Hello Neighbors,
With the very high temperatures we’ve been experiencing, it takes a little planning to make sure your Blue Stem plantings and lawn will survive when you are away for a week or more on vacation.  See this article by Red Dirt Gardening for survival tips.

Hopefully the Board of Directors are watching the entrances’ sprinkler system closely as quite a few of our plantings and trees are showing great stress due to a lack of water.  Today’s rain may have helped temporarily but the heat wave will evaporate the moisture before long.    Be a good neighbor and keep a watch.

In 2006, homeowners spent a record $44.7 billion to hire professional lawn and landscape services. Taken together, these figures represent a dramatic increase in gardening interest and expenditures.

Where is this growth coming from?   According to many publishers, authors and educators, is young people.  “In a world going green, the under-35s have taken it upon themselves to make positive use of their natural surroundings.”

Pam Art, president of Storey Publishing, believes that two factors are responsible for the surge of young gardeners: a heightened awareness of green issues and an interest in preserving natural resources—and the ability to do it in one’s own backyard.

With an ecological crisis looming, Cool Springs publisher Roger Waynick sees young people turning to gardening as a means of “nurturing the planet back to health.” Each individual gardener, he says, believes he or she is “taking care of their little piece of earth.”

Firefly publisher Lionel Koffler offers an additional reason for this spurt of gardening newcomers: first-time home ownership. “Starter homes’ front and back gardens have almost nothing in them,” he says. “There are millions of these houses whose owners don’t have a clue as to what it takes to make a mature shrub and perennial garden five and seven years hence.”

If any of you home owners are in the above category and want to improve your landscaping as well as the value of your home, you may want to visit the Red Dirt Gardening Blog for info and tips to grow healthy plants and turf.  

Spring is here!  What can you do to take care of this little piece of planet earth?

(Much of this content was taken from an article by Juan Martinez, Publishers Weekly, Feb. 2008.)

The flowers of these Asters are so pretty, purple with yellow centers and that is about all I can say for this pesky weed.  I am sure we have all seen yards that are almost over taken by this weed. Opportunists are what these weeds are as are all other weeds. They love bare and unhealthy soil as well as dryness.  Given the chance, they will choke out ailing Bermuda in their ever ending cycle of flowering and going to seed.

How to get rid of:

Chemically

· Spray in October/November as the plant will begin seeding for next spring if you do not spray the flowers. Use a broad leave weed killer.

Organically

· Use corn gluten meal as a pre-emergent on your yard in November.

· The Aster has a very woody stem and is easy to pull in healthy soil. If the plant has seeded, be sure to carefully dispose of it not dropping the seeds into the yard.    JLH

Once construction of the new fire house has been completed, you might want to contact your homeowners insurance company as your rates might go down a bit. In determining the cost of your policy, among other things there is consideration made as to how close you are to the local fire department. Ask the insurance company to recalculate the distance from your home to the new fire station and see if it makes a difference in your annual premium. Also, many insurance companies give home owners discounts based upon how close your home is to a fire hydrant. So if you have one in your yard or within a house or two from your home, be sure and mention that as well. It might save you a few more dollars.

Judy L. Hall