Design Is Not Opinion

Contrast Is King

My Column for 4.27.2012 in the Naples Daily News ( Here is the print version:  Download 4.27.2012 Contrast is King ):

Planting Design

It’s useful to view your garden designs from at least two levels of magnification. At the first level, imagine the entire garden on a single sheet of paper. This overview allows you to make connections, resolve buffer requirements, analyze circulation issues, and, most importantly, establish focal points.

These focal points are key to your design. Why? By understanding how your garden design is experienced visually, you automatically establish motion– the motion of the garden user as she moves, either physically or visually, through your garden spaces.

An example for the neophyte: Your car approaches your house, it slows, turns. What do you see first? Next? Your eye naturally lingers at each focal point. These are the natural place to spend design time and your money. Everything else is green mayonnaise.

Your design pundit calls it ‘sequential design’, and there’s really nothing magic about it; the idea here is to lend cohesiveness to the whole, and to introduce interest and motion. 

Michael's Garden Column, 4.13.2012

Here's Michael's column for 4.13.2012 in PDF form:   Download 4.13.2012 Spring Flowers, Internet Sources

Originally printed in the Naples Daily News. 

And here's the copy: 

We are in the ‘spring doldrums’, those dreadful months where Florida’s daily weather is no longer determined by northern cold fronts, but neither have we the reliable mixture of sea breeze and rising air over the interior of the peninsula that produce afternoon rains. And while we know that the rainy season will come, and soon, for now we watch our plants, watching the sky all the while. 

Historically, rains become reliable sometime in mid-June or so, but sometimes a month earlier, or later. In other words, who knows?

Michael's Garden Column, 3.30.2012

Here's Michael's column for 3.30.2012 in PDF form: Download 3.30.2012.

Originally printed in the Naples Daily News. 

A Blast From the Past

Readers may not realize that your Design Pundit's education includes a BA in Classics, followed by an MLA (Master of Landscape Architecture).

Modern society is built on something less than a classical education, yet, in all of the important ways, it is the my classical training in Greek and Latin that adds richness and value to my life.

Nowadays, college students have a sadly different approach. Indeed, if coursework does not seem 'practical', if it can't lead directly to a job, it's of little value.

I know from personal experience just how wrong this view is.

Now comes online access to Oxford's Bodleian Libraries, and to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: all fully digitized. It's a boon to researchers, funded by the Polonsky Foundation.

Here's what The Vatican has to say: 

Blues

Do you like the Blues? Forget this post, then.

But if you LOVE the Blues, then check out Hawaii Public Radio's "Blue's Hang", dished up with the appropriate dash of attitude by Jon Alan. Jon puts on a helluva show for a few hours on Sunday mornings (EST) from 6 to 8 AM.

The Patron Saint of the Blues Hang? Tom Waits, of course.

Stream it here.

Hell, Jon even makes pledge drive interesting. 

 

 

Morning Awesome

4/11/12 Show: George Zimmerman Charged with Second Degree Murder; Hannity and Zimmerman are Confidantes; Santorum Drops Out; and much more!Listen and subscribe on iTunes (it's FREE!)Download the mp3 (54 minutes, 23mb)

via bobcesca.com

Bob Cesca quickly turned into one of my favorite sites. One reason? His 'Morning Awesome' feature, today the Scorpions doing Ruby Tuesday. It's just great.

Gagarin's Falsified Flight Record : Discovery News

For a flight to count, the pilot-astronaut or pilot-cosmonaut would have land with his spacecraft. After all, if a pilot fails to land his with his aircraft, it's usually because something has gone wrong and the flight has been a failure. Why should spaceflight be any different?

via news.discovery.com

Yuri Gagarin has always been a bit of a hero to me. Why? Because what he did– climb into a rocket that was no where near ready for human flight– was a stunning act of bravery. In point of fact, all of the Mercury astronauts took a similar ride.

I remember you - Roger Ebert's Journal

The first death that registered in my life was my Aunt Hulda, my father's sister, who was laid out in the front parlor and I was allowed to kneel at the coffin, cross myself, and say a prayer before this strange, pale, motionless body.

via blogs.suntimes.com

Nothing to add. Read this post.

Graft punk

Now this San Francisco-based group called the Guerrilla Grafters is challenging the very notion of the ornamental fruit tree. And they’re working outside the law (city officials don’t like rotten fruit on the sidewalk, nor the liability it suggests). They’re covertly grafting — a practice of connecting two branches in a way that will allow their vascular tissues to join together — fruit tree limbs onto the trunks of ornamental cherry, plum, and pear trees. (We’ve highlighted them before on Grist, but since NPR covered their illegal work again this weekend, I thought it was worth another mention.)

via grist.org

Many times when I am working through a plant list with clients, I hear objections about 'messiness': this tree, or that, is just too 'messy'. Sometimes I tell clients that every tree loses every leaf every year, and sometimes I throw up my hands.

People. Plants are not bubble wrapped.

Coming to America

It is a hard and lengthy task to become acquainted with the vagaries of the language, not to mention the forgotten or altered meanings of many words. Some of these vagaries are aptly illustrated by the story of the Frenchman who said to an American:

I am going to leave my hotel. I paid my bill yesterday, and I said to the landlord, ‘Do I owe anything else?’ He said, ‘You are square.’ ‘What am I?’ He said again, ‘You are square.’ ‘That’s strange,’ said I. ‘I lived so long that I never knew I was square before.’ Then, as I was going away, he shook me by the hand, saying, ‘I hope you’ll be round soon.’ I said, ‘I thought you said I was square; now you hope I’ll be round.’ He laughed and said, ‘When I tell you you’ll be round, I mean you won’t be long.’ Then, seeing me count my change twice over, he said, ‘Are you short?’ I did not know how many forms he wished me to assume: however, I was glad he did not call me flat.

via www.futilitycloset.com

I just love this stuff and futility closet keeps me well fed.