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Pastimes : NNBM - SI Branch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: abuelita who wrote (47356)	10/9/2005 8:04:16 AM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 104155

rose~ last night we heard some people wonder that our anemometer hasn't been knocked down yet ... just for the hell of it. root causes of crime ..... low self esteem boredom poor education lack of respect addiction the list goes on. i kind of wondered if there might be a bit of a problem with that. it can be a problem. interesting, but we have friends who live in a small, outlying town and the kids around there could be quite troublesome. however, they're biologists and got quite a few of the kids in the town interested in field biology study...and just helping out with all kinds of monitoring projects, etc... and it has really helped some of the kids in a big way. people need to feel that they have a purpose, but that's often something that is hard to "invent" in our modern society -- you either have a job and money, or you're kind of a nobody... or at least that's how people are often made to feel. when jobs and money aren't really possible (and to be frank, there are only so many and so much to go around, and many kids are being left behind)... the purpose has to come from somewhere else -- mainly from within -- but kids (and older people too) often can't find something to give them purpose... especially something accessible and affordable. that's been the "trick" in the area where my friends are living. there is no money to work with, so what can you do that costs little or nothing -- and that thing is to go out walking around observing nature -- and developing a knowledge of what you're seeing. of course, their situation is quite unusual, but i don't think it's entirely unique or un-do-able. . . anyhow, that's just a bit of musing on this sunday morning before i take off to go off into the bush for the day. (o: tell me about your white garden. i had in mind to do that. sure! i built it on the east side of our house. gets the morning light, but by afternoon and evening, it is shaded in there, so i thought the white flowers and foliage would make that area seem like it was lit by foliage rather than something artificial. That's one of the garden areas which I still put a bit of work into, not that it takes much time. The garden is about 20x25 feet -- I like to create "rooms" here in my gardens, and this is one of them. It's cut off from the rest of the garden by a perimeter defined by larger bushes, all of which get white flowers at some time during the spring and summer. those bushes include: high-bush cranberry white lilacs white winter hardy azalea "Northern Lights" (I think) chokecherry something that looks like sumac or a giant astilbe with white flowers (forget what it is called). Inside the white garden, i used a few plants as the main ones, and tried to pick things that would create some white through the seasons. Some of the main ones include: a Blanc de Coubert rugosa rose -- one of the "old" roses - shade hardy, winter hardy, tough devil of a thing and tends to expand rather rapidly. loaded with white, highly-scented old rose type flowers through the season (if you're not familiar with it, but I expect you may already be). Plant a few like that along the inside of your picket fence and i assure you that within 2 years, that anemometer will never get kicked over! <g> a large stand of hydrangea that came from my grandmother's garden about 25 years ago. wild Solomon's Seal plants (wonderful in spring and early summer and their foliage is beautiful from spring to fall) variegated hostas (a couple of kinds from nurseries and a very robust variety from a friend's garden. Goat's Beard -- not sure of what that is, but it might be an astilbe -- maybe Mannie knows. tall ferns -- cinnamon ferns. a kind of white mallow which grows very tall. i got that as seed from Richter's Herbs many years ago and I have it in a few places in my gardens The last step was to find smaller plants to fill the spaces between all of that. for spring, I have white trilliums White Swan echinacea pearly everlasting Dicentra Alba and a couple of other things that i've forgotten the names of... i sometimes put annuals in the garden... usually something like a mammoth mexican white nicotiana and white night-scented phlox. and that's about it. I'm left with a small patch of grass which I mow about 3 times each summer and there's enough room inside that spot to put a lounge chair and sit there with my canvas and paint box when i feel like painting out in the garden. very low maintenance to that garden become the planting is so dense. probably should divide some plants though as it's getting overcrowded now that so many of the plants are mature as I built that garden about ten years ago. ~croc