destroying the freaking flowers.  Where are they going?  There is not a pile of flowers on the ground around these stems.  At least seven sunflower plants look the same way.  Right at where the flower would meet the stem it simply ends in a frayed mess.  Are they all going to disappear?  The only positive is that I think I could use these for make shift paint brushes for the kids to play with, but there gonna say "Hey Dad, where did the flowers go" and the best answer I got is maybe big foot at them.  Nature would be great if it wasn't for all the bugs and animals and stuff.

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making a new chicken feeder

Not much going on around the farm these days except the unbearable heat.  In a few weeks I may try to get some goats, but for now it's just us and the chickens.  They should be getting ready to start laying, but lately they have been knocking over their food or standing on the feeder.  Luci had a great idea for some new feeders and despite the heat I managed to hang around outside long enough to get these made. 

I took some 4" PVC that Luci had picked up at the hardware store and cut out one quarter down the length of the pipe.  A couple screws hold the caps on each end and now the chickens have a new feeder that should keep out the rain. 

The chickens are much happier now that the feeder is long enough for them to all get to it at the same time.  We just noticed a few days ago that we had a rooster in one bunch of hens.  Still deciding what to do about this guy.   We don't want fertilized eggs, but it is tempting to just let things go and see if they make some chicks on their own.

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Is my life insurance a good deal?

This is a pretty subjective question, but I have a few thoughts to share that I think can make you more comfortable about your life insurance purchase.

Does it match your needs?

When you purchase life insurance that you don't need or doesn't accomplish what you intend, then that is a bad deal no matter how cheap it is. Think about why you purchased or are purchasing the life insurance. Debts, funeral expenses, income replacement, estate taxes, tax free investing, etc. all have different life insurance product needs. If you want to make sure your wife and small children have income to live on until the kids are grown, then find yourself a level term product that lasts until your kids are adults or the age you plan to retire. If you want to make sure your funeral expenses are paid for, then a guaranteed whole life insurance product that will pay if you die tomorrow or 50 years into the future probably makes the most sense.

Price

I always recommend that you research and shop around to find a plan with a good rate at a company with high ratings and a high level of customer service. I apply this philosophy to most of my shopping. When I get ready to purchase a new electronic gadget that I need, (or want, whatever) I will usually look up the product on both Amazon and Google Shopping just to see what the going rate is. I love shopping with Amazon. Their service is great and I really trust them as an online retailer. If their price is pretty close to the lower prices on Google Shopping, then I will usually buy from Amazon rather than risk saving a few percentage points to go with an unknown company or someone on Ebay.

When I buy running shoes, I usually go to a store that specializes in running shoes. The people there usually are runners and they know their shoes. They usually pull about ten pairs of shoes they recommend and we work for about thirty minutes to find the perfect shoe. Sure I could probably find a better rate if I purchased online or from an athletic super store but with a running shoe, finding the really good shoe is more important to me than finding the cheapest shoe.

When I purchased my life insurance, I took the same approach. I went to an online life insurance website that I trusted and got a list of companies and rates. I went with the second cheapest company for the type of product I wanted because the company had higher ratings and was only a few dollars more expensive per year. I didn't even check other websites or shop with other agents because I had found the shopping experience I trusted the most to find the life insurance product that fit me the best.

Michael, Garden State Life Insurance

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In Case You Didn't Believe Me

Last week I wrote an article stating that life insurance rates are on the way up and that the time to buy life insurance is now. Life insurance rates have been decreasing to historic lows over the past couple of decades, mainly fueled by the need for companies to stay competitive with internet quote sites and independent agents.

In case you thought I was just using scare tactics to get you to buy or that I was just spouting off some kind of crazy theory, here is a link to a press release by Accuquote reiterating that many carriers have raised their rates or have rate increases scheduled within the next few months.

Michael, Garden State Life Insurance

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About Us

I've never shared this with the readers of this blog and so whether you are a regular or first time reader I thought I would share the main reason why we created this blog.

This blog was created as a way for the authors to educate consumers about life insurance from an insurance company's perspective and engage in a dialogue with consumers about both the basics and complexities of life insurance. I have long held that one of the areas that we in the life insurance industry have fallen short is having a sell first explain later attitude. Education has typically been in the form of insurance company produced sales materials and life insurance agents, and I believe we can all see the conflict of interest that can arise there from time to time. I think that only through education about and understanding of life insurance will the millions of uninsured or under-insured Americans finally seek out the life insurance they need and obtain the proper coverage.

We will try to write helpful articles based on our industry experience, comment on relevant life insurance industry news and changes, and avoid directly plugging Garden State Life and its products and services. If you are interested in Garden State Life Insurance or it's products you can visit our main company site by clicking the company logo or the link in the navigation bar above or visiting our Wikipedia page.

And finally our disclaimer: While this blog is sponsored by Garden State Life Insurance Company, the articles written in this blog do not represent the opinions of Garden State Life Insurance Company, its subsidiaries, or its parent companies. These articles are meant to be informal and for entertainment purposes only. Everyone's situation is different and we suggest that you seek the advice of professional financial adviser for your particular situation.

Michael, Garden State Life Insurance

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Has it shifted on your list of priorities?

I was listening to "All Things Considered" on the radio this afternoon while driving home. There was a segment about how the American public's perspective on luxuries versus necessities is changing.

Paul Taylor, executive vice president of Pew Research Center, talked about some interesting shifts.

Microwaves are now seen as luxuries, while some newer technologies — including flat-screen TVs — are considered necessities.

You can listen to the segment here.

I was hoping that Mr. Taylor might touch upon - yes, you guessed it....

If the current economic constraints are causing people to consider the microwave as a luxury item, where does life insurance fit along this continuum?

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More on that Pew Research Center study

In case you're not into listening to audio or podcasts, here is a link to the study I talked about previously.

The information they share is extensive but interesting - it's a good way to gobble up a lunch hour spent at your desk.

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realLIFE Stories

If you have never taken the time to check out some of the videos that LIFE puts out, then I encourage you to do so. These can be especially helpful if you have a spouse who is reluctant to move forward with a life insurance purchase. Seeing the positive impact that life insurance can have on those we leave behind can do wonders for helping us to take care of these types of things we don't like to think about.

realLIFE stories

This month LIFE is working hard to bring awareness to disability insurance. As much as people put off purchasing life insurance, I would say that even more neglect disability insurance.

Michael, Garden State Life Insurance

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Intro to Buying Your Life Insurance Online

As technology continues to improve, the concept of buying life insurance on the Internet is constantly evolving. Five years ago your buying choices on the Internet were pretty much limited to applying with quote sites that essentially acted as your online independent agent and gave you a list of premium rates. There was always the argument that if you knew what product you needed and you didn't want to mess with an agent buy online, but if you weren't sure what you needed, then go to a local agent and let them provide that extra level of service.

The lines have now blurred. Now many of the insurance companies themselves are selling their products directly online to consumers and many agents have gone online themselves. Both have added some of the convenience factors that were normally reserved to the online quote sites. Now many of the quote sites have added extensive educational resources to their websites and have added new dimensions of customer service to offer a little more than just a few emails and an envelope in your mailbox.

The one thing I will say is that if you have a special health condition (e.g. bipolar, high risk profession), then you are still better off finding a local independent agent that is familiar with the underwriting guidelines of the different companies and can find you the best policy. Agents that are connected within the industry can make contact with insurance companies and find out what kind of rate they will offer you given your special health condition and avoid the hassle of you going through the full application process with a number of companies to find out where you can find the best rate. That said if you don't have a quality independent agent in your area, then more and more of the best agents are setting up shop online and offering their services to more than just one area.

Michael, Garden State Life Insurance

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Spending habits during a recession

There is a study recently published by M&C Saatchi, a global advertising agency with headquarters in London. It puts consumers into categories based on their behavior and reaction to the recession.

I'll get to those categories in a minute, but I think it's important to first note that the premise of this study is that while we are all effected by the recession differently depending on where we live and the local economy there, we generally are reacting to the macro economy - as it's reported by mass media.

We are bombarded daily by dismal reports of national or even global economic downturns. We cannot help but let this color our thinking. Yet, things might actually not be so bad in the immediate area around us.

So, the study and the categories are generated by how we are reacting to macroeconomics.

‘Reacting to Recession' is the name of the study. It identifies and categorizes attitudes and behavior adopted by different groups of consumers. The study finds eight consumer types with distinct approaches to spending in this recession.

Each identified group has adopted an overall specific behavior to cope financially with the downturn.

Crash Dieters

Scrimpers

Abstainers

Balancers

Treaters

Justifiers

Ostriches

Vultures


A caveat before the descriptions: they're not based on socioeconomic status, meaning that you can be in the Crash Dieter...and a millionaire.

Crash Dieters are the largest segment, grabbing 26% of adults participating in the study. The group was so named because it aims to "shed pounds" from their weekly budget by identifying and cutting out all non-essential spending until things improve. Crash Dieters are a heavily cash orientated group. Debt clearly frightens them (or is unavailable to them). They live from week to week and when the money runs out they're forced to take quite drastic action.

Scrimpers made up 13% of the study population. Cutting spending is still a main reaction, but they want to maintain their lifestyle and are reluctant to make sacrifices. "Trade down" is more their philosophy than "cut out." Cheaper stores and private labels have become more important to them.

Abstainers, like their Scrimper brethren, don't plan to make any huge cuts in spending habits. About 15% of the population are Abstainers. "The big purchases can wait until the economy improves," is what they'll tell you.

Balancers is one of the smallest groups. Nearly one in 10 people in the study fit into this category, which doesn't want to compromise or make any changes to their pre-recession lifestyle. However, a monetary crisis for them, say a job loss, triggers abrupt behavior. There's no "trading down" - It's gone.

Just over 12% of the study population are Treaters. You could describe them as Crash Dieters who occasionally binge. Every once in a while, the frugality they have adopted to deal with the recession gets rewarded by the purchase of something they promised themselves they wouldn't get.

Another 12% are Justifiers. They'll spend, but they need to have a reason - and it's not price-sensitive. If it's a newer version of something they already have, they want it and convince themselves it's a wise expenditure.

Everybody knows what an Ostrich does when it confronts danger - supposedly - and this is the way 9% of the study population is reacting to the recession. They're simply ignoring it - either because they have sufficient means to do so or because they have been brought up to believe that large balances on credit cards is the accepted norm.

At 4%, the smallest category was given the name Vultures. They're thriving on the carnage caused by the recession. Prices on many things have plummeted. They're swooping in and purchasing all they can.

The study is ostensibly for the purpose of how to market to these groups during the recession; and these distinctive categories of behavior strongly show that there may be only one recession globally...but we certainly are not all reacting to it in the same way.

Obviously, the propensity to purchase life insurance products at this time by these categories presents the same types of obstacles and challenges as any other industry.

Do you recognize yourself in any of them?

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Life Insurance Claim Denials

This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of life insurance and a constant source of animosity and suspicion between consumers and life insurance companies. Consumers think that insurance companies are out to get them, steal their hard earned money for years and then deny their claims over a technicality when the time comes. This is one of those areas where the life insurance industry has failed to educate consumers on the denial process and the misunderstandings that have resulted have come back to hurt their image. In honor of open communication, let me try to take a step towards setting the record straight.

First of all, let's establish what claims a life insurance company can and can't deny. Most state laws prevent insurance companies from denying a claim two years after the policy has been inforce. The only exception to this is if the beneficiary is convicted for intentionally killing the insured and even then the benefits are usually still paid but just to someone else. Within that two year period the life insurance company can deny your claim if you misrepresented anything in the application or underwriting process or if you commit suicide. If you die from a pre-existing condition that they didn't ask about, that you didn't know about or that had never been diagnosed, then the insurance company will still pay.

Another check and balance in the claims process is that each state in the United States has a department of insurance that is there to enforce the laws of that state. These departments of insurance work for the residents of the state and they are there to protect your rights. If there was an evil company out there unfairly denying your benefits, then all you have to do is file a complaint with your department of insurance and they can arbitrate between you and the insurance company to make sure they are upholding the laws of the state and treating you fairly.

So the key to take away from all of this, is to just be honest. If you are honest and forthcoming during the life insurance application process, then you have nothing to worry about. If there is any doubt on an application, then I would recommend erring on the side of more information is better. For example, if they asked if you have used a nicotine product in the past 12 months and you smoked one cigar when you were at a poker party, then I would recommend saying "yes" and then explaining that you don't generally smoke, but you had one cigar at a poker party. Most companies will still treat you as a nonsmoker and you also don't worry about your claim getting denied because you lied about smoking.

Michael, Garden State Life Insurance

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New Look to the Garden State Website

Garden State Life Insurance recently updated its website. Let me know what you think, how it looks, what it is missing, etc.

www.gardenstatelife.com




Michael, Garden State Life Insurance

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My Ten Commandments (Minus the Burning Bush)

This is my 50th blog post at Edhat. Overlooking my schizophrenic swings between writer's block and the fear of numbing repetition, blogging for Ed has made for a jolly good time.

Writing has been therapeutic. Putting my thoughts into words forces me to examine my beliefs about beauty, purpose and sustainability. Along the way, I have either confirmed what I already thought to be true, or reexamined long-held beliefs and come away with a fresh perspective.

Stupid = Ugly

Most gardens I see are either blah or they outright suck. If they were just ugly, I wouldn't be so pissing furious driving through suburban neighborhoods. After all, ugly is in the eye of the beholder. What one person sees as stunningly beautiful can trigger their neighbor's gag reflex.


Read the rest at Garden of Ed

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Nibbling Through the Nosh-O-Sphere

You're probably a few months from that frightful moment when you machete your way to the back of your veggie bed, lift an umbrella-sized leaf and behold a zucchini big enough to have its own zip code. I don't know if this is an urban legend or something I heard on A Prairie Home Companion, but there's supposedly this town in Wisconsin (or San Diego or something) where at the end of summer, when the garden is pumping on all 12 cylinders, people sneak under stealth of night, dumping their unwanted green bioblimps on their neighbor's porch. The neighbor, in turn, fattens the collection with a few of their own and then tiptoes away on their own ninja escapade.

The Burden of Bounty

It's easy to go overboard planting fruit trees and other edibles, only to find that you'd have to be a reality-TV family like Kate & Nate and Their Horde of 38, to eat everything you've grown. Simpler to find a willing recipient for your overstock and find something else to feel guilty about.

You can find a welcoming home for your extra edibles by checking out what Santa Barbara Food Not Lawns is doing to make our area a healthier, better connected, sustainable community.

See how you can do this in your own neck of the woods - In The Garden of Ed

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Severe Cutbacks

A few weeks ago I was taken to task about my word choice. It seems, in the opinion of more than one reader, that using "sucks" when describing many of the gardens I see might prevent me from reaching a wider audience.

I also mused about what a wonderful world it would be if we could eliminate gas-fueled tools. A reader offered, "Pretty good stuff. But I'd tone down the attack on folks who use power tools…I don't use chemicals in the garden, but do use gas in the mowers. I'm a sinner, not a saint."

Mae West allusion aside, I guess should set the record straight. I know that power tools are here to stay - they're just so damn convenient.

[Darn it! I said "damn". That pretty much locks up spending eternity in H-E Double Hockey Sticks.]

I've gotta admit, power tools are fast, convenient and allows a gardener to keep his monthly charges down. I only wish the guys wielding these tools had a microgram of understanding about plant physiology. As long as I'm dreaming, what if they had imagination and a sense of play?

Shear Madness - Plant Physiology 101

Whether it's you or a hired gardener shearing a hedge, keep in mind that leaves are the solar collectors that drive the plant's engine. Sunlight provides energy to convert carbon dioxide to carbohydrates, the food the plant needs to survive. If you're continually shearing off the productive leaves, it's like throwing a blanket over your solar collectors.

Read the rest and check out the delightful pruning fantasies at Edhat.com

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Urbanite - A New Mineral?

Even if you were paying really good attention in your Geology 101 class, you probably haven’t heard of urbanite. It comes in almost any color you can imagine, sits conveniently on the earth’s surface waiting to be loaded on a truck, and is as hard as concrete.

That’s cuz it IS concrete—recycled slabs of pavement seeking a second career. It makes sense to put such a durable and multi-use material back to work, instead of dumping it into landfills, then mining and manufacturing more.

Urbanite has lots of uses in the garden, as I was reminded on my Open Days garden tour in Pasadena last month. If you can build something with flagstone, you can generally substitute urbanite at a much reduced cost. It’s free, since scrap concrete is usually seen as a waste product that has to be disposed of. Most of the expense is in short-distance transportation and labor for installation. Better yet, if the concrete is from your former cracked driveway or patio, you can even scratch the cost of loading and transport.

See what else you can do with broken concrete at Cool Green Gardens

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Growing A Greener World - Sustainable Comes to PBS

I’m going to let Joe Lamp’l, aka Joe Gardener, introduce himself: “I am a full-time gardening & sustainability communicator in the media. Former host of two national shows on DIY and PBS, I am currently producing and hosting a new show on this subject to begin airing nationally in spring, 2010.”

That’s from the little box on the left side of Joe’s Facebook screen. I wish he’d checked with me before posting it, because there’s some stuff he left out. Like the stuff about what a funny, friendly, nice, enlightened, sincere guy he is. I discovered that for myself last year when we got to hang out at the annual Garden Writers Association symposium in Raleigh. Here’s Laura Schaub's candid photo of Joe getting his cool on in my now notorious stingy-brim. Work it, Joe!
Joe’s newest, greenest, most ambitious TV adventure is Growing A Greener World, now showing on multiple public television (PBS) stations around the country. Joe’s impeccably produced, lusciously filmed HD video, 30-minute weekly show is a top-notch visual treat, but it’s the content that has me so excited.

I’m all about spreading the word on sustainability and praise Joe for this show. In his capacity as executive producer and on-camera host, Joe turns the camera on people, organization and events that are making a difference in our world, focusing on gardens and horticulture. The goal of the show is to raise awareness about the environment, and to motivate viewers to be good stewards of the planet.

See what makes Joe's show so cool at my Cool Green Gardens blog at Fine Gardening.

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Famous Footwear - Me and Michelle Obama

I'm flattered to be in the same blog post as the First Lady. My new friend, Charlotte (Daffodil Planter) Germane, asked a few garden "rock stars" (I guess I'm a celeb now) to send her a pic and some words about their shoe-du-jour when it comes to the garden. Hands down (or is that feet), it's Crocs for me.

If you've got a minute, pop over for a fun read - also in the line-up are Angela Davis (blogging Gardening In My Rubber Boots), Shawna Coronado, Dianne Benson in her too, too sexy leopard skin footware, and, of course, the First Gardener.

Read it - Daffodil Planter

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