Mother’s Day, Lawns and more…

“Chilling with my family today, enjoying my garden in the spring,” tweeted actor Michael Caine, unlike many other thespians a keen gardener. It is doubtful this chilly spring in southern England. Or hereabouts for that matter, where the climate has been distinctly moist. Some have gone as far as to proclaim it Queen Elizabeth weather: a long reign.

Planting impatiens once more? You might want to think again. A distant relative of the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine, in oaks on the U.S. west coast and in New Zealand’s kauri is now romping through oen of our favourite flowers. Plasmopara obducens or downy mildew is technically an oomycetes, or water mould. Formerly rarely a garden problem, it has apparently mutated in the past few years to plague proportions. Given humid conditions and warm nights it can destroy garden impatiens, I. walleriana, within days. There is no effective control. Fortunately New Guinea impatiens, I. hawkeri are apparently not susceptible. Neither are begonias, an admirable substitute for shaded situations.

Diversion No. 1

A new study of Philadelphia found that abundant vegetation, when well-maintained, can deter certain types of crime – particularly assault and robbery. The study is the first to look at the issue across an entire urban area and offers strong evidence for urban greening as part of city planning and crime prevention strategies. The research was published in Landscape and Urban Planning.

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Mothers Day in North America is always the second Sunday of the month, falling on 12th May this year. “Candy is dandy but flowers have power,” noted Norman Winter writing for McClatchy Newspapers. A son in Britain must wish he had heeded that advice. Earlier this year, a court was told he was cut from his mother’s £1-million fortune after he stopped visiting her and neglected to send her flowers in Mother’s Day. Certainly she doesn’t deserve such neglect. An annual survey suggests a full-time mother should get paid $110,800, and a part-time mom $65,698 for all the work she does, according to The Miami Herald. Most of us appreciate this, making Mothers Day the second-most gift-giving day after Christmas. However, flowers are safest. Last year one of the South Australia’s biggest pharmacy chains raised eyebrows by advertising sex toys as Mother’s Day gifts. It will pay to keep it mind that while men are smart, women are smarter as the late singer Harry Belafonte observed in his ‘Man Smart, Woman Smarter’:

• Garden of Eden was very nice
• Adam never work in Paradise
• Eve met a snake, Paradise gone
• She make Adam work from that day on

Diversion No. 2

After a string of horse deaths in the last 10 years, the England’s Grand National horse race will now be run over plastic fences instead of the traditional birch ones to make the course at Aintree less dangerous. ‘To think of all the marvellous ways they’re using plastics nowadays,” once warbled Tom Lehrer.

It has been said in a jocular fashion that the way to get rid of weeds on the lawn is to forbid your kids to touch them. Possibly so but better to prevent weed seeds from germinating and establishing themselves on your verdant carpet in the first place. Fertilize towards the end of the month or even early in June. This will encourage thick, dense turf that will choke out intruding weeds. Mow the grass no shorter than two inches (five centimetres) and, should the weather turn dry, water heavily every three days. If you want to have visitors praising your garden, before they arrive trim where the lawn meets flower beds and walkways with a turf edger – that crescent-shaped blade mounted on a long handle. Forget filament weed trimmers, those motorized toys beloved by youths hired by garden maintenance companies. They are incapable of leaving that crisp, vertical edge that draws attention away from the plantings beyond. Why did God create men, queries feminist humour? Because a vibrator can’t mow the lawn, or so they inform us. And if weeds are sprouting from between patio stones or ants have taken up residence, poor boiling water between the cracks as a quick, easy and environmentally friendly means of eliminating either or both.

Diversion No. 3

The Asian long-horned beetle has been successfully eradicated from Canada, the federal government announced. The invasive insect has not been seen in Canada since 2007, said a news release from the Canada Food Inspection Agency.

Dedicated environmentalists will probably never recognize the urban lawn as a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Nevertheless, while urban grass might be greener, that doesn’t mean it’s “greener,” suggests Science Daily. New research explores efforts to keep urban lawns looking green and healthy might negate the soil’s natural ability to store atmospheric carbon. Amy Townsend-Small, a UC assistant professor of geology and geography, presented her research, ‘Carbon Sequestration and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Urban Ecosystems,” at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting held 9-13 April in Los Angeles. “Landscaping is something everybody can understand,” Townsend-Small says. “You probably have your own maintenance routine you do. To make your lawn look nice, you need to use fossil fuels, which emit carbon dioxide. Depending on the management intensity, lawns could either be a small sink – meaning they store carbon – to a small source of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.” Fossil fuels are used to power lawn mowers and trimmers, to pump irrigation water, and to make fertilizers – and all of these activities emit carbon dioxide. The bottom line, Townsend-Small found that having a well-cared-for lawn will improve its carbon-quelling capacity, intensive lawn care isn’t worth the atmospheric side effects.

Diversion No. 4

A study found that green-fingered women are up to a dress size smaller and have a better diet. Men who went to the allotment regularly were up to 14-pounds lighter. Previous studies have credited gardening with a host of benefits, from raising zest for life to boosting happiness. In the latest, the University of Utah researchers compared he vital statistics of almost 2000 men and women who tended plots for at least a year with those who lived nearby. The gardeners were clearly thinner, the Journal of Public Health reports.

And yet more misery for proud lawn owners: According to research published online in Soil Science Society of America Journal, more carbon dioxide is released from residential lawns that from corn fields. And much of the difference can likely be attribute to soil temperature. The data, from researchers at Elizabethtown College, suggest that urban heat islands may be working at smaller sales than previously thought.