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Archives for January 2007

Outdoor Decor

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Have you noticed that items that you would traditionally use indoors are finding their way into your garden?

Items such as wall ornaments, sculptures, benches, swings and unusual containers all create interest and a homey atmosphere. Outdoor decorations have to be of durable construction, so select displays of lasting metals, stone, baked clays or simulated woods to survive the elements.

Much outdoor interest is also generated through the landscape designs that often include vignette gardens full of unusual plants and ornaments displayed within easy view.

Some design Asian themed gardens with flowering plants, tropical foliage and brightly glazed containers. To capture even more attention, you might include a water feature of a carved stone mortar from Java that’s ideal for floating blossoms.

What types of items have you begun to use outdoors that you would never have thought of using outside 5 or 10 years ago?






Dubai, a most interesting place to visit

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Do you ever wish that you could travel to an exotic land? I do, and after reading about Dubai I can’t think of a more interesting or exotic place to travel to. You might know that Dubai is the second largest emirate of the united Arab Emirates after Abu Dhabi, but you might not know that it’s the most populous area as well.

Oddly enough, when many of us think of the middle East and the United Emirates we probably think of oil as one of their main sources of revenue- and what a source that is. However Dubai only receives 6% of it’s gross domestic product through sales of oil. Increasingly a major source of it’s revenue comes from tourism.

dubai_sports_city.jpg Would you have ever believed that Dubai would have a fantastic sports stadium such as the Dubai Sports City property. Just look at that. It’s a first class sports arena.

So yes, I’m thinking that perhaps someday Chris and I might visit Dubai, after all it’s hot all year round so we could go at any time of year and there are so many interesting places to visit. Just the sheer history of the land. Hey, perhaps we’ll visit the artificial Islands such as Dubai Marina or The Palm – a completely man made island in the shape of a palm. What a creative idea.

Have any of my readers ever considered visiting a place such as Dubai?

I’ve been flamed?

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Can you believe that someone got riled up over my post “Amazing Weather“? Yesterday the irate, and amazingly ignorant person decided to leave an oh so rude comment. Sorry, but I didn’t publish it. There’s no point as it didn’t add a valid or even constructive argument to the post or the site.

My post discussed the fact that the weather has been unbelievably warm here in Toronto. I’m not just talking for a few days in a row – I mean for most of December and up until this past Sunday we’ve had temperatures day and night above 0 Celsius (that’s 32 F for you American Folks). Days often reaching 8 to 10 c. Quite pleasant.

In fact so nice that I don’t think my roses have fully gone dormant. They have little red nubs of new stems and branches growing on them. That happened last year as well, but in February after a very cold January.

The person who left the nasty comment didn’t bother to leave a website, and the email doesn’t look real either. They took it upon themselves to call me a stupid idiot who shouldn’t talk about things that I know nothing of saying that Toronto’s average temperature is -1.7 C during the day and -6 at night and that warm days are not unheard of.

Well you know what? It’s true that warm days are not unheard of in December, January, February and or March. But long stretches, a whole month of warm weather when it should be below zero, is unheard of. Listen to the news. This is the warmest winter we’ve ever had. As a gardener I pay quite a bit of attention to the weather year round.

To my unknown commenter. I do know what I speak of. I’ve lived here for 23 years. Were you having a bad day or something? Why get so riled up and call someone an idiot over weather? I’d hate to think of how you might act or what you’d say over something much more worthy of getting angry over.

Get a life.

Oh and thanks for breaking me into the flames and mean comments – that’s the first really mean comment I’ve received on uhm … oh the 8 blogs that I write for or maintain. Cool.

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