Sumie, that's it! thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!
The fourth photo of column three appears to be the same flower <first page> On each of the flowers petals there are minute dots of coloring similar to the color of the geranium <second page, first column, second photo>
Absolutely loved the arbor house! <second column, second photo. first page> What terrific decorating ideas!!!
sumac, you're the greatest!! My pointy finger was getting sore thumbing through plant books.......smile.
Well, I cheated a little bit. First, I have seen photos of the bush in full, mature, glory, as is yours. It is magnificent, and yours must be very old indeed.
Second, I have my own now, but only a few years old, so nothing like yours. Since it is not a true climber, you do need support. But the fountain-like cascade is wonderful. I will try to get new plants started from it this year. Best time to try to get pieces (4-6" long) rooted, with hormone rootintg solution or powder, is July-August. I will try some end pieces now in my make-shift greenhouse and see what happens.
sumac, not sure the age of the plant, but guessing by the rest of the landscaping, i'd say probably about 13 years.
I've anchored the plant correctly for weight distribution at the top instead of attaching another trellis. Plus, with the new storm expected in the next few days, the eaves will protect the just trimmed plant from severe weather. The news predicted heavy rain/wind and snow.
Wishing you much luck with your new plantings. When I moved here, the plant was tall as the porch, but didn't begin filling out until the next spring. I began feeding all the plants, trees, and shrubs a product called Miracle Grow directly after moving to the house. Believe me, the product works! Trees have grown 3-5 feet in the past three years, and last year was the first year the plant began cascading and growing large clusters of flowers. Before that time, there were just a few blooms.
So you may be surprised how quickly the plant matures and before ya know it, you'll have an arbor or climber with lovely spring blooms.
Thanks again for the great link, sumac! You're a gem
Morning all,
Clicking in - just me and my cuppa.
Did you forget your pants again, Danon?
I'm back - new puter - no e-ddresses, no favourites. It's a scary world with a new puter.
aktbird57
You and your 282 friends have supported 1,695,454.2 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 56,696.0 square feet.
You have supported: (34,064.9)
Your 282 friends have supported: (22,631.1)
American Prairie habitat supported: 32,346.8 square feet.
You have supported: (9,199.8)
Your 282 friends have supported: (23,147.0)
Rainforest habitat supported: 1,606,411.5 square feet.
You have supported: (158,405.3)
Your 282 friends have supported: (1,448,006.2)[/b][/size]
Whew! Bethie, you are a wonder, with the new thread and the exciting results of all our clicking.
Sumie, the link is so beautiful that I can almost smell the roses--need to make that stop often.
BTW, will you be able to click for me again? We are leaving early Monday in the RV for Florida. On the way home, we are just winging it, stopping when and where we like. We will most likely be home by the 24th--I'll be sure to email you right away.
Is there any way you could make it down to Cocoa Beach to visit with Rae, Misti, Panzade, maybe Phoenix and who knows else? It would be wonderful to see you again.
Clicked.
My apologies to all the dial up users for this long article, but the link wouldn't work unless you subscribe to Salon. Here it is:
Selling the forest for the trees
In a gift to timber industry patrons, the Bush administration is thinning national forests and cutting down government scientists who stand in the way.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Rebecca Clarren
Dec. 22, 2004 | In eastern Oregon, amid the land where trees grow wider than queen-size beds, Forest Service biologist Kristine Shull has become afraid to speak the truth. She tried that once, and under the industry-friendly Bush administration, she nearly lost the job she has held for more than 15 years. Last fall, Shull's supervisor proposed selling to a timber company more than 3,000 acres covered in part with big, old trees that had been scorched by wildfire -- the kind of trees that birds and animals rely on for their habitat and are critical to keeping forests healthy. The timber sale, though, would have disregarded federal regulations that prohibit the agency from cutting trees bigger than 21 inches in diameter -- unless the trees are dead.
But these trees were not dead; they were green and broad, providing good habitat for the wildlife in the area Shull was charged to monitor. Even so, her manager wanted Shull to sign off on an analysis that said the trees were dying and were not providing habitat for animals. When Shull balked, she says, her superiors in the agency repeatedly asked her to change her assessment. One told her that if she didn't "get this done," she'd lose her job. When she snickered at the comment, she says he slapped his hand on the table and said, "I mean it." Shull didn't change her mind, but the pressure at work did not let up. She was told she wouldn't receive an expected raise, and for months she was ignored by her supervisors and some of her co-workers. Ultimately Shull developed high blood pressure, and her doctor recommended a month of medical leave.
While she was out of the office, her supervisor signed off on the sale -- the single largest amount of logging the forest had seen in a decade. "I was just so stressed; I'd never had my job threatened. I was afraid of retaliation. I don't deal very well with that kind of pressure and the threats were very scary," Shull told Salon. "This has become a hostile work environment; there's harassment and threats, and nothing is ever done."
Under the Bush administration, a disturbing number of biologists, botanists and ecologists who work for the Forest Service are reporting stories similar to Shull's -- more than a dozen spoke to Salon about their experiences. Fearing retaliation, almost none of the current Forest Service employees contacted for this story were willing to talk on the record. But they were desperate to tell their stories behind a veil of anonymity, and from their muffled voices a clear trend emerges. Scientists are routinely pressured to not do their jobs: to not stand up for the resource they were hired to protect so that timber, the old cultural icon of the agency, can continue to fall for the benefit of industry.
Forest Service "staff officers will tell you until the Earth goes cold that they follow the latest science, but we know that we can't give them too much data if we want to keep our jobs. Really, they could give a rat's behind about science," says a Forest Service employee who spoke on condition of anonymity. She recently received a $15,000 pay cut and demotion, she says, because she was "agitating other botanists" by disseminating information about laws they could use to protect plants. D.J. Evans, a former ecologist for the Hiawatha National Forest in Michigan, says: "I just wanted to do my job," counting on her fingers the eight botanists, biologists and ecologists who left the agency in eight years. "It was really stressful and discouraging. I don't think I've ever stayed up so many nights."
With government scientists pressured to abandon the native plants and wildlife they were charged to defend, the outlook is distressing for America's national forests. Along with this general assault on the land, the Bush administration is also not ensuring additional protection for declining species. It hasn't listed a single endangered species for protection from timber sales or other habitat-destroying actions, such as ski areas and hydropower dams, except under court order, court settlement or citizen petition, bringing the administration's total to a mere 31 species. Bill Clinton listed 521 species; Ronald Reagan listed 253.
This situation is only likely to get worse over the next four years. During the 2000 presidential campaign, the timber industry caught the Republican Party's attention with a $1.5 million fundraiser in Portland, Ore. Over the past two years the industry contributed nearly $600,000 to Bush's reelection campaign.
Next page | "A lot of species probably will be pushed toward extinction"
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In response, the Bush administration has opened up the national forests: Last year it offered the timber industry approximately 30 percent more timber than it did in 2000 -- that's about 100,000 additional log trucks. And in early December, Mark Rey, undersecretary of agriculture, announced in Idaho at the annual meeting of the Intermountain Forest Association, a timber group, that the administration plans to double its efforts to thin Western forests. Said Rey: "We're going to be active; we're nowhere near the end of what we want to do." Meanwhile, a slew of new weakened environmental regulations and policies means that scientists who try to protect plants and wildlife are in for one hell of a ride.
"The whole apparatus of the Bush administration is a revolving door and then some with industry. What they're doing [in changing scientists' reports and opinions] is so egregious. I don't see any explanation other than to intentionally mislead the public," says Robert S. Devine, author of the 2004 book "Bush Versus the Environment." "If environmental policies are not guided by science and are instead guided by this corporate-oriented administration, the environment will be in trouble for a long time beyond this second term."
If the administration does indeed double the amount of logging over the next four years, botanists say there will be no way to conduct the required surveys of rare plants and animals prior to all timber sales because there simply is not enough staff. In the entire U.S. Forest Service there are only 179 botanists, and of those, fewer than 100 are actually out walking the ground. (In comparison, the agency employs over 10,000 foresters and forestry technicians.) With an average of one botanist per 1.5 million acres, often wildlife biologists and even foresters conduct botanical surveys. These employees are not required to attend botany-specific trainings or even to have any educational background in plant knowledge. "That's just not right," says a Colorado botanist who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's so critical to have areas that are preserved. If you don't care for the plants, there's no wildlife -- but nobody else seems to be looking out there for these sorts of things."
Recent policy proposals by the administration will further strip scientists' power to protect fish and wildlife. While the National Forest Management Act sounds about as exciting as a Honda sedan, this law has been key to environmental oversight of the country's forests. Yet the administration today announced changes to this nearly 30-year-old law so that when specific forests want to revise or amend long-term management plans, they would not have to consider how new timber sales or ski areas or other actions would impact the environment.
More troubling, changes to current law include relaxing a Forest Service requirement to protect all viable populations of native fish and wildlife species -- called the single most important legal tool for protecting wildlife in national forests. The new rule will undermine the legal basis for protecting old-growth habitat and could result in much more logging of ancient forests. "This would take away the main tool that Forest Service wildlife biologists have had for 20 years," says Mike Anderson, a senior resource analyst for the Wilderness Society. "A lot of species probably will be pushed toward extinction. It's a pretty bleak outlook on all fronts."
In this hostile political climate, many agency scientists look ahead to the next four years with despair. They know what politicians and timber lobbyists would like to ignore: that when rare plants no one has ever heard or species few people care about disappear, the entire ecosystem -- even water quality -- is affected. Such ripple effects and long-term impacts have made even career scientists like Shull rethink whether they want to continue to work for the federal government. "They're going a way I don't agree with. My principles and morals don't fit anymore with the people in charge here. When I bring up an issue of protecting species, it's met with anger," says Shull, her voice heavy. "Since Bush has been in office it's just this feeling that they [upper management] can say and do anything and get away with it."
salon.com
Damn shame.
I know it doesn't help anything now - but, history cannot possibly miss it's opportunity to give the entire Bush family it's due. I'm still recently finding that GW has more brothers than I ever knew - and all in hot water with legal issues. What a mess.
I've just started reading the new book by Jared Diamond -- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. He examines, in some historical and archeological detail, the demise of the Easter Islanders, the Maya, the Anasazi and the medieval Norse colony in Greenland. Diamond comes to the conclusion that in every case deforestation of their environment was a significant factor (though not the only one) in the collapse of those societies. Fascinating -- and scary -- reading. Save our forests!!!
I'm doing a little more of my think globally, act locally, routine here.
I live on a street with cedar in the name - so I've been planting cedars.
Danon, there were warnings about the administrations forest policies, but unfortunately, enviornmental issues and sound science arn't important issues for voters.
You're correct in your assessment though. The administration will pay for their dispicable acts - and hopefully before we lose what remains of our pristene forests, wildlands, and wildlife habitat.
ehBeth, glad you've returned with new puter! We were having stat withdrawals.
Cedars? Good choice!
<John Muir smiling>
Diane, thanks for the article. The administraton will stop at nothing to further their agenda unless enviornmentalists and a majority speak out against destructive policies weilded by a government bought and paid for by industry.
We WILL save the forests.
I'm out here, saving the forest one tree (and tiny ecosystem) at a time
aktbird57 - You and your 282 friends have supported 1,696,695.1 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 56,836.4 square feet.
You have supported: (34,088.3)
Your 282 friends have supported: (22,748.1)
American Prairie habitat supported: 32,346.8 square feet.
You have supported: (9,199.8)
Your 282 friends have supported: (23,147.0)
Rainforest habitat supported: 1,607,511.9 square feet.
You have supported: (158,405.3)
Your 282 friends have supported: (1,449,106.6)[/size]
I'm down here and have saved one more tree today!!
G'day danon and stradee!
<can you guys send me an email sometime soon? please? i need to start rebuilding my address book on the puter>
Hi ehBeth and Danon ~
E mail on the way ehBeth!
Me too - email.
I go now.
Hey.... hey.... hey.... HERE you are!
I've been remiss with my clickin' but here I am again. (It really helps to have a daily reminder.)
CLICK
ehBeth - Neat idea. What kind of cedar? Native American western cedars -- Thuja? Real cedars- Cedrus? or Native American eastern cedars - Juniperus?
I'm hoping for the thuja!
http://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/notes/cedar.html
