| OPINION LINE EXTRA
Demo-publicans, Rep-ocrats. Both political party lines are so blurred it doesn't matter any more. This country needs a new party and candidate based on the original framers' vision of the U.S. Constitution -- one where politicians are not bought off. • • The state should require mandatory monthly drug testing for all individuals receiving any form of monetary state assistance such as food stamps. The system is so abused, and the state can't see it. • • That sculpture of the millipede at Wichita State University is one of the most beautiful pieces of art I've ever seen. WSU should erect a privacy fence and charge admission to see the sculpture. • • I always thought I was spoiling my animals when I gave them an extra can or pouch of food.
Will there still be a place for plants?
Where is the garden heading? Quite possibly to the distant past, to A.D. 1404 and the garden of the Central Asian prince Timur. In the ancient city of Samarkand, he built a garden where he received visitors while reclined on an embroidered mattress set on a dais. In the surrounding orchards, writes landscape historian Penelope Hobhouse in Gardens of Persia, "there were pitched many tents the walls of which were of silk stuff or the like." Yes, friends, the current mania for bringing the house outside is turning the suburban backyard into a set right out of The Arabian Nights. Timur, no doubt, would feel quite at home flipping through the pages of the current lifestyle accessory catalogs advertising hot tubs, outdoor kitchens, banquet tables, even netted chaises and divans for where the roses once grew.
Getting the Goods on Kittenboy
For the past few years, small items such as gardening gloves, house shoes. swim trunks, holiday decorations, diapers and even underwear have come up missing near the corner of Carfax Ave. and Los Santos Dr. Even though the 14-year-old perpetrator is known, the victims of these small thefts cant be identified, probably because the taker of the stuff aint talking. His name is Kittenboy, and hes a 12-pound black and white alley cat with jointed thumbs and six toes on each side. His owner, 54-year-old Becky Bailey, a one-time sales rep for a perfume company, has a laundry basket of the stuff collected at her Carfax Ave. home to prove it. Generally, Kittenboy works at night and apparently alone. He can go through a hole in a screen, then brings the things into the house, if the door is shut, he puts it on the porch.
Raising the Garden Bed with Compost Always a Good Idea
My editor recently passed along a story idea to me called, "Lasagna Gardening." Since I'm always on the lookout for story ideas and this one had a rather catchy title, I was intrigued. Turns out, "Lasagna Gardening" is a farce, a fake, a catchy title with a pretty meaningless body.
As its name implies, "Lasagna Gardening" involves layering of "growing medium" on top of the ground. The layers are newspaper, peat moss and compost, and you keep repeating that layering process until you have a "lasagna." If this sounds familiar to you gardeners out there, it should. "Lasagna Gardening" is simply a catchy name for raised bed gardening. Veteran home gardeners have been gardening with raised beds for years. In fact, farmers have been going the raised bed method for hundreds of years.
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