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Fame Audit: Vin Diesel

NAME: Vin Diesel
AUDIT DATE: June 26, 2001
AGE: 34
OCCUPATION: Writer, Director, Actor, Producer
EXPERIENCE: 10 films since 1994

Assessment

When the improbably named Vin Diesel first came to our attention, about five years ago, it was thanks to a magazine ad. The ad, as we remember it (our usually rigourous factchecking department has, alas, been unable to locate the advert in question), was for a watch company and was part of one of those campaigns that features good-looking "real" people in a sort of "Name, Occupation, Why I Love Tag Heuer" sort of format. At that point, none of us had ever heard of Vin Diesel (of course, in such ads you've rarely heard of the person, which is what makes them so "real"), so when he was introduced as "Writer/Director/Actor Vin Diesel," it seemed only to prove the reliable adage that the more occupations with which someone prefaces his name, the less likely it is that he legitimately deserves any of them.

We begin with this engaging anecdote because it serves to illustrate the way in which Diesel has been leading dual, even competing, careers: Vin Diesel Onscreen and Vin Diesel Offscreen. Let's start with Diesel Onscreen.

And if you want to learn more about both the offscreen and onscreen lives of your favorite celebrities, visit Hollywood Insider.

Diesel Onscreen, we like. Watching Diesel in The Fast and the Furious opposite Paul Walker -- a young actor so blandly good-looking that he seems like a glimpse into a future where movie stars are computer-generated according to poll data from Tiger Beat -- only serves to highlight the fact that Diesel is a genuinely interesting, and in some ways unprecedented, physical presence. With his bald pate and soft, rounded facial features, his head looks a bit like an overinflated balloon. Throw in his tree-trunk physique, ethnic ambiguity, and trademark sandpaper voice, and he seems more like a cartoon character than an actual person -- an effect not exactly underscored by his comic-strip-ready name. (Can't you just picture something called "The Adventures of Vin Diesel," drawn by the guy who did Tank Girl?) His go-to expression is an efficacious "don't fuck with me" glare, likely honed during his years as a Manhattan bouncer, yet he'll also break out into a goofy, crooked boomerang of a smile.

Yet somehow it all works. Whether or not you find him attractive -- and so far it seems like a split vote -- it's hard to argue that he doesn't have presence. In fact, he so perfectly embodies a kind of swaggering, craps-and-callgirls brand of Vegas machismo that, looking back over his brief résumé, you have to double check that he didn't star in Swingers. Whether or not he's an actor remains to be seen -- he hasn't exactly shone in his emotional scenes, but then again, he hasn't exactly had many to shine in -- but it seems a good bet he'll be a star. The evidence so far -- a bit part in Saving Private Ryan, standout ensemble work in Boiler Room and Pitch Black, a serviceable star turn in The Fast and the Furious -- is scant, but already we're starting to feel like Vin Diesel makes his movies better just by being in them. If that sounds like faint praise, think of how many actors for whom you can't say the same.

So what's the problem? Diesel Offscreen, for starters. Considering that he's enjoyed relatively little media attention thus far, a disarming number of reports about him end up making him look like kind of an ass. Not that big stars can't also be big asses -- they can and so often are -- but they usually square away the stardom thing first before unveiling the extent of their ass-tosity to the world.

Diesel, however, isn't wasting any time. Though he may be a kind, thoughtful, good-hearted man for all we know, he's certainly failed at communicating these qualities in any sort of public forum. As has been pointed out on our own finger-in-the-wind forums, an HBO documentary that followed Diesel around Sundance didn't exactly leave viewers with a warm-and-fuzzy opinion of young Mr. Motorfuel. And director John Frankenheimer claims that, during the filming of Reindeer Games, Diesel refused to wear a sleeveless shirt, saying something to the effect of, "I only show my guns in Vin Diesel films." "Guns"? "Vin Diesel films"? After demanding a rewrite that would significantly beef up his own role, Diesel was fired from the film, only to turn up later as Exhibit A in a Premiere article on Hollywood egos run amok. Diesel has also refused to reveal his real name or his ethnic background, preferring to leave both ambiguous -- a stance that dubiously assumes that the details of his ancestry are the subject of ceaseless speculation and heated debate around the water coolers and in the barbershops of this great land.

But with The Fast and the Furious's surprisingly strong opening weekend, some lucky star will be the recipient of all that box office good karma, and Diesel seems best poised for the windfall. And who knows? Maybe America will soon be scrambling to the next Vin Diesel film to get another treasured glimpse of those guns. Right now, however, the biggest obstacle to stardom for Diesel seems to be that, in his own head, he's already there, and acting accordingly.

Assets

  • It is a cool voice
  • Sure, the name sounds cartoonish, but so does "Tom Cruise"
  • Thankfully, action film not a genre that requires the ability to convey a wide spectrum of emotions
  • "Vin Diesel" also manna to pun-loving magazine headline writers

Liabilities

  • May be first man to star in romantic comedy with a mirror
  • "Okay, guys, from now on my name is going to be Diesel. Vin Diesel. No, seriously."
  • In painfully predictable turn of events, now rumoured to be dating Playboy model Summer Altice
  • Seems vaguely like obnoxious guy in your high school who you secretly hated

Fame Barometer

Current approximate level of fame: Jon Favreau

Deserved approximate level of fame: Vince Vaughn






Age Difference In Relationships – Does Age Really Matter?

They say that when it comes to love, age isn’t nothing but a number. But is this really how it is when it comes to two people with a big age difference in a relationship? Does age really matter?

It Can & Does

In a sense, age does contribute to a relationship being successful or not. Now, don’t get me wrong. Age is just one of the many factors out there that may influence how a relationship works and it is by no means a single factor that will determine if a relationship will work.

There are several couples out there that have a wide gap of 5-20+ years apart from each other and are going strong with their relationships. My mom and dad is one example. They have been married for a while now and there is a 9 year age difference between them.

Even with that being said, there are a lot more couples out there that have broken up because of reasons which can contribute to age like maturity and life experiences. These are actually the main two things that really break down relationships where there is an age difference.

Have You Seen This Couple

Take the couple off of the Bad Girls Club for example. This girl was young in her late teens or early twenties and she was messing around with a guy that looked 30 years her senior.

If you watched how they were on the show, you saw how she wanted to party and mingle and not really want to commit fully. In some cases, people who are not ready for commitment can also turn to infidelity. If this situation sounds like yours, visit Are You Cheating to learn more.

The guy looked like he was married before, a lot more mature, and had a lot of life’s experiences which she lacked and wanted for herself before really getting into a full blown intimate and real relationship with the guy.

Well, it’s been a while since that season and I’m not sure how they worked out but this is a good example of age difference in relationships and how things could be for other couples in similar situations.

What it Really Comes Down To

So, it seems that age really does matter to a certain extent. Different views, maturity levels, interests, life experiences, goals, and baggage all relate to age in a way and can affect a relationship in a negative way even though the relationship didn’t intend on being affected this way initially.

So, what if you are already in a relationship where there is an age difference and you are afraid things won’t work out due to age? What if you are interested in someone that is a bit younger or older than you but you are not sure if you want to make it into the real thing?

If you are already in a relationship where there is a big age difference and everything is going fine, you don’t have anything to worry about unless you are a teenager and the other person is fully grown or borderline elderly. Yeah, this is rare but it does happen. When it does, it is often a crime – unless you are 18 or older (Depends on where you live). In any case, in these types of situations, the relationship can’t really work.

If things are kinda rocky, you and your partner may need to evaluate your relationship and life goals and see if they coincide with each other in terms of each persons views of things. Can you both get through the issues you are facing despite the age difference or is it really the main culprit of your issues?

If you are interested in someone older or younger, take the time to get to know the person and their views on life and other things before you jump into a relationship with them.

Make sure that you both feel comfortable with each other even in public. Just get to know them as best as you can and lay everything out on the table as far as needs, wants, dislikes, goals, baggage, etc if you are really serious about this person and think you want to give it a go.

Tips For Couples In Relationships With a Big Age Gap

Despite age being the main focus of this article, couples are couples and age is only one factor that can have an impact whether positive or negative on relationships. If you know what makes a relationship work and bring those things to the table in any of your relationships with anyone and they do the same thing, there is a good chance that things will go smoothly with occasional ups and downs since no relationship is going to be perfect.

If you are happy and they are happy, then you can put that age thing behind you. Just make sure that there isn’t too much of a huge age gap. I personally do not condone relationships that are made of teens (19 and under) and overly grown people (30+). Also, these types of relationships just don’t work out and cause a lot of trouble including legal ones.

Here are few other helpful tips for those in relationships where there is a big age difference. Keep in mind that the age difference nowadays that is considered the norm is 3-5 years. So, “big” is usually anything after 5 years.

  • Make sure that you are completely truthful when it comes to telling your partner about future goals
  • Be prepared for the how people will react to the huge age gap (family, friends, society) Be Strong!
  • Be prepared to deal with sex related issues and find ways to make things work if sexual issues arise (Because they do especially when there is an age gap)
  • Try to find common interests or hobbies that you both can share with each other
  • Only enter or proceed with the relationship if you both truly love and care for each other and not for other reasons (wrong reasons – money, etc)
  • Get new “positive” buddies. If your current friends think your relationship is gross or do not agree with it, make new ones that cheer you on or are simply positive minded.
  • Accept that you are in a relationship where there is an age gap as well as the differences that come along with the relationship due to the age of your partner. Compromise and try to make things work.
  • Talk with other couples that are similar to you or get inspiration from couples that are doing well despite their age differences. Celebrity couples are a good example.
  • Be Strong! I said it earlier and I will say it again. Be strong and try to be as positive as you can be about the relationship especially if things are going well. Society or people close to you may judge you or look down on you but if you are happy, that is what matters.





Dumbest Dating Mistakes

Fear of Internet Dating, Expectations, and Letting Go of the Past

Many singles eagerly await a new date only to blow it soon after. These folks typically engage in the dumbest dating mistakes around.

Singles can sometimes be their own worst enemy when it comes to their dating life. Many engage in self-sabotage without evening knowing it. Many others over complicate dating to the point where it seems difficult rather than enjoyable. Here are a few of the "dumbest dating mistakes" a single guy or gal can make.

Being Afraid of Online Dating

Internet dating has so many myths attached to it, it's amazing anyone still tries it. But the truth is, online dating is an amazing resource for single people. Online dating sites are filled with people who simply haven't met the right person yet.

So rather than get caught up in fears about online dating, single people should embrace it. The medium works as an excellent method of introduction, and remains a popular way for people to connect.

Reading too Much Into a Date

Some single people can spend a long time on their own between dates, and many want a relationship so bad that they will try and size up a guy or girl for marriage on the very first date! This is never a good idea. First of all, this type of attitude puts pressure on the couple and doesn't allow for them to simply go out and have a great time.

Dating should be fun. More than that, however, it takes time to find the right person. Going out with someone once or even twice sometimes is not long enough to determine if they will be good for a long-term relationship. Singles should learn to date casually in order to find the right one for them.

Bringing Unnecessary Baggage Into a New Relationship

Everyone has a past filled with disappointment and let downs. The difference between smart singles and the ones who ruin their chances at love is all about attitude. Some single people have a hard time getting over break ups. They spend so much time wondering why something didn't work out with someone else that they inadvertently fail to get to know the new person they are dating.

Rather than obsessing about the past, singles should accept that if a relationship in the past wasn't right, then it quite simply was wrong. This attitude can free the nagging questions on why something didn't work out and allow them instead to focus on the next person in their life. A good rule is to never even bring up a past relationship on the first or second date.

Everyone has good and bad dates. But singles who repeatedly make some of the "dumbest" dating mistakes also tend to get caught up in an endless cycle of rejection without really knowing why. Overcoming these common mistakes can help singles get a handle on the dating mistakes they have made in the past and move on to finding the right person for them.

Dating can be tough, but so can being in a relationship. Relationships come with their own sets of mistakes that clueless partners can make. If you suspect your partner of cheating, you can look into different ways to catch them. Visit Are You Cheating to learn more.





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Top 5 Famous Fashion Brand Ambassadors

When it comes to fashion, it’s not news that every brand wants a celebrity to endorse their products. Generally, the most famous brands want the most famous celebrities to promote them as if you`re a great brand you need a great name!

We all know that the top 10 fashion houses among which we find Chanel, Dior, Versace etc. commonly choose the most popular singers, actors and actresses, models and world-class showmen to present their brands as here any celebrity is considered as not just a recognizable brand but as a recognizable brand of QUALITY. The most famous designers commonly collaborate with the world famous celebrities because their big names need the right big names for their luxury labels because, in the world of advertising, the image is everything!

And for more on what’s hot from Hollywood, don’t forget to check out Hollywood Insider. In the meantime, here’s a look at the top 5 partnerships brought to us by 2017.

  1. Let`s start our fashion list with a famous brand ambassador about which we don’t have the right to silence, namely Maria Borges. Borges started her model career in 2015 at the Victoria Street Fashion Show as the first model to wear her short, natural curls. In 2017 L’Oreal Paris called Maria Borges a new face of its label and signed her onto its roster.
  2. The boundary-pushing pop star Rihanna has been a face of the world’s iconic fashion house Dior since 2015. Firstly, she joined forces with Dior for its Secret Garden campaign. By the way, that was the first Dior campaign to feature with a celebrity of color. In 2016 Rihanna continued her collaboration with Dior to produce a splendid collection of futuristic sunglasses.
    She visited Dior Resort 2018 Show where surprised everyone with her prairie-chic look. The off-shoulder fur piece, cuffed jeans, layers of turquoise jewelry, a stone embellished bolero hat and fringe-trimmed Dior flap bag make her look amazingly versatile and gorgeous. Just look at her shoes. What to wear on rainy days? Of course, such combat boots as Rihanna wore!
  3. What can we say about David Beckham as a fashion brand ambassador? Oh, much more! Maybe there isn’t one person who doesn’t know his most effective campaigns, including Pepsi, H&M, Brylcreem and Sainsbury`s. And this year Tudor announced that Tudor and Breitling had entered into partnership and made David Beckham a new face of the updated brand.
  4. Kendall Jenner has already fronted more than 14 advertising campaigns. The model and reality TV personality has now been the face of Estée Launder and Marc Jobs for three years. This year Kendall Jenner has been the latest member of “Adidas fam.” Since September she was announced as the official face of Ippolita`s Fall 2017 campaign. Besides, she and her sister Kylie have their own clothing line deal with Topshop.
  5. Of course, we can`t compile a list of the best fashion ambassadors without George Clooney. This striking Hollywood star has been a face of Nespresso and Omega for many years now. His long-term partnership with these two international brands makes George Clooney one of the most popular ambassadors when it comes to good coffee and cool classy watches.




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Why is it Important to Identify Treat Bipolar Disorder?

In order to perform the proper diagnosis for bipolar disorder, it usually takes around a period of 8 years on average, with various treatment methods by various doctors. The disease prognosis is based on how fast it is diagnosed and the initiation of appropriate therapy for treatment at right time.

Actually, the therapy initiation should begin with very few episodes of the disorder so that there are better possibilities of a cure for the patients. The social and psychological problems mentioned below could be prevented with earlier therapy and treatment.

Avoiding death through Suicide

Particularly during the initial stages of the disorder, the probability of suicide is very high. Patients having bipolar disorder are there kept safe in psychiatry ad there is a greater risk of suicide attempts with those patients.

When you search the medical records of patients having this disorder, at least 50% of them are addicted to drugs or alcohol or certain types of medication. Generally, various substances are used by them for “self-therapy”. They try to use alcohol or drugs to minimize their suffering and pain, which makes them addicted to these habits inevitably.

Avoiding relationship conflicts

If the patients are treated faster, the chances of faster recovery are high and the existing relationships will not get broken down due to problems associated with the disease. This will also help them continue their work and business activities without any trouble.

Avoiding improper treatment methods

Many patients do not recognize bipolar disorder correctly and misunderstand the symptoms with some other illness taking inappropriate medications. In the worst case, it could cause the disease to get worsened and further episodes of disorder could continue.

What is the duration required to treat bipolar disorder?

The patients and their relatives should understand that bipolar disorder must be usually treated for the entire life duration of the patient. If you are seeking psychological treatment for bipolar disorder, visit Estadt Psychological Services. The treatment intensity could vary, but there is no way to permanently stabilize the patient’s state of mind. Patients who have bipolar disorder should be careful in making decisions and dealing with people in the workplace. The relatives should make sure that the patients are free from emotional burdens and always remain in a positive environment. Patients having bipolar disorder are genetically susceptible to the disease and advanced treatment methods can help only to a limited extent to make the patients remain normal.





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The Wolf of Wall Street 2013

This film has created enough noise and received enough hype, without needing me to add my two-cents' worth. But I still will!

Wolf of Wall Street is the true story of Jordan Belfort, a New York stockbroker, who made millions from corrupt dealings and securities fraud, after he suffered an early career setback due to the 'Black Monday' crash in 1987. The story not only revolves around Jordan's very lucrative and illegal ventures, but also his very debauched lifestyle. Drugs, alcohol, sex - Jordan abused it all. He lived a crazed, decadent, over-the-top life, which simply could not go on. And yet it does.

This is a black comedy - and we are not meant to be judging him. There are no moral lessons to be learnt, truth does not prevail and the honest are not the victors. Belfort today is a motivational speaker and still makes millions - some of them from the royalties of his book that was turned into a motion picture, which has already won the lead actor a Golden Globe! There are lots of silver linings here, but unfortunately, none for the victims of the frauds. Like I said, the film has been delivered in a certain vein - of dark comedy - and it is to the writers' and director's credit that they have not tried to make this serious or moralising at any point. It continues in the same vein and is a refreshing success because of its integrity.

The star of the show, from the first frame to the last is Leonardo di Caprio. I keep hearing how he has improved as an actor over the years, which upsets me greatly. Because to be honest, he hasn't improved over the years; he's always been brilliant. Five top-notch performances before Titanic (1997) and at least seven great performances since - he has only been type-cast as a pretty face that can't act, because of one blockbuster, technically-sound film that girlfriends forced boyfriends to watch. Let's stop blaming it all on him!

After a long, long time, I have seen di Caprio completely unleashed in this film. If Jordan had no boundaries, neither does Leo. He is completely uninhibited and wild in his portrayal. It's fascinating to watch him on screen and see him deliver a performance that does not falter or disappoint for even a moment.

This is the fifth time that Martin Scorsese and di Caprio have worked together - and each time it's been a very different character, a very different film. But this is possibly their best effort together since The Aviator (2004). Despite all the hype around the film, it actually is that good. The performances, the storytelling, the direction, the cinematography, the music - everything fits and works. At 180 minutes, this may seem like a big one to commit to, but time flies when you're having fun. And this is fun!

Click here for more on the lastest Hollywood movies.





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Some Actors Do Have All The Luck :: The Better-Looking In Acting

Acting’s Not An Industry Of Equality :: Inherently

But, specifically, and not always, nor exclusively…Very good-looking actors have much better careers than other actors. Often, better than great-acting-actors.

The beautiful actors just have more ‘acting luck’ than the not-as-good-looking.

Not that it’s logical, either; but, hey, acting has a lot about it that doesn’t make sense.

(Can’t really complain about the unfairness in a business that is crazy enough for anyone to enter it, for starters. If you want to be in a business that really is extremely unreliable and ‘not linear’ as far as long term success and ROI, then it doesn’t seem quite kosher to complain, once inside the acting profession about the imbalance of opportunity as far as types, races, and genders, go.)

(However, that never stopped me…)

(Just sayin’…)

Seriously, Acting Really IS About Acting

But the truth is, while most actors are clawing, clamoring, and constantly creating new ways to try to get into the business to show their talent…As well as training and forging a strong acting craft virtuosity…

Beautiful people get opportunities to walk on in, with or without a great talent, or accomplished acting skills. Some get to be professionals, pretty fast.

Beautiful people are allowed to be moderately ready for a close up. And they can get agents and auditions, sometimes for top level films and TV roles. Often, they get the opportunity to audition for leads…especially on TV.

It’s Not That Beautiful People Who Want To Act Don’t Have To Be Actors.

…Because they do.

They just have a lot more leeway room to develop that skill. And a lot more help in getting there. And they get into meetings, with agents and casting directors, far easier than most other types. Before other types.

Unlike other acting types, beautiful actors don’t need to prove themselves, backwards and forwards; as an actor and as far as being worth an agent, casting director, or producer’s time.

If you’ve been to the ACTING ADVICE 1 LINERS section of Hollywood Actor Prep (the link is up at the navigation bar, up above the post), you’ll see one by the actor Kellan Lutz. His one-line of acting advice reads: “I don’t know.”

That’s what he said. Yup.

At first, I thought, I’ll just never put this one in. I thought it was a joke, or just a way to express that he really didn’t want to participate.

Then, I thought about it a bit. I mean, here’s a guy who is a kind of teen idol; he burst onto the young female fame-and-lust scene in the TWILIGHT movies, as Emmett Cullen. The lighter-haired muscle-y one.actor kellan lutz on the cover of men's health magazine

Before acting in TWILIGHT and a few other things that you may or may not have heard of, prior; Kellan Lutz was a model. A real one. (Not a euphemism for escort, or dental assistant, or whatever those people were doing who suddenly hit the spotlight for some reason or other, often notoriously, and call themselves ‘models’ but no one has ever seen them in a print ad, not ever…)

Point is: beautiful people, handsome people, even very cute people, have an edge over everyone else in the acting business. Especially at the beginning, they are able to get in. They have a ‘go to the front of the line’ pass. They just are different, and have a very different experience, and often a different perspective on the acting business.

So that’s why I included Kellan Lutz’s 1 Liner Acting Advice.

I heard that, on that night that I asked him for something for my blog, that he was having a tough time…that he’d just been through a big break up.

Whatever. (We all have tough days, um hm.)

I still wanted to use what he said, to make the big point.

That is: If you are exquisitely beautiful, you are lucky and quite probably, will have a far easier time getting people in the Industry to meet you. Especially before you have any Industry credits. Even before you are in a Master Class for acting.

If you aren’t gorgeous, if you don’t know this already: You need to do far more than probably anyone in any other career, to succeed.

Most likely.

Unless you are tremendously lucky. As lucky as someone who wins the lottery. Or as lucky as an exceptionally beautiful person.

So when Kellan Lutz says that he doesn’t know what it takes or the average actor, or even the exceptionally talented actor, to break into the industry…to get representation… to audition for the big stuff roles, on TV or in films, he is simply sharing his own experience of the acting business.

It doesn’t mean that Kellan Lutz doesn’t have the potential to have a really strong acting career, or won’t ever have serious chops, if he hasn’t developed them already.

It just means that his path is on a map that’s different from the maps of most other actors.

He wasn’t necessarily born an actor, but he was born with an acting ‘pass’. It was in his biology.

If you’re interested in becoming an actor, don’t forget to stay on top of the latest movie entertainment news.





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Play With Me Sesame

Sesame Workshop's half hour Sesame Street spinoff for Noggin brings old friends to a new format.

Set against vibrant backgrounds and featuring short, entertaining segments, Play With Me Sesame is perfect for toddlers and preschoolers. The show features a lot more “face time,” in which the characters are filmed up close, almost as if they are talking directly to the children. It is a bit more interactive than classic Sesame Street, but still brings the same educational value that parents and educators have come to expect from any show that features Grover. According to Noggin's website, the program helps children cultivate skills and attitudes needed to succeed in the social environment of school.

The large cast from the classic PBS show has been scaled down to four well-known characters: fuzzy, cuddly Grover monster, perennial best pals Ernie and Bert, and piano-playing Prairie Dawn. There are occasional visits from Elmo, Oscar, Big Bird, and other Sesame Street characters, but for the most part, these four have the spotlight.

The show consists of several short segments that help children develop important early-learning skills such as counting, reciting the alphabet, matching, or recognizing a pattern. There are several classic Sesame Street segments thrown in and combined with new footage. Bert makes “oatmeal art” pictures and makes patterns of pigeons on the computer. Prairie Dawn has an art show in each episode, showcasing artwork by Play With Me Sesame viewers demonstrating either a particular color or showing how different children can draw the same subject in totally different ways. Ernie and Grover are usually in charge of getting the kids up and moving. It is reminiscent of the “learning centers” that so many preschool and kindergarten classrooms incorporate; each segment works on a different skill, and the children are only there for a few minutes at a time.

There is also a fair amount of interaction. Grover and the gang will cajole the viewers into pretending to fly like an airplane, or jump, or pretend to be a piece of spaghetti. A popular recurring activity in the show has the four characters shouting “when I say 'play with me' you say 'Sesame'.” and then going back and forth with the viewers. This interaction also helps children develop listening skills, as well as the ability to follow verbal directions.

Play With Me Sesame feels like having a playdate in the comfort of your living room. The security of familiar characters, the trusted methods of Sesame Workshop, and short, vivid segments make this show a winner.

For more on the latest shows and movies, check out Hollywood Insider.





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Lock,Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

The surprise hit film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was directed by Guy Ritchie and features an appearance by Sting.

Four East London lads get into big trouble when they lose a rigged card game against Hatchet Harry, (P.H. Moriarty) and end up owing him five hundred thousand pounds in one week. Unless they can come up with the cash in time, Hatchet's menacing henchman Barry the Baptist (Lenny McLean) will start taking fingers as collateral. What follows is a violent and fast moving film involving some tough and shady characters in London's seedy underworld.

Directed by Guy Ritchie, the movie introduces the audience to four friends. Eddy, (Nick Moran) Tom, (Jason Flemyng) Bacon, (Jason Statham) and Soap (Dexter Fletcher) pool their savings to enter the card game with Hatchet Harry. Once Eddy tells the others that they are in hock for half a million pounds, they come up with a plan to steal from the unhinged thieves in the flat next door who intend to grab cash and some low grade marijuana from a group of paranoid cannabis growers, who are distributing the drug out of their apartment.

In an unrelated crime, two low level criminals from the north of England steal a pair of antique muskets for Hatchet Harry, but he is not happy when they sell them to Nick the Greek (Stephen Marcus) who deals in stolen property and is connected to Eddy and his buddies.

An unstable debt collector who works for Hatchet named Chris (Vinnie Jones) pays a visit to Eddy's father J.D. (Sting). Chris has an ultimatum for J.D., (who owns a bar) either you hand over your bar to Hatchet, or Eddy will suffer the consequences if he fails to repay his debt. The role of a brutal enforcer was played to perfection by Jones, not only is he a man who doesn't hesitate to use physical violence but he also has a son, a young criminal in training, on whom he dotes.

p>The heat is on Eddy and the others. With very little time remaining they pull off their scheme with success, and amazingly none of them get hurt. The marijuana growers are not as fortunate, however, and the loss of the weed puts them in greater peril with Rory Breaker, (Vas Blackwood) a psychotic crime baron who gathers his men together to get the cannabis back. A shootout quickly follows in which they are all killed, and the lives of the two burglars are snuffed out almost as quickly as they kill Hatchet and Barry the Baptist.

Although the story is an assortment of unlawful activities by different criminals, all of the characters cross each other's paths during the film. The sharp and witty Cockney dialogue may confuse American viewers but the actions of the characters definitely speak louder than words. Alan Ford is the narrator and is also the actor who plays the brutal crime boss "Brick Top" in Snatch. As for Eddy and his three partners in crime, they survive without a scratch on them, but they are also flat broke.

Tom is asked to get rid of the shotguns which they managed to hide from the police, but at the last minute it is discovered that they are worth more than two hundred thousand pounds. In the final scene, Tom is hanging over a bridge with one hand on a lamppost and the other clutching the old weapons. And then his cell phone rings, and it's a very important call. But he can't reach the phone.......

The film was dedicated to Lenny McLean, who passed away from cancer in 1998 shortly before the film's release.

Love reading movie reviews? Hollywood Insider has some good review articles for you.





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Principles of Garden Design - Proportion

This is the third in a series of articles about the principles of design. I am trying to explain the principles by writing about floral design because floral design is less complex than garden design.

When designers talk about proportion they are comparing all of the elements in a design with each other.

When flower show judges judge an arrangement, they are supposed to look at the amount of plant material in relation to the container, the height of an arrangement relative to its width, and the whole design relative to its allotted space. The height of the plant material in an arrangement is supposed to be twice the height of the vase. By those standards, the proportions of my arrangement were rather eccentric.

The show was held in a school library and this arrangement was at the end of the checkout counter, so the space between the counter and the ceiling was the “allotted space”. The most effective aspect of this arrangement was the way that it towered over all of the people. For humans, man is the measure of all things. We see something as large or small in relation to ourselves. Everything that humans create is on a human scale. Our sense of proportion is always connected with our own bodies.

When thinking about proportion, we should also be thinking about scale. The arrangement in the photo was created using three containers - all synergistic arrangements must be use at least three containers. The two containers on the left side of the photo are dominated by bright red Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ flowers - the tallest stems soar to at least 5 feet. The third container had a single short stem of this flower, but it mainly contained yellow flowers. The taller flowers are a species Peruvian lily (Alstromeria aurantiaca) and the shorter are are Saint John’s Wort (a bush hypericum). The photo was taken early in the morning and the hypericum buds were fully open a few hours later, but the proportion of yellow to red was not very effective. In my previous article on balance, I said that if I had added tall yellow crocosmia to the red, the design would have been better balanced; it also would have improved the proportions because the amount of red was almost equal to the amount of yellow. The design needed about a third more yellow and it needed all of it in the upper part of the arrangement. When judging proportions, we are comparing the amount of one element with that of other elements. Equal proportions can be confusing. In this particular arrangement, our eyes keep asking us if the arrangement is yellow accented with red or vice-versa.

The design was intended to create a single arrangement using three containers. I was somewhat successful at doing that, but the arrangement in the smallest container is out of proportion with the other two. This is not because the flowers in that container were shorter, but because that container needed more cocosmia foliage. The other two were filled with that foliage but the third one wasn’t. I should have used the same proportion of foliage of foliage to flowers in that container - just on a smaller scale than the other containers. This would have tied together the three containers into a unified arrangement.

It was difficult to analyze the proportions of this arrangement and it is much more difficult to analyze proportions in our gardens. Most gardens are composed out of many more elements than a floral arrangement and most arrangements are only expected to last a few days so it is relatively easy to control the proportions of color. In our gardens, something will stop blooming while the plant next to it is just beginning to bloom. Gardens have to be planned many months and even years before the intended floral display can be seen.

Most houses in the United States have 8 foot ceilings. The library where I displayed the arrangement of crocosmia had a high ceiling - maybe 12 feet. Outdoors, proportions are often defined by 60 foot tall trees. Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ is tall in relation to most humans, but it is short in comparison with most trees. When you consider that trees are short in comparison with clouds that are floating by 10,000 feet overhead, dealing with scale in a garden can be quite daunting. The main thing to remember is that gardens are created by and for humans, so everything is on a human scale. Trees tower over us, so the trees are large, we don’t really need to see the garden from a tree’s point of view. Everything in our gardens should be designed in relationship to our bodies.

Many people make the mistake of making garden walks too narrow. Three feet is wide enough for a hallway in a house, so they are surprised by how narrow a three foot wide walkway seems in a garden. This is partially because we are experiencing the walk in relation to trees which tower over us, but it is also because walks are often encroached upon by plantings and because we expect to have more room to move about when outdoors. The principle walks in a garden should be wide enough for two adults to walk side by side. This means that the minimum width for a walk crossing a lawn is 4 1/2 feet. If you are going to have flowers spilling over the edges of a walkway, 6 or even 8 feet is better. If a garden’s walks feel comfortable in relation to your body, you are likely to feel comfortable with the gardens proportions.

Plants can tower over you or cause you to kneel down for a closer inspection, but you will be experiencing both of them from the walkway. My advice is to focus on the proportions of your walks and only fuss about the proportions of your plantings when you see obvious design problems. A plant that is too small today may be overgrown in 10 years. Just try to see your garden with fresh eyes every day.

If you need tree planting or yard maintenance services for your house garden or yard, be sure to check out Portland TT.





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The Telling of Columbine

Is the tragedy of Virginia Tech next? More than likely.

The Columbine High School shootings of April 1999, took place in Jefferson County, Colorado, near Denver and Littleton. Two teenage students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, carried out a shooting rampage, killing twelve students and a teacher, as well as wounding twenty-four others, before committing suicide. After the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre and the 1966 University of Texas massacre, Columbine is the third-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

Director Gus Van Sant

Four major motion pictures have dealt with the retelling of the tragedy of Columbine as has documentarian Michael Moore. Gus Van Sant’s "Elephant" (2003) won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in May 2006. It is a visually original film about a normal day in high school that ends in a Columbine-esque massacre. Much of the film is improvised.

“Runaway Jury” (2003), the Gene Hackman/Dustin Hoffman thriller, based on John Grisham's 1996 novel, briefly refers to a school killing and exchanges the book's central court case involving a cigarette company for a firearms trial. The tag line for “Zero Day” (2003) is: In high school, you're told you can do anything you put your mind to.

“Home Room” (2002), is a story that deals with the aftermath of a high school shooting and an unlikely bond between two young women, united by nothing more than their common suffering. It is a film writer/director Paul F. Ryan hopes can make an impact. "'Home Room' is an opportunity to start a discussion without anybody in the real world getting hurt."

FBI Begins Profiling

Ryan’s idea of cinema catharsis is still relevant today. A story that addresses a social issue and uses performance as a way of illustrating injustice to the audience is a concept that finds its origins in the philosophers of ancient Greece.

The problem with this theory is that often life, particularly modern life, is imitating art. In the wake of the recent Virginia Tech shootings, the FBI is sending psychologists into schools to profile the minds of such potential killers. Reminiscent of Michael Mann’s “Manhunter,” these profilers, by identifying ‘red flags’ and getting into the heads of these murders, believe they can stop a tragedy before it happens.

Meanwhile, Virginia Tech's Student Government Association issued a statement Sunday asking the news media to respect the privacy of students and leave campus. Around campus, camera crews and reporters are routinely met with scorn, including comments such as "go home."

Although some TV viewers expressed outrage at NBC’s decision to broadcast the tapes that Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-hui sent to it on the day of his attacks, the network's Nightly News With Brian Williams surged well ahead of its rivals Wednesday, according to Nielsen Research. The use of the killer's tapes is being condemned by many websites. Cliff Kincaid, editor of the watchdog group Accuracy in Media, wrote, "NBC is playing into the cold, dead hands of a mass murderer, exploiting his paranoid delusions for ratings and profit." But NBC was taken to task even on the liberal Huffington Post blog. Harry Shearer warned, "a hundred thousand self-pitying mentally ill young men (and women?) have just been shown the road to glory one more time."

For more articles related to the U.S, Hollywood, movies and more, check out Hollywood Insider.

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Yard and Garden Planning - Theme Colored Combinations for your Garden

Yard and Garden Planning - Theme Colored Combinations for your Garden

Colour is like your garden’s armour, an expression of your own true colours. Understanding the benefits that colours can bring to your garden will give you the power to impact on all of your senses. In the last article I explained how colours work with our moods and how to use them. This time we will look at some examples of single colours, and harmonised and contrasting colour combinations.

Note: the numbers in parantheses after the plants refer to the number of plants to include in your plan.

Single Colour Combinations

Blue

Syringa Vulgaris “Firmament” (1) + Viburnum opulus “Xanthocarpum” (1) + Polemonium caeruleum (3) + Aquilegia vulgaris (2) + Hosta ventricosa (1)

Soft Purple

Allium schoenoprasum (5) + Allium aflatunense (3) + Rose “Mme Gregoire Staechelin” (1) + Salvia lavandulifolia (3) + Buddleia alternifolia (1)

Deep Plums

Astrantia major “Hadspen Blood” (3) + Berberis thunbergii “Atropurpurea Nana” (1) + Cotinus coggygria “Royal Purple” (1) + bearded iris deep plum (2)

Soft Yellow

#1

Rudbeckia fulgida “Goldstrum” (2) + Anthemis tinctoria “E.C. Buxton” ( 4) + Osteospermum “Buttermilk” (3)

#2

Rosa “Buff Beauty” (1) + Lilium testaceum (2) + Kniphofia “Little Maid” (1)

Yellow-Orange

Cockscomb (Celosia) + Coneflowers (Rudbeckia) + Marigolds (Tagetes) + creeping Zinnias (Sanvitalia procumbens)

Red

“Fire King” yarrow (Achillea millefolium) + “Disco Flame” French marigolds (Tagetes patula) + Scarlet cockscomb (Celosia)

Hot Colours

#1

Gladiolus hortulanus, 4 red, pink and magenta + Dianthus barbatus “Summer Beauty” (2) + Lobelia cardinalis (3) + Coreopsis grandiflora “Sunburst” ( 3) + Petunia hybrida, magenta (8) + Zinnia elegans “Rose Pinwheel” (5) + Tagetes patula “Scarlet Sophie” (3) + Verbena hybrida “Showtime” (3) + Celosia, Scarlet (plumed cockscomb) (4)

#2

Lobelia cardinalis (3) + red Dahlia (3) + Potentilla astrosanguinea “Gibson Scarlet” (4)

Pink

#1

Lavatera “Rosea” (2) + pink painted Daisies (3) + Anemone hybrida (1) + Dendranthema (1) + Sedum “Ruby Glow” (2)

#2

Echinacea purpurea “Bright Star” (3) + Hemerocallis “Catherine Woodbery” (5)

Dark Pinks

Magenta petunia + “Apple Blossom” verbena + “Sunnyside” camellia

Harmonised Colours Combinations

Pink, Yellow and White

English rose “Chianti” (1) + “De Rescht” (1) + Rosa Mundi (1) + “Ivonne Rabier” (1) + Allium moly (2) + Rudbeckia nitida “Herbstonne” (3) + Foxgloves (3 pink + 2 white)

Cool-colour

#1:

Hibiscus syriacus “Diana” (1) + Cerastium tomentosum (3) + Limonium latifolium (5) + Scabiosa caucasica (3)+ Aster frikartii “Monch” (3) + Salvia superba “East Friesland” (10) + Achillea millefolium “White Beauty” (3)

#2:

Gaura lindheimeri (2) + Iris “Pallida Variegata” (Zebra) (3) + Nepeta faassenii (3) + Liriope muscari “Silvery Sunproof” (7) + Iberis sempervirens “Snowflake” (7) + Scabiosa caucasica (3) + Hemerocallis “ Little Grapette” (4)

Gold-Yellow

Lilium “Luxor” + “Amber Queen” floribunda rose

Soft Hues

(Shady Location)

Digitalis purpurea (3) + Thalictrum aquilegifolium (2) + Berberis thunbergii “Atropurpurea” (1) + Anemone hybrida “Honorine Jobert” (4) + Thalictrum rochebrunianum “Lavender Mist” (2) + Lamium maculatum “White Nancy” (2) + Hosta “Chinese Sunrise” (3)

Blue, Pink and Yellow

Taxus baccata “Aurea” (1) + Phlox paniculata “Landhochzeit” or “Dusterlohe”(3) + Agapanthus Headbourne purple Hybrids (2) + Allium sphaerocephalon (2) + Penstemon “Evelyn” (3) + Ajuga reptans “Atropurperea” (1) + Hybrid sage (3)

Contrasting Colour Combinations

Orange & Blue

Tulipa greigii “Cape Cod” (6) + Ajuga reptans “Atropurpurea” (3) + Trollius chinensis (2)

Yellow & Violet

#1

Blue Forget-me-not (2) + Corydalis lutea (3) + Meconopsis cambrica (3) + Clematis montana (1)

#2

Buddleia davidii “Glasnevin” (1) + Solidaster luteus “Lemore” (3)

Lime Green & Blue

#1

Nigella damascena “Miss Jekyll” (3) + Humulus lupulus “Aureus” (1)

#2

Delphinium pacific hybrid “Black Night” (3) + Acer shirasawanum “Aureum” (1)

Shocking Pink, Red & Orange

Lysimachia clethroides purple (3) + Helenium “Waltraut” (5)

Blending similar plants in different shades makes a stunning combination. For example, try a mix of cream, pink and red Astilbe or a combination of daisies that are all of the same tones. It is an easy way to achieve a perfect landscape. When you make decisions about your colour choices for your landscape, take notice of surrounding colours like buildings, sheds, or fences that will have an effect on the resulting colours. Your landscape will be at its best in a partnership with your environment. Make sure that your plants will complement your house in the background etc. For example, a good choice for a red-brick house would be flowers with dark salmon pink colour. I saw a wonderful brick house one day, facing a north side, that had a mix of azaleas with ferns, a perfect design. For a white house, a white and green plan would complement it very well. For instance, use white flowers, one or two variegated shrubs and a green background, play with the tones. We will look more closely into that subject next time.

Good gardening!

If you need help maintaining your garden, cleaning up trees and bushes, check out Portland TT and their services.

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Healthy Soil's Key Components

Healthy Soil's Key Components

Earthworms:

      • Earthworms provide aeration so that oxygen reaches plant roots.

      • Earthworms till the soil bring nutrients to plant roots.

      • Earthworms digest plant materials and then excrete waste containing readily available nutrients for plants to use. Carbon, Nitrogen, and in smaller amounts Phosphorus and Potassium are all made available through worm castings.

Fungi:

Fungi work together with plant roots to form a mutually beneficial relationship. Fungi excrete substances that help plants fight disease. Fungi also help plant roots take up nutrition.

Humus:

Degraded plant materials not only provide key nutrients for plants, they also provide better soil structure for plants to live in. Humus helps soil retain moisture in sandy soils and helps clay soils drain. More humus means more oxygen to the roots of plants in heavy soil as well.

We had none of these when we started gardening on our land.

What We Did To Build Soil In Our Garden

When our home was built the backyard was graded and the topsoil was lost. All that was left were boulders and sticky-compacted clay. What a mess! It has taken years of work to build the garden soil. What I've learned over the last 12 years could fill a book but I'll stick to some high points.

We did not till. We do use raised beds but we build these beds by either sheet composting (I describe later) or Hugelkultur, mounds made of small twigs and branches and layers of leaves and other organic matter. Tilling compacted soils decreases the numbers of fungi and worms in the soil.

We mulch heavily. Mulch is very important for healthy soil. Mulch provides cover and food for worms and beneficial microbes as well as for plants when it degrades. Mulch moderates soil temperatures and helps soil retain moisture. Mulch suppresses weeds. We mulch nearly everything in our raised beds.

Healthy soil needs organic material. We grow our own fertilizers and at the same time add biomass to the soil structure. We plant vetch, clover, oats, fava beans, garbanzo beans, mustard, turnips, and winter rye in the fall in some of our beds and in our paths. In some beds I need more nitrogen so I plant the nitrogen fixers, vetch, beans and clover. In others I need to improve soil structure so in go oats and turnips. You can plant the oats and clover together if you need both better structure and nitrogen. Here in Alabama, these plants grow slowly all winter and then really take off in the spring.

Once the weather warms, we cut the cover crop and compost the greenery or use it as mulch. What is left in the soil is a huge amount of wonderful roots that decompose and add rich organic matter to the soil. To plant I simply cut out the cover crops in the spaces where I'll plant. The heat of summer prevents the cover crops from coming back.

Sheet composting is basically what is suggested in "Lasagne Gardening" a book available at Rodale Press. We bought the book at the thrift store and I assigned the older boys to read the book. They in turn became enthusiastic about gardening and have built their own beds.

Sheet composting smothers weeds and invites worms to the soil. The worms TILL the soil for you so that what you get after a season is beautiful loam. If you really need to suppress the weeds use newspaper as the bottom layer.

Between the two methods, sheet composting and cover cropping, my soil is healthy and vital. Since I know that chemical fertilizers leave various kinds of salts in the soil and over time ruin the soil, I never buy chemical fertilizers. I've seen soil that has been fertilized chemically for decades and it's dead. The plants get all their nutrition from the fertilizers and much of it must be bought in order for the plants to produce.

Good luck to you and happy gardening!

If you want your garden to be maintenance or your old trees and lots to be removed, you can’t go wrong with the professional services offered by Portland TT.

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Container Gardening - Lessons From A Transplanted Gardener

Container Gardening - Lessons From A Transplanted Gardener

Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to gardening. Knowing how nature "works" gives us gardeners the power and the ability to work in concert with her to produce beautiful flowers and vegetables and create healthy gardens. And we’ve all heard a million times how important it is to know your gardening region and understand what practices work and don’t work there successfully.

LESSON #1 When planning a move, don’t underestimate the emotional attachment you have to your garden and plants. If you have container plants, start early looking for new homes for them. Other alternatives would be schools and retirement/assisted living facilities which often have teaching gardens.

Given that northern coastal California and northern coastal Florida are both zone 9, one might think that you could grow roughly the same plants in each place. Think again. Even though both areas have mild winters and year-round growing climates, the winter weather patterns are reversed. Once winter comes in Florida, the daily downpours of summer cease, whereas winter in California brings heavy rains which offer relief from the arid spring and summer seasons.

LESSON #2 Research and understand the weather patterns and climate of your new location. As is increasingly the case these days, a given year is not necessarily typical weather-wise. Listen to and believe what the locals tell you...they’ve been there. Especially your first year or so, pay attention to the weather forecasts. When they call for frost, protect your garden. Be aware if a long dry spell is predicted, and adjust your watering accordingly.

LESSON #3 When you’re starting a new garden (even if you haven’t moved), focus on your soil. Soil is the fundamental building block of a healthy, abundant garden. If you’re gardening in containers, use an organic potting mixture and replenish at least 1/3 of it each year. If you’re gardening in the ground, have your soil tested for pH, to determine the relative alkalinity and acidity. Determine whether you have clay, sand or some mixture of the two. And amend, amend, amend. Every soil type can benefit from the addition of organic matter which breaks down to add additional nutrients, making the soil healthier and more hospitable to the millions of microscopic beings living there. Talk to your local nursery people and your Cooperative Extension office to see what amendments are favored in your area.

LESSON #4 Spend some time getting to know the ecosystem that is your garden. Observe what insects, butterflies and bees regularly visit. Continually amending the soil will encourage earthworms to take up residence. Add insectary plants such as sweet alyssum, dill and yarrow which will attract beneficial insects. These good guys will help keep any problem bugs in check.

For the first few months, be a sponge and talk to as many local gardeners as you can. Read books specifically about gardening in your area. Visit local nurseries and tune in to local radio or TV gardening shows. Discussion boards on gardening web sites often have a wealth of information and you can specifically question other gardeners in your region...and as gardeners everywhere, they are usually more than willing to share their own challenges and successes. Above all, check out your county Cooperative Extension Service.

If you need a great service for your garden maintenance with a team of professional experts, click here.

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Remedies For Your Garden

Remedies For Your Garden

This is a quick summation of what helps when you have bug and disease problems.

Disease and pest resistant plants come from healthy microbes (beneficial fungi especially) + healthy beneficial organisms such as worms.

Beneficial microbes battle plant disease and capture nutrients for plant roots to use. Worms "till" the soil and add fertility at the same time.

Sprays are for unhealthy plants but you don't have those when you encourage healthy soil and beneficial organisms.

Listerine, vodka, etc... (Jerry Baker style) sprays impede the health of beneficial organisms.

Spray compost tea instead. Use lots of compost. Try milk for some fungal disease. You'll do much better in the long run and save yourself time and money.

Stressed plants invite disease and pests. Remember that plants must have adequate water.They must be planted at the correct time and temperature. Most need the sun to grow. Plants that are poorly grown from the start are stressed plants.

So what if you aren't blessed with terrific soil yet?

Soil building:

Michael Phillips in his book, The Apple Grower, explains, "Root colonization by either type of mycorrhizal fungi provides protection to the roots [plant roots would be the same]." He goes on to explain, "The beneficial hyphae exude glomulin and other antibiotic metabolites as a way of protecting their home turf." This all means that fungi help plants resist disease (and they also help plant roots take up nutrition!) We make use of brush piles that have degraded and we use rotten logs from the forest that we break up and compost or break up and use as mulch or break up and use in building new garden beds. Fungi abound in both the degraded brush pile and in the rotten logs.

Bug sprays:

They are the base of the garlic and hot pepper spray. Boil the chiles and garlic in a saucepan with about 2 cups of water and then let cool. Then grind the chiles and peeled garlic in the blender with the hot water and then strain the liquid into a sprayer. Add a little biodegradable soap (Bronner's peppermint soap works well) and water and go to it. The spray doesn't kill the beetles but it stops them in their tracks. Habeneros work well too and are also easy to grow.

Another pest solution

Once the plants need pollination, remove the covers. (Crops such as potatoes do not require pollination.) We bend rebar into U shapes and stick the ends down into the ground. The row covers are pinned to the rebar with clothes pins. Later that rebar can be covered in plastic for frost protection.

Good things about mulch

Mulch prevents weeds, helps the soil's temperature stay even and helps the soil retain moisture. Eventually, once it breaks down or is broken down by soil organisms, it also feeds plants. Mulch also protects beneficial soil organisms from too much heat or dry weather. Mulch is important for preventing stress to plants. Use LOTS of it!

A Warning about mulch

If you choose to mulch, please be sure to NOT mulch with hay from fields where herbicides have been applied. You'll have to ask; the information will not be volunteered.

GSE

GSE (Grapefruit Seed Extract) works well with bacterial as well as fungal problems and I've noticed it works in a small way as a deterrent too.

Compost Tea - A cure all!

Please do a google search for finding how to make it. It's made all the difference in seedlings, pest control, disease control and bringing plants back from the edge of disaster.

If you need garden maintenance by a team of professional experts, contact Portland TT.

Grow Your Own Nitrogen

Grow Your Own Nitrogen

Nitrogen (N) helps plants use carbohydrates to gain energy, like certain foods we eat help us to gain energy. Nitrogen controls how plants take their form and how they function inside, and nitrogen helps plants make protein that helps them grow strong and healthy. Humans and animals benefit from eating vegetables and plants that are rich in nitrogen because proteins are passed on to humans and animals when they eat vegetables and plants.Leguminous plants such as beans, peas, clover, alfalfa and vetch actually generate nitrogen in the soil.

Rhizobia bacteria that grow on the roots of these plants take nitrogen from the air and make it available to the plant. In turn, the plant gives the Rhizobia the carbohydrates they need to grow. This give and take between different species is known as a symbiotic relationship. The seeds should be inoculated (coated) with the proper Rhizobia before planting to assure higher rates of nitrogen fixation.

Growing Nitrogen in the Garden

Interplant vegetable crops with peas and beans. In late summer and early fall, thickly plant peas between crop rows or in open spaces. The best time for tilling legumes into the soil is before they bloom. Then, the plants are most leafy and richest in nitrogen.

A cover crop adds nutrients and organic matter to the soil and decreases soil erosion. If an area of the garden will not be cultivated, in spring sow a leguminous cover crop such as alfalfa, fava beans or clover. In early autumn, clover or hairy vetch can be sown once crops are harvested. Where fall crops are still growing, you can sow a cover crop a month or less before the vegetable harvest. This way the cover crop gets a good start but does not interfere with the edible crop. Do not allow these cover crops to set seed as they can become invasive.

Growing Nitrogen Outside the Garden

Where garden space is limited, grow vetch, alfalfa, beans or peas along yard borders or fences as a source of green manure or high nitrogen organic matter. Leguminous crops can also be grown in parts of your yard instead of a grass lawn or in a section of the garden that is not being used. Adding only phosphorus fertilizer (no nitrogen) will favor legume growth over grasses and weeds. Legumes also grow best in well-limed soil.

Leguminous plants (peas, beans, lentils) can be mowed, raked, and added to the compost pile,used as a mulch, or turned directly into the garden soil. Plant your vegetables where the legumes were planted the previous year(s).

If you need help maintaining your garden or clearing trees, be sure to visit Portland TT to know more about their professional services.

Garden Weeds – Best Ways to Kill & Prevent Weeds Naturally

Garden Weeds – Best Ways to Kill & Prevent Weeds Naturally

Garden weeds rob sunlight, soil nutrients, water and growing space from your plants and can harbor pests and disease all of which can lead to a less fruitful harvest. While it’s impossible to completely do away with them, this page will teach you how to reduce their impact to nothing more than an occasional annoyance…

Identifying Garden Weeds: Types of Weeds & Pictures of Weeds

Garden weeds include anything that grows where you don’t want it. In addition to traditional "weeds", this also includes sometimes wanted plants like grass, vines and tree seedlings.

Garden weeds can grow at any time of year and can be annual (live and die in the same year), biennial (live and die in two years) or perennial (live several years), each of which present unique challenges.

      • Annual garden weeds are the easiest to fight since pulling them as soon as they sprout means they won’t go to seed. As many as three generations can result from one annual weed in a single season, so the battle with that weed is only over if you pull it before it's gone to seed.

      • Biennial weeds can often be identified by their puff of leaves sprouting from the ground.

      • Perennials are by far the hardest to get rid of. Not only do they reproduce from seed like annuals and biennials, but they can also grow back from their roots and stems.

Preventing Garden Weeds & How to Kill Weeds

Unfortunately, it’s impossible for your garden to ever be completely free of weeds. Even if you’ve created ideal conditions to discourage their growth, there’s still a number of ways they can come back…

      • Carried in by wind

      • Creep in from surrounding beds or yard

      • Dormant seeds churned up from the soil

      • Flown in by bird droppings

      • Grass clippings, straw or hay mulch that was not free of weed seeds

The good news is there are several ways to keep weeds at bay so that they become nothing more than a minor annoyance…

The waiting game – when your garden is cleared, tilled and ready for planting in the spring, wait a week or so for any churned-up weed seeds to sprout. As soon as they do, cut them off just below the soil’s surface with a hoe.

A diamond-head hoe makes fast work of this while disturbing the soil as little as possible (it also allows you to use the hoe while pushing instead of pulling to prevent back strain)… the less you disturb the soil, the less likely you’ll be to churn up additional dormant seeds. Repeat this process again after another week and you can be pretty sure that most dormant weed seeds close to the surface are done sprouting.

Assuming you’ve cultivated extremely healthy soil, your weed problem should be minimal in future years as long as you don’t continue to till up dormant seeds.

Apply mulch – a healthy layer of organic mulch spread around your garden plants will serve to block sunlight necessary for weed growth. Synthetic mulches such as black plastic mulch and biodegradable paper will have the same effect, as will living mulch.

For those tenacious weeds that somehow find their way through, mulch also makes them easier to spot. See Proper Mulching Techniques and Types of Mulch for more information.

Set up a drip irrigation system or, better yet, a mulch/ drip irrigation combination system – Make weed-seeds-in-waiting depend on the rain instead of your water bill! Drip irrigation delivers water directly where you want it… to your plants and away from the open spaces between them.

Use barriers – Especially good for preventing grass from creeping in and for giving young plants time to get stronger, garden barriers are an effective weed-preventing addition. Commonly used barriers include:

      • Cold frames (pictured right) are bottomless boxes that allow light in. Their tops can be opened for air circulation and closed for plant protection from all of the elements, including cold air and weeds.

    • Edgings serve a number of purposes, one of which is weed prevention, especially when using them to create a raised plant bed or when burying them several inches into the ground. There are several types/materials available, including:

nbsp;           - Stone edging (pictured right)

nbsp;           - Plastic edging

nbsp;           - Wood edging - must be replaced more frequently due to rotting

Create weedless walkways around your garden beds. One effective method for accomplishing this is to cover your walkways with a couple layers of newspaper topped with several inches of straw. After a year or so, the weeds should be completely starved out.

Be a proactive puller – The longer you wait to pull weeds, the more likely they are to go to seed, so make weed hunting a part of your weekly routine. When making your rounds, try to remove as much of the weeds as possible, including the roots.

There are also several effective tools out there to make the job easier. If you're tired of using your hands, go to your local garden store and try out a few tools.

To get rid of weeds after pulling, add them to your hot compost pile (NOT your cold compost pile unless you want them to live to fight another day).

Organic herbicides – good for spot treatment, not all effective weed sprays are made from chemicals. Organic options such as Weed-Aside Herbicidal Soap use vinegar and fatty acids to get the job done. It'll only kill what it directly touches, so it's not the end of the world if you accidentally spray a little on surrounding plant leaves when targeting garden bed weeds.

Cover crops – If all else fails and weeds continue to take over your garden bed, it’s time to shift all of your focus towards defeating them. Planting a cover crop such as buckwheat, alfalfa, clover or soybeans means that nothing but the aggressive cover crop will grow in that space for the entire year. It will overtake anything else that tries to grow there, including weeds.

When the cover crop starts to flower, till it into the soil, replant and repeat. After that year’s over, your soil will be healthier and the weeds will be gone.

If you need help maintaining your garden or clearing trees, be sure to visit Portland TT to know more about their professional services.

Soil Fertility in the Vegetable Garden

Soil Fertility in the Vegetable Garden

Walkway and Patio Edge Designs with Modern Low-maintenance Plants

Modern low-maintenance plants surrounding walkway and patio edges in memorial and meditation garden designs convey intimacy. Choosing suitable garden plants is crucial.

Memorial and meditation garden landscapes are welcoming and restful spaces. Regardless of size, components of these landscape designs are a central meditative or memorial feature, an open space like a patio, benches, and walkways for entering and exiting the garden. If the area is large, there may be margins of walls, fences or hedges as well as meandering pathways. Nevertheless, the setting should be one of intimacy. Low-maintenance landscape plants contribute tremendously to achieving this desired effect.

In order to focus on the main meditative or memorial feature, plantings are best restricted to patio and walkway edges. Plant selection is usually the last designed garden landscape component. Planting a successful garden landscape requires knowing three factors:

      • Site conditions

      • Characteristics and functions of desired plants, and

      • Coordination of plant colors and appearances

This example shows a church model that memorializes early 19th century church founders as the focal point of a landscape garden. The plant hardiness zone 7 garden is set facing south on disturbed soil that is primarily acidic red Virginia clay. The specified soil amendment is mushroom compost.

Planned benches are teak. Installed irrigation is underground. Poured concrete makes up the patio and walkway. Timers trigger safety lighting on poles and within the model.

Low-maintenance Plant Colors and Characteristics

Coordinated colors and plant textures present a unified and tidy appearance and pleasing public image. The idea here is to bring warmth and welcoming to the garden without detracting from the model. Colors, carried out through both flowers and foliage, are white, pink, deep blue and intense yellow.

Plants in this scheme either are small-leaved evergreens or possess some kind of late winter interest. They remain small and require little or no pruning. They are also resistant to common pests, diseases, drought and, for the most part, are deer resistant. They can all triumph over a variety of soil types.

Sun and Shade Site Essentials

      • South facing walk edges: East, west and southern year-long sun exposure on shrubs planted here. Plants here must be capable of withstanding year-long sun exposure on a daily basis. Evergreens are not appropriate due to possible winter wind and drought damage.

      • South facing patio edges: East, west and southern winter sun exposure; some east and full southern summer sun exposure. Plants here must be capable of withstanding winter sun exposure. Evergreens are not appropriate here also due to possible winter wind and drought damage.

      • North and east facing patio edges behind memorial: Limited winter shade from surrounding deciduous trees and memorial; heavy summer shade from surrounding deciduous trees and memorial. Plants here must be capable of surviving in part to heavy shade. This is an excellent location for some small-leaved evergreen shrubs.

      • North and west facing patio edges with benches: Limited winter shade from surrounding deciduous trees; filtered summer shade from surrounding deciduous trees. Plants here must be capable of surviving in part to dappled shade. Evergreens are also not appropriate here due to possible winter wind and drought damage.

Specific Low-Maintenance Plant Selections for this Landscape Garden Design

      • Low-Maintenance Plants for DIY Landscape Gardens: Bordering Walks and Patios in Memorial and Meditation Garden Designs

If you need help maintaining your garden or clearing trees, be sure to visit Portland TT to know more about their professional services.

Soil Fertility in the Vegetable Garden

Soil Fertility in the Vegetable Garden

By now, most of my seedlings have been started and are waiting for warmer weather before they’re placed in the garden. We’ve had a few warm, dry days and I’m taking the opportunity to amend the garden with organic fertilizer and lime.

Here on the “Wet Coast” the high amount of rainfall we get leaches away a lot of the calcium, magnesium and other nutrients that help maintain soil fertility. In their absence, our soil tends to become acidic.

I usually alternate between normal agricultural lime (also known as calcium carbonate) and dolomite lime (which has magnesium). Ideally, this lime should be applied in the autumn to allow it enough time to take effect. In this region, clubroot disease in brassicas is prevalent and one of the only ways to prevent it from flourishing is to increase the pH of the soil close to 7. The fungus that causes clubroot prefers a more acidic pH and therefore doesn’t proliferate. Tomatoes also get a dose of lime more for the calcium that lime provides. Blossom end rot in tomatoes is caused by a lack of calcium uptake by tomato plants. Often, this is due to uneven watering – periods of extreme drought followed by heavy watering. Still, providing some extra calcium in the soil along with mulching will prevent my Romas from succumbing to BER.

The recipe goes as follows:

      • 4 parts canola seed meal (or alfalfa seed meal)

      • 1 part rock phosphate

      • 1 part greensand (or ˝ part kelp meal)

The canola meal provides the majority of the nitrogen for the fertilizer. The rock phosphate adds the phosphorus (and quite a bit of calcium too) and the greensand builds up potassium and micronutrient levels.

Here are some examples of how much to use per vegetable type:

      • Tomatoes, peppers & squash: ˝ cup under each plant

      • Beans, peas, beets & alliums: 1/2 cup per 10 ft row.

      • Corn: 2 cups per 10 ft row

      • Lettuce & salad greens: 1 cup per 10 ft row.

The beauty of using an organic fertilizer like this is that the nutrients are released slowly, over time, as microbes break down the organic material.

If you are seeking help in maintaining your garden, Portland TT can help. They have a team of professionals that are expert in garden maintenance and tree care services.

Minor Garden Maintenance Tasks Reduce Major Landscape Renovations

Minor Garden Maintenance Tasks Reduce Major Landscape Renovations

Disease and pest damages, mechanical injuries, and moisture and heat stresses initially appear trivial. Inspection keeps minor maintenance from becoming renovation.

An essential landscape garden chore is remedying plant damages, injuries, and stresses. The first step is routine inspection of landscape plants. This gives structure to garden maintenance by helping to prioritize chores. Quick attention to small and seemingly trivial problems keeps what should be minor maintenance tasks from becoming major renovations.

Inspection

Inspect leaves and flowers first. Not only are they the easiest to see, but disease and pest problems, along with moisture and heat stresses, may appear here first. Tree trunks and branches are next. Some problems like mechanical injuries are easy to spot, but identification of bacterial and fungal problems need expert identification. Roots, especially those of trees and shrubs, are inaccessible and hard to inspect. However, root injuries or diseases are important but sometimes forgotten pieces in plant health maintenance.

Help

Assistance may be as close as books like Pirone's Tree Maintenance (7th Edition) or The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting & Pruning Techniques by Tracy DiSabato-Aust. Another source of good information is The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Cooperative Extension System. Extension agents in many area offices offer help and may maintain landscape and garden websites through state universities. Staff in local garden centers is often well trained and experienced in diagnosing regional problems. They are usually qualified to make suggestions for combating problems.

Problems That Appear in Mid- to Late-Summer

      • Disease and Pest Damage

A branch full of dead leaves in an otherwise healthy tree raises a red flag. Cut out problematic branches immediately, identify cause and plan for solution. Hopefully, quick action will prevent spread of the problem to the rest of the tree or neighboring trees.

Deer and other mammals prefer some plants to others. The easiest solution is to grow plants that animal pests do not like. Taste deterrents are initially inexpensive and easy-to-use remedies. Repeated chomping on plants leads to stunted growth, little or no flowering and sometimes death.

      • Mechanical Injuries

Wires left in place too long bring about girdling - trunk damage that leads to tree death. Electric wire from light strings left in place year around is often overlooked until decorated trees cannot contend with midsummer stresses and begin to die. To prevent girdling, regularly loosen light strings left as permanent decorations.

      • Moisture and Heat Stress

Shrubs and small trees planted under building projections show desiccation and dieback due to lack of water. An unfortunate and illogical assumption is that rain will provide enough moisture. These same plants often suffer from heat stress because of their positions close to buildings. Windows and brightly colored exteriors may reflect intolerable amounts of light and heat into nearby plants.

      • Neglect

Allowing volunteer plants to grow through established trees and shrubs leads not only to initial untidiness, but formidable cleanup tasks later. Volunteers may also rob desirable plants of moisture, nutrients and light when continued growth is permitted.

If you need garden maintenance by a team of professional experts, contact Portland TT.

Organic Treatments

Organic Treatments

One way you can do your part for the environment is by shunning synthetic pesticides, and going back to more natural treatments.

Here are some options for natural garden treatments:

The Bordeaux Mixture

This is probably one of the most popular natural treatments.

It can be used to protect your tomato plants, vines, and fruit trees from cryptogamic diseases.

When sprayed onto your garden, it will leave characteristic blue droplets on your plants’ leaves.

The bordeaux mixture is made by combining lime with copper sulphate (hence the blue color).

Take care when spraying the Bordeaux mixture near bodies of water, as it is harmful to fish.

Sulfur

Powdered sulfur can be used to prevent powdery mildew and scab on vines and fruit trees.

Sulfur can also be used alongside the Bordeaux mixture.

Horticultural White

Horticultural white, also known as ‘lime milk’ has the following uses:

      • Prevents moss and lichen

      • Prevents cryptogamic diseases

      • Kills insect larvae lodged in tree barks at the end of winter

It is typically applied to tree trunks using a paintbrush. This process is referred to as ‘tree liming’.

Pyrethrin

Pyrethrin is a natural insecticide that works best against greenfly and caterpillars. It is produced from Chrysanthemums.

Pyrethrin is not to be confused with rotenone, another plant-based insecticide, which has been banned in the US since 2009 due to its toxicity to humans and pets.

Glue

Glue Bands

Glue bands are a great way to stop insects such as caterpillars, ants, and greenflies from reaching up tree trunks. Simply place the glue band at about 32 inches from the soil.

Glue Stickers

Yellow glue stickers can similarly be used to catch greenhouse and indoor insects such as thrips.

Plant Slurry

Plant slurry treatments are great for fighting both cryptogamic diseases, and parasites. They can also be used to strengthen your plants.

Plant slurries can be made from a variety of plants; nettles and common horsetail are popular favorites.

Fungi and Bacteria

Use these to selectively attack certain parasites.

Bacillus Thuringiensis

This bacteria can be bought in powder form. Spray it on plants that are being attacked by caterpillars.

Tricoderma Viridae Spores

These spores come in both granular and powder form. They can be used to treat leaf curl. Simply place the spores in between bark crevices, or in the trees’ openings.

Conclusion

If you’re still confused about the kind of products you can use for your garden, why not let the experts handle it? Visit Portland Tree Trimming Services for quality care for your trees.

Famous French Rose Growers

Famous French Rose Growers

The French rose has a long history, honored by famous names who labored to bring us the varieties we enjoy today.

Empress Josephine

One of the biggest names in the history of the French rose is that of Empress Josephine. Her efforts cemented France’s place as the cultural center for roses throughout the 19th Century world.

The Empress’ garden at Malmaison housed one of the most famous collections of roses in history. It boasted over 250 botanic varieties and cultivars.

The Empress’ passion for French roses went so far that she secretly imported the “Duchess of Portland” rose tree, despite the ongoing English embargo.

Empress Josephine also gave her support to talented rose growers. Among the talents she supported was André Dupont. He was the longtime director of the Luxembourg Garden before becoming Malmaison’s official gardener. Dupont was one of the first gardeners in history to produce roses from seeds.

Jacques-Louis Descamet

In the 1800s, Jacques-Louis Descamet started his first rose nursery.

Between 1804 and 1814, he would become known as France’s first great large-scale rose producer. Some argue that the distinction even extends to the whole of Europe, given the more than 200 new rose varieties produced in his garden.

After the fall of the Empire, he immigrated to Russia and continued his work for the Tsar.

Jean-Pierre Vibert

After Descamet came Vibert. Jean-Pierre Vibert was considered the first French “rose-breeder, as he was the first to grow roses exclusively.

Through his experience and scientific research, he was able to produce more than 600 new rose varieties. These roses were created in the nurseries he brought from Descemet back in 1815.

Louis and Philippe Noisette

Louis Noisette and his brother Philippe were trained agronomists. After immigrating to the United States, Philippe sent Louis some rose tree seeds from South Carolina. Those rose trees helped launch what would become known as the Noisette rose group of Europe.

Jean-Baptiste Guillot and Son

In 1867 Lyon, Jean-Baptiste Guillot created the first group of modern “Hybrides de Thé”. He named it “France”. This coup gave the French rose a renewed international reputation.

Eight years later, his son would produce the “Paquerette”, the first Polyanthus variety.

The Pernet-Ducher Nurseries

Lyon was an exciting place for the French rose at this time. Just a few years after the Guillots’ successes, the first variety of orange-yellow French roses were produced in the Pernet-Ducher nurseries. It was a rose tree called "Soleil d'Or". These first orange-yellow roses led to the yellow "Hybrides de Thé" that we see today.

Réné Barbier

Around the same time, the first climbing roses were produced by Réné Barbier, a rose grower from Orléans.

The Meilland Family

The Meilland family in Antibes is famous for its many creations, and continues breeding exceptional roses to this day. Some of their rose varieties include:

      • The “Madame A Meilland”, the world's best-selling rose

      • The “Black Bacara”, the first black rose

Conclusion

Want a rose bush or rose tree in your own home? We can help! Visit Portland Tree Trimming Services.

Three Tips for Organic Vegetable Gardening

Three Tips for Organic Vegetable Gardening

Learn to Grow Vegetables Without Chemicals

Grow your very own pesticide and chemical-free vegetables through organic gardening methods. This spring, use these three tips to go organic.

Many people imagine that organic vegetable gardening is difficult. It's actually easy to begin growing vegetables, fruits and herbs using organic methods. These three tips will get you started to a beautiful organic vegetable garden.

Build Soil by Adding Compost

Compost is often called black gold by gardeners, and for good reason; it's a rich organic source of nitrogen, phosphorous and potash, the three major building blocks of soil, as well as many trace elements. You can purchase compost or make your own.

To make your own compost, simply find a spot in your garden away from the house or use an old trash can. Begin adding kitchen scraps from fruits or vegetables, such as carrot peels, potato skins, browned lettuce leaves, and apple cores. Add some soil from the garden to encourage beneficial bacteria to begin breaking down the plant matter. Add leaves in the fall or grass clippings in the spring and sprinkle with water or allow the rain to soak the compost pile to further encourage bacteria to break down the materials. Turn the compost pile regularly. When you see crumbly black soil under the refuse, that's compost. It can be added to the garden frequently. The more compost you add, the better the vegetables, since they will use the compost to build healthy roots, leaves and flowers. Never add animal waste or animal products. Animal waste may add parasites, and scraps of meat, fish or poultry will only attract vermin to the compost pile.

Animal manures may also be added to the soil as natural compost. Horse manure, cow manure, chicken and goat manure all make good fertilizers for organic gardens. Be sure to let them age, since fresh manure is very high in nitrogen and may burn plant roots. A safe way to incorporate manures is to add them to the compost pile, turn them in, and wait until they crumble down into soil.

If you see worms in your compost pile, don't panic - celebrate! Worms actually eat through all the leaves, grass clippings and apple cores and poo out the rich dark matter gardeners know and love as worm castings, one of the richest fertilizers available. Worms are an organic gardener's best friend, and finding lots of worms in the compost pile or garden is a sign that it's a healthy organic ecosystem.

Another great way to keep your soil in top condition is by planting trees. Trees are a wonderful way to diversify your garden’s ecosystem while decreasing the risk of waterlogging. Visit Portland Tree Trimming Services to learn more about what trees can do for your landscaping.

Use Companion Plants Such as Marigolds to Discourage Insects

Before commercial pesticides, gardeners relied upon nature to teach them how to repel insects. Some plants are both beautiful and useful. Marigolds, for instance, repel many insects. They naturally repel tomato horn worms. Tomato horn worms are several inches long and bright green. They will strip a tomato plant of all of its leaves in a single night. Marigolds planted around tomatoes will naturally repel these voracious bugs.

Basil is also another wonderful companion plant. Many gardeners also plant basil around tomatoes. It is known to repel white flies and other insects.

Numerous other companion plant combinations exist, some tested and some only tested by time. For the organic gardener, harnessing the power of natural to naturally repel insects reduces or eliminates the need for commercial pesticides.

Rotating crops in your vegetable garden also reduces the incidence of insect pests. Some insects lay eggs in the soil which hatch the following season. If you rotate crop groups, such as cruciferous vegetables and squashes in the same bed from year to year, the insects won't be able to find food. You will greatly reduce or eliminate them by making it hard for them to find their next meal.

Neem Oil and Organic Pesticides

Some plants are difficult to grow through preventative organic methods without using some kind of fungicide or pesticide. Roses, for example, often get black spot, mites, and a host of other diseases. When it becomes necessary to use some sort of topical pesticide or fungicide, choose an organic product. Neem oil, for example, is taken from the neem tree, and works wonders to repel pests ranging from black spot to Japanese beetles.

Diatomaceous earth is an excellent organic pesticide if snails or slugs are chewing away the leaves of your vegetable plants. Diatomaceous earth is a powder created from the ground up remains of diatoms, creates with a hard shell. Sprinkle the powder around vegetable plants. Although you can safely handle the powder, and it won't harm animals or birds, the tiny little crushed up shells destroy the soft bodies of slugs. Using beer traps by placing a small pool of beer or a beer bottle tilted sideways to allow slugs to crawl in and drown happily in a puddle of beer also provides organic control methods that won't harm the environment, animals, birds or beneficial insects.

When starting organic vegetable gardening, the amount of information on organic gardening may seem overwhelming. Focus on building your soil and the battle is half won. Harness natural pesticides like marigolds to repel insects. And if invaders threaten, use only organic products like neem oil. Enjoy the fruits of your labors with a clear conscience knowing they are chemical-free organic vegetables.






Adult ADD Help... Get Control Of Your Adult ADD Life!

If you or a loved one is struggling with ADD and is seeking treatment, click here. In the meantime, here are our suggestions for coping with the condition as an adult.

Adult ADD Coping strategies:

  1. Continue educating yourself regarding Adult ADD, strategies, and accommodations that might be useful, as well as about legal rights and advocacy techniques.
  2. The use of note takers or tape recorders in classes or meetings can be invaluable when it comes to making sure you get everything, and will remember the important issues later on.
  3. Take time to get to know your peers, and any disability support staff and seek them out to request any assistance you need. Find help as soon as you experience difficulties. Consider working with a counselor or advisor to help you learn additional, personalized coping strategies.
  4. Keep a planner (or electronic scheduler) in which you record your assignments, projects, meeting and appointment dates, your plans for completion, your personal deadlines for steps to completion, dates and times of appointments
  5. Pick a quiet and comfortable place to do work that requires concentration and take frequent breaks to get physical movement and refresh yourself.
  6. Set aside 15 minutes at the end of your concentration/work time to review where you are on your various projects and to plan the next day.
  7. Select projects, and tasks that are high interest and a good fit for your learning style. Consider taking a reduced course load. If possible, request course substitutions to fulfill requirements that pose great difficulty for you because of your disability. If you must take a difficult course, consider taking it during the Summer or during a semester in which you have a light load.
  8. Request needed accommodations for special activities
  9. Remember, since you're an Adult add, ask questions if you do not understand a topic. If you remain unsure, write your question down, then proceed to complete the task to the best of your ability and understanding





Landscape Maintenance Mistakes

Landscape Maintenance Mistakes

There are a number of common landscape maintenance mistakes that are made on both residential and public landscapes. We are here to guide you into preventing these errors and fixing what you’ve already broken. But first let’s identify the mistakes and their causes.

Landscape Mistakes and Causes

There are generally three categories of landscape mistakes. These are pruning, mulching and site selection. The problems that arise usually come about due to lack of knowledge, carelessness, poor judgment or misunderstanding. These mistakes will affect the health of your plants and can even completely destroy the entire design of your landscape and in public spaces can affect public safety.

      1. Over Pruning

      Pruning is a well-needed landscape maintenance technique. However it is often mixed up with shearing. Some species of plants will not recover from a session of shearing. When some plants are sheared their branches, buds and needles die. Shearing of a plant’s growth tip in arbitrary locations to give it an artificial shape can also be harmful.

      When you prune selectively you can prevent the death of your plant’s interior portions.

      2. Incompetent Site Selection

      A very crucial and common mistake is selecting the wrong planting site for a plant. A knowledge of plant types can help to remedy this mistake. A simple Google search in most instances can provide you with some tips on how to place plants. If you are not satisfied with the information you find you can contact us and get advice from our certified arborists.

      3. Leaving OffShoots to Grow

      Offshoots should always be removed manually. You shouldn’t use a herbicide, nor should you use a string trimmer. As soon as offshoots appear, carefully dig as close to the main root as you can. Remove as much of the sucker and fibrous roots as you can and replace the soil.

      4. Over-Mulching

      Adding too much mulch is evident from the appearance of “mulch volcanoes.” You simply need a few inches of organic mulch in a doughnut like shape. This will keep weeds down, conserve soil water and provide an attractive look.

      When you create a mulch volcano you can kill your shrubs and trees because the mulch will:

      • Keep the bark in direct contact with water which causes bark decay.

      • Encourages the growth of feeder roots which stresses the plants severely when the mulch dries.

      5. Unprepared Site

      When you are going to plant anything you need to prepare the site for planting. Some plants may require special preparation but there are some general things that should be done no matter what you will be planting.

      Even drought resistant plants will fall prey to light and heat radiation. So if you plant something close to asphalt, heat will be reflected and the asphalt will also hold the heat and constantly bombard the plants planted next to it. This is true even for light colored sidewalks.

      Mulch has the ability to reflect light and heat too but it also holds heat which can evaporate the water, leaving less for the soil and the plants.

      6. Not replacing old bleached out mulch with fresh mulch.

      7. Withholding proper irrigation.

If you need more information than provided here, you can visit Evergreen Tree Services. Our experts can help you design, plant and maintain beautiful and healthy landscapes for both residential and commercial settings. Contact us today!