“Children's Garden to host Scarecrow Jubilee October 3 - Battle Creek Enquirer” plus 4 more |
- Children's Garden to host Scarecrow Jubilee October 3 - Battle Creek Enquirer
- This fall help prevent winter injury to woody plants - New Britain Herald
- The video debut of Garden Girl - Boston Globe
- Home décor company opening local showroom - Mount Airy News
- Family home goes from sustainable to suspended - Riverside Press Enterprise
| Children's Garden to host Scarecrow Jubilee October 3 - Battle Creek Enquirer Posted: 01 Oct 2009 06:02 PM PDT Scarecrows in the gardenoh my! Life-size scarecrows will be hiding all over the Children's Garden at Leila Arboretum on Saturday, October 3, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. "Bring the family and go on a scavenger hunt to find funny, scary, silly and lots more scarecrows throughout the garden," says Nancy Jones, education specialist at Leila Arboretum Society. Jones says visiting families may make a scarecrow to take home to their own yard or make one to add to the Children's Garden. Visitors may bring their own materials — hats, gloves or mittens, long-sleeved shirts and long pants (sizes 4T to 12) — plus plastic grocery bags for stuffing. "If you can't find just the right scarecrow outfit," she adds, "choose from materials the Children's Garden has on hand." Every hour, on the hour, a scarecrow contest winner will be named. She encourages families to enter a scarecrow in the contest for a chance at winning a prize. The Children's Garden will also offer other activities including pumpkin art, where children can create a paper pumpkin and give it a happy, sad or scary face. "Do you like apple juice or apple cider, red or yellow apples?" Jones asks. "Stop by the taste-testing table and find out." For a minimal fee, visitors will have the opportunity to have their face painted by Gina Newsum. The Battle Creek Police Department will offer free fingerprinting in the child ID program for children 4 and older. From 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., the Battle Creek Fire Department will be at the garden with a real fire engine. Jones says, "Celebrate fall and bring the family to the Children's Garden." Admission and activities are free to all, compliments of United Educational Credit Union and Post Foods. Donations to the nonprofit Leila Arboretum Society, which owns and manages the Children's Garden, are gratefully accepted to help defray the costs of offering free programs. The Children's Garden is close to downtown Battle Creek and near the Kingman Museum. The garden is adjacent to the Leila Arboretum at 928 West Michigan Avenue in Battle Creek. A complete schedule of Children's Garden activities is available at www.LASgarden.org or by calling (269) 969-0270.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| This fall help prevent winter injury to woody plants - New Britain Herald Posted: 01 Oct 2009 07:06 PM PDT Rhododendrons and other broad-leaved evergreens in Connecticut often suffer from winter injury and drying that cause varying degrees of browning and dieback. These symptoms show up in the spring sometime after the injury actually occurred, making diagnosis of the cause difficult. Symptoms on evergreen and deciduous woody plants can include tip and branch dieback, foliar browning, sunscalding and bark splitting. Excessive drying is a common problem on evergreens. Water evaporates from the needles or leaves on windy or warm, sunny days and cannot be replaced by the roots because the water in the soil is still frozen. On rhododendrons and mountain laurel, the most common symptoms are marginal browning and leaf rolling parallel to the midvein. On needled evergreens, symptoms include browning of the needle tips and centers, chlorotic or yellow flecking, loss of needles, and branch dieback. In extreme cases, plants can be killed by winter injury. If planting new trees or shrubs, select a sheltered planting location and choose plants appropriate for the site. Avoid planting broadleaved evergreens in open windy sites. Maintain healthy plants with proper fertilization and watering.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The video debut of Garden Girl - Boston Globe Posted: 01 Oct 2009 12:11 PM PDT Here's a new video from our partner, Garden Girl, aka Patti Moreno. Patti is a native New Yorker who now calls The Hub home. We'll be featuring her videos in the gardening blog. She'll offer tips and more on gardening.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Home décor company opening local showroom - Mount Airy News Posted: 01 Oct 2009 07:56 PM PDT MOUNT AIRY — Kimberly Jenkins, senior rising star designer with Celebrating Home, is opening a showroom in the local area. The showroom is at 143 Riverside Drive in Mount Airy. An open house event is scheduled for Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. Celebrating Home's exclusive items will be on display for the public to enjoy. Refreshments will be served and door prizes given away. Celebrating Home is a Christian-based company, headquartered in Marshall, Texas, that offers products to decorate and enliven homes, including stoneware pottery, candles and fragrance lamps, wall décor, gourmet food mixes, dining and entertainment pieces and accessories for the home and garden. Celebrating Home enables thousands of women across the United States to earn extra income, have fun and make friends while working from home as designers. For more information about Celebrating Home's products or business opportunities, visit www.KimberlyDJenkins.com, call Kimberly Jenkins at 325-5877 or email kimberlyjenkins@teamhgp.com.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Family home goes from sustainable to suspended - Riverside Press Enterprise Posted: 01 Oct 2009 09:58 PM PDT Reese and Christine McClure agonized over every last detail for five years before they began building what they deemed would be one of most eco-responsible homes in California. They recycled and reclaimed natural materials to use top to bottom, from the roof tiles to the wooden floors. They christened it the Strawbale Home after the unusual type of insulation they installed. In March 2007, the McClures congratulated themselves as the steel framework and 2-foot-thick straw bales rose from a half-acre dirt lot in unincorporated Riverside County just north of Moreno Valley. Their original plan was to move into the Tuscan-style home six months after groundbreaking. A camera crew from the Discovery Channel was capturing every move. But the couple's delight turned to desperation and then despair when their lenders, caught in the crosshairs of the collapsing housing market, ran out of money before the McClures could refinance the project with a traditional loan. Work halted nearly two years ago, the home three-quarters done, $180,000 shy of completion. What was meant to be a top-of-the-line, 4,400-square-foot green showcase is now a white elephant, languishing on a rural patch of Pigeon Pass Road. The McClures are still clinging to the property, working with their lenders and making half their monthly payment on the land, which is all they can afford. The McClures live with their three children on a small rented ranch in Moreno Valley with goats, ducks, chickens and bunnies. Reese McClure, 37, a self-employed contractor, and his wife, 39, an interior designer, work together. They also grow hops for home brews, raise chickens, garden and sell honey. Compounding the McClures' problems were their big dreams. They envisioned their home as the epitome of "sustainability," the new buzzword for doing more with fewer natural resources, without breaking the bank. But they suffered just like everyone else trying to build a home at that time. "The entire industry is affected," said Lance Williams, head of the U.S. Green Building Council's Los Angeles chapter, who is eager to dispel the notion that it's more expensive to be environmentally responsible. "I can honestly say we're getting to the point where there is parity between building sustainability and building the traditional way," Williams said. The cost for the McClures' home was $125 per square foot, or $550,000, compared to $180 to $200 per square foot for the average custom home, Reese McClure said. The problem was that the only loan the McClures could get was from a company that charged much higher fees and interest rates and offered a specialized type of short-term deal that doesn't conform to bank standards. These so-called "hard-money" lenders lost their shirts amid the subprime loan debacle and investors reneged on promises to provide them $200,000, Reese McClure said. With a cash infusion, the project could wrap in three months, but "we've had to back off," he said. So did the Discovery Channel camera crew. After four months of filming the McClures' home for an episode of "Planet Greenovate," the show awaits the final chapter. NOT A 'GRANOlA BOX' The new plan is to convert the home into a nonprofit corporation, funded by grants, private investors and donations. The idea is to put the project in a trust and ballyhoo it as a model green demonstration house, Reese McClure said. "We'll live in it sometimes," he said, "but it will mostly be like a museum." The McClures want to install top-of-the-line Energy Star-rated appliances and plumbing fixtures that sip, rather than guzzle water to prove that you needn't sacrifice mainstream amenities. "Everything is high-end to show you can do this without living in a granola box," Reese McClure said. They're eager to trumpet the message that environmentally responsible doesn't mean bare bones and tiny. The average "granola box" green home is 1,000 square feet, half the size of the typical tract home, according to industry figures. "We're using the house as a platform for promoting green technologies and educating the consumer about sustainability," he said. The McClures didn't cut corners. Their green house in limbo boasts 30 energy-efficient windows. To save trees, they bought a barn in Wisconsin on eBay, dismantled the structure and hauled the wood back home to eventually build cabinetry and trim. The straw bales, an agricultural waste product they bought in Marysville, provide almost four times the usual insulation to keep energy bills low. The high-density bales also provide fire protection. On a recent day, the couple lovingly touted every detail as they tramped through their empty four-bedroom, five-bathroom home. "We can open the roof windows for natural ventilation," Christine McClure said as she gestured around the hulk of their incomplete home. They paid $500 for the pine front door salvaged from a surplus material building store in San Clemente. They plan to wrap the door's edges with copper to complement their 200-year-old Italian villa decor. Three 8-foot reclaimed ficus trees rescued by a woman in Santa Monica stretch to the ceiling, planted in Redwood tubs. They will install solar panels and a wind-powered generator for electricity, and they plan to collect rain and used water from the washer, showers and bathroom sinks to recycle for toilet flushing. A device will harvest methane gas from the septic tank gas to power a front-door lamp. A warmed floor system will heat the home. If they complete the house, they can expect a zero electric bill and a water bill under $50 a month. The family throws parties at their green house and offers free tours every Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. to inform anyone who will listen about the virtues and costs of sustainability. COST CONSIDERATIONS There's no pat answer to whether it's less expensive to go green from the ground up, said landscape designer Susan Frommer, who built her own sustainable home in Murrieta. "It depends what you put into the house," she said. Green homeowners, like everyone else, typically weigh what amenities they can live without, said architect Eric R. Shamp, who owns Ecotype Consulting in Redlands. "If people expect to build a McMansion with green features, of course, it will cost more money," he said. The McClures scoured the Internet for the least-expensive products they could buy and the best deals they could coax from eco brokers. The couple say they're disgusted with what they call "green gouging" -- huge product markups, especially for solar systems. "Some of the prices are outrageous, too expensive for people to build homes the way they want them," Christine McClure said. Williams, who is head of U.S. Green Building Council's LA Chapter, said that when the fledging green industry becomes more competitive, people will have more options. For now, he said, "They have to beat the bushes, do research, see what's available and compare costs." A 2004 study by Davis Langdon Adamson Inc., a construction consultant in New York, found the initial costs of a green building matched or slightly exceeded those of comparable nongreen buildings. Some important factors in determining the price include climate, location, market conditions and local standards. The McClures, meanwhile, remain confident their investment will pay off. "I know the economy will turn around," Reese McClure said. "We would use this as a green resource center. It will change the way people approach buying homes.' Reach Laurie Lucas at llucas@PE.com or 951-368-9569. Strawbale home Where: 8821 Pigeon Pass Road, Moreno Valley Information and tours: Reese McClure, 951-453-3899 or gonestraw@yahoo.com  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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