“Fifth-grader’s vegetable garden leads to TV appearance - Naperville Sun” plus 4 more

Fifth-grader’s vegetable garden leads to TV appearance - Naperville Sun
Gordon Hayward: Look At Paintings As Way To Envision Garden - Hartford Courant
Anchorage Children’s Home Cleanup - panhandleparade
A Paulson Tries to Cement Portland Stadium Deals - Wall Street Journal
Home and Garden - VillageSoup Belfast

Fifth-grader’s vegetable garden leads to TV appearance - Naperville Sun

Posted: 22 Oct 2009 08:00 PM PDT

When Jack Hennessy turned over his first few shovelfuls of dirt in the backyard of his downtown Naperville home, he never imagined it might lead him to the national spotlight.

The 10-year-old, a fifth-grader at SS Peter and Paul Parish School, won't be in his classroom Nov. 2. His school friends will see him, though — on TV.

As one of 16 contestants who have made it to the semifinals in "The Today Show's" Kid Reporter Contest, Jack will be flown with his mom to be interviewed live in New York City, and his video entry — a look at his first foray into suburban agriculture, titled "Kids in America: Planting their own gardens and going green" — will be among the four submissions going before a nationwide audience for judging that day. Three other quartets of semifinalists are appearing on other mornings between now and Jack's big moment.

After the finals are held Nov. 5, the top finisher will be invited back the following week for a guest co-hosting gig with morning regulars Meredith Viera and Matt Lauer.

Having never before visited the Big Apple, Jack is pretty excited.

"I've never flown that far in a plane before," he said.

Jack's teacher, Jean Lindsey, plans to have her other 34 students tuned into the broadcast. There's already been a bit of talk about it.

"We're so excited," she said, describing her almost-famous student as enthusiastic and full of initiative. "He kind of bubbles. He's very curious about life, and very interested in what we're doing."

Wendy Hennessy, the budding reporter's mom, said when they heard on the morning news show that the competition was coming up, they knew right away it would be a good thing for him to try.

"He's very outgoing, has a very nice speaking voice, so we thought, 'Jack would be good at this!'" she said.

The contestants were invited to choose their topics, and for Jack, it was a slam-dunk.

The vegetable garden that took root after he asked for the necessary supplies for his mid-June birthday would give him plenty to talk about. For one thing, he'll be able to show that from tiny gardens, mighty sunflowers grow.

"We didn't have a lot of space, but we got a few plants in there," he said.

The most impressive-looking among them were the three enormous sunflowers that towered over the plot.

"They were taller than my dad," Jack said.

Before another Jack — Frost, that is — came visiting, the plot yielded zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkins, green peppers — and those gargantuan flowers. It also planted the seeds of culinary curiosity in the gardener, who'd never been much of a vegetable guy before — and perhaps illustrated that there can be too much of a good thing.

"We made probably 15 zucchini breads this summer," Wendy said.

For Jack, it was all new. And pretty exciting.

"I didn't even know what a zucchini looked like, and then one day I went out there, and there was a big, huge one," he said. Lots more were to follow, he added.

In the little pumpkin patch, two grew to a size sufficient for carving. That will happen next week: Jack's Jack o' lanterns.

He's pretty sure when spring comes back, he'll plant some seeds again. His mom doesn't think he'll be alone.

"This garden was such a highlight, all his friends want to have one next year," she said.

The whole star-power thing probably won't deter them one bit.

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Gordon Hayward: Look At Paintings As Way To Envision Garden - Hartford Courant

Posted: 22 Oct 2009 06:06 PM PDT

"The study of art is the most important study a garden designer can pursue."

Marco Polo Stufano, garden curator and designer

Gardeners' achievements depend greatly on their backs, their knees, their hands, their strong arms, even their feet pushing hard on a shovel.

But the real key to success, says garden designer and author Gordon Hayward, is our eyes.

"If you pay attention to art, you will learn how to see," Hayward said at last week's meeting of the Connecticut Horticultural Society. People typically spend only three to eight seconds looking at a painting in a museum, whipping past scores of them and then winding up in the museum cafeteria exhausted, Hayward said. He urged people to slow down, "give paintings time and let them work their magic on you."

And just as painters explore ideas and feelings in their work, so should gardeners.

Hayward — who grew up in New Hartford and now lives in Westminster West, Vt., and in Gloucestershire in the Cotswolds in England, with his wife, Mary — based his talk on his recent book "Art and the Gardener: Fine Painting as Inspiration for Garden Design" [Gibbs Smith, $40, 176 pages].

The garden-design process starts with the big picture, he said, showing more than 30 pairs of slides of paintings and garden photographs, to illustrate design principles shared by painters and gardeners.

You should choose the style of garden you want, he said; it could, for example, be romantic or impressionist or cubist or minimalist. Hayward juxtaposed the romanticism of painter Thomas Cole's "An Italian Autumn" — with wild vines crawling over an old Italian structure — with a photograph of a garden he helped design in Walpole, N.H. In a romantic garden, there are no edges; if a few weeds creep in, that's not a big issue, an attitude that comes in handy around July, Hayward chuckled.

By comparison, an impressionist garden is about light. Here, Hayward showed Impressionist painter Auguste Renoir's "The Seine at Chatou" and a photograph of his own Vermont garden in spring, a wild plum tree in bloom with its "little exploding dots of color."

Hayward urged the audience to "look at what you've hung on the wall. Maybe that will give you a new way to think about your garden." When he takes on design projects, he noted, he always takes a close look at the rugs, walls, fabrics and artwork in the client's home.

People who visit a garden want to find "the way in," he said, cautioning the audience "not to get caught in the American trap of walking past your garden." A garden should invite people in, and "when people understand the itinerary and how to move through the space, then they understand your intention."

Pathways in the garden provide invitation and structure, Hayward said. Focal points help a visitor "read distance," which is important: "Otherwise you feel a little lost."

Among Hayward's other suggestions:

•Ask yourself whether the paths in your garden do what you want them to do. Do they expose what's around the corner or are the curves more hidden, creating a sense of mystery?

•Name each part of your garden: Grandma's garden, the secret garden, the wild garden, the moonlit area. It will make the meaning easier for you and others to grasp.

•Walk around your garden with a lightweight plastic chair to find your garden's "three knockout views." Use trees to frame distances and pleasing views, including your neighbor's garden, if it's a good one.

•For a clearer sense of your garden's design, look at it through each pane of the windows in your house. When a window frames an outside view it creates a warm relationship with the interior and almost "grabs" and brings that view indoors.

•Define depth in the garden. Hayward showed how he staggered a pair of matched urns in his own garden to help visitors understand distance. If you can see how far away something is, it creates a sense of comfort and coherence.

•If you want to draw attention to something, put the lightest light against the darkest dark.

•Contrast textures. Showing the tropical jungle scene of Henri Rousseau's "The Dream," Hayward said, "You can see every plant in the painting because it contrasts with its neighbor." That's why you wouldn't want to plant daylilies next to Siberian irises, with their similar foliage. If daylilies are planted next to a peony, he said, they complement one another.

•Don't be afraid of open space. It can calm a garden and contrast with more complex areas. To make this point Hayward showed Edgar Degas' "The Dancing Lesson," in which a full third of the painting is devoted to the floor, with the dancers pushed to the back and corners of the composition.

•Make sure areas of your garden each have a focal point — "a still point in a changing world, a place to settle your mind and start a journey into your garden."

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Anchorage Children’s Home Cleanup - panhandleparade

Posted: 22 Oct 2009 03:57 PM PDT

Elizabeth Cate - bio
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Panama City, Fla:

A day of work turns into a cleanup for kids.

Today administrators of DaVita Dialysis got out of the office and into the dirt. The group volunteered to help cleanup the Anchorage Children's Home.

To beautify the building workers pulled weeds, mulched the garden and cleared the grounds. The business saw the clean up as the perfect opportunity to reach out to the community and to the kids.

"To be able to get together with our team and come out and support an organization like this, as sort of a break from our normal work day, and doing something out in the community, it means a lot. It's a great thing for us," said Mark Taylor of DaVita Dialysis.

After all the hard work, the group got to share in some fun. Once the Anchorage kids got out of school DaVita helped them make tie-dye shirts and then they ate supper.

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A Paulson Tries to Cement Portland Stadium Deals - Wall Street Journal

Posted: 22 Oct 2009 06:27 PM PDT

By JOEL MILLMAN

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Henry Merritt Paulson III has bought the sports teams. Now he needs to sell the stadium ideas.

The 36-year-old son of former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson came to Portland two years ago after marketing jobs with HBO on Demand and the National Basketball Association. He bought a home in the city's swank Lake Oswego district. He bought two minor-league franchises -- soccer's Portland Timbers and baseball's Portland Beavers -- in a 2007 package deal that people in the industry valued at about $16 million. His father is a minority shareholder.

Associated Press

From left, Merritt Paulson III, his father, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella before a game in Washington in 2008.

The two teams have been sharing downtown Portland's cozy PGE Park, built in 1926, which the Beavers first called home in 1956. Now, Mr. Paulson is trying to button down a deal to turn the park into a full-time soccer venue after next year's baseball season, and a separate deal with the neighboring city of Beaverton for a new baseball stadium.

The stadium deals' combined price tag of $90 million could be a tough sell in a state with 12.2% unemployment and in a city that has never been generous with financing for sports teams. Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen was on his own -- to the tune of $233 million -- in 1993, when building Portland's Rose Garden, home of the city's sole big-league team, the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers. Nor did the city lend a hand when the Rose Garden filed for bankruptcy in 2004. Mr. Allen eventually bought the arena out of bankruptcy, again without assistance from any public entity.

Against that backdrop, the drama of Mr. Paulson's stitching together two stadium deals has been unfolding in regular installments in the Portland media.

In July, Portland's City Council signed off on a $31 million deal to renovate the Beavers' stadium. Mr. Paulson's real-estate-development firm, Peregrine LLC, will make an $8 million cash contribution, plus prepay some $11 million in rent and anticipated ticket taxes over the life of a 25-year lease from the city.

Meanwhile, after Mr. Paulson unsuccessfully pitched various plans for the new baseball stadium in two Portland neighborhoods, he has moved on to the suburbs. Last week, Beaverton pledged to back a $59 million deal for a new ballpark, offering to cover 60% of the cost. Mr. Paulson is contributing the rest.

"While the public will pay 60% of the stadium, the public will own 100% of the stadium -- forever," Mr. Paulson told a gathering at Beaverton's City Hall last week. His commitment, he explained, would come from a combination of $9 million paid upfront for initial construction, plus annual payments totaling at least $13.8 million over 25 years, which he said would be "personally guaranteed." Mr. Paulson also pledged to pay for any cost overruns in excess of $2 million and commit to keep the Beavers in Beaverton through 2035.

Beaverton says it will raise property taxes and fees on electricity and natural gas to meet obligations to finance the new stadium. Mayor Denny Doyle calculated that would cost the average Beaverton property owner less than $60 a year to finance $50 million in revenue bonds, while providing hundreds of new jobs. He said that would stimulate the local economy by roughly $17 million annually.

Time may not be on the Beavers' side, however. Mr. Paulson, who declined to comment through a spokesman, says he needs to start construction by February to have a stadium ready for the team's 2011 season.

Opponents of the Beaverton plan have 60 days to raise just more than 2,000 signatures on a petition that would force a vote authorizing the city council to float revenue bonds for a stadium. It isn't clear how long beyond that it would take to hold a referendum.

"This is not a good deal for Beaverton," said Russ Draper, a member of the group called LOVV, for Let Our Voters Vote. "Mr. Paulson's group gets the profits and all the taxpayers get is the bill."

Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A8

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Home and Garden - VillageSoup Belfast

Posted: 16 Oct 2009 06:24 AM PDT

Thomaston Place Auction Galleries
51 Atlantic Highway
Thomaston , ME, 04861
Phone: 207-354-8141

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Home and Garden Tips

Thursday, October 22, 2009