Gain a culinary edge: When you plant a garden, leave room for plenty of herbs

For thousands of years herbs have been used and enjoyed as food, scents, flavorings, disinfectants, medicine and even as currency.

Cathy Gerarge, owner of Down to Earth Landscaping and Garden Center in White Stone, was recently in Mathews to give a program on herbs. A native of England, Cathy says she grew up in a garden. “My mother was always in the garden. We lived in the city so our yard was a small one, but she had a lot growing. I developed a love for it and a desire to learn more.”

Herbs have a long and loving relationship with man. If you have ever been in France and visited the Lascaux cave, the point is proved. There you find paintings which depict herbs dating to between 13,000 and 25,000 B.C.

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Owner/Builder Website, Make My Own House.Com, Launches New Landscaping Section

Make my own house.com, a top-ranking website that provides free information to homeowners about home construction, is launching an impressive landscaping section. This is one of the best methods to help owners raise property values in a weak housing market.

Saint Anthony, ID (PRWEB) April 16, 2008 — Owner/builder website, Make my own house.com, is launching a new home improvement landscaping section to help homeowners improve property values during weak housing markets.

The landscaping addition can be found on the home page navigation bar which shows site visitors where to find many aspects of soil preparation, irrigation, and landscaping styles. It also offers a thorough description of many different kinds of trees, shrubs and ground coverings.

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4 N.H. men charged in Maine home invasion

Four New Hampshire men face charges of burglary, firearms theft and criminal mischief in a home invasion in Hanover, Maine.

Sheriff’s deputies say the four broke into the home of an elderly man and stole several guns. The victim fired four shots at the intruders as they fled, but no one was hit.

Police say the suspects were arrested in Bethel and stolen guns were found in their car.

The four are identified as brothers Craig and Bradley Leblanc of Berlin, N.H., and Barry Vaillancourt-Locke and Matthew Gauthier of Gorham, N.H.

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Ex dismantled her home, stole her shoes — and gets jail

Cassandra McDonald knew her ex-boyfriend was angry over their breakup. However, she didn’t know how angry until a fateful day last May when the 37-year-old Highland Park man ended up doing about $140,000 worth of damage to her Southfield home during an hours-long fit of rage.

He did it, he said, because of a broken heart.

“I poured my heart and soul into the relationship, and I was deeply hurt,” Abdullah told Oakland County Circuit Judge Nanci Grant when she demanded an explanation Wednesday before sentencing him to six months in the Oakland County Jail.

“I’ve never been in love as deeply as I was with this particular woman,” Abdullah said in admitting his wrongdoing, adding that he was “ashamed and embarrassed.”

Abdullah, who had been a postal worker, dismantled McDonald’s furnace, tore out the plumbing in her bathrooms, removed the inner workings of her refrigerator and stove, ripped the doors off her kitchen cabinets, shattered her light fixtures, smashed her mirrors, slashed her upholstered furniture and mattresses, destroyed the electrical box and spread paint on the carpet throughout the house.

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City leaders question funding Albany Tomorrow

Albany — Downtown’s Ray Charles Plaza is the latest Albany Tomorrow project to open, but city leaders want to make some landscaping changes before they take control of the new park.

“We are working to try to finalize what that look is going to be from an erosion control measure,” said Senior Project Manager, Kenneth Cribb.

Since that wasn’t part of the initial project, the city will have to pay for the changes. Commissioner Bob Langstaff says the city could have handled the whole project itself. “We’ve got a large engineering department at the City of Albany, and we have qualified people to do that kind of work.”

Langstaff voted against Albany’s city budget last year because it included money for ATI. He thinks the city needs to stop funding Albany Tomorrow.

“We have two cooks in the kitchen.

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Proceeds from home tours go to foundation

The Kempe Foundation for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect will receive the proceeds from tours of a recently built 12,000-square-foot “green” home in Cherry Hills Village.

The Kempe Villa of Dreams, listed at $5.2 million, is at 1013 E. Belleview Ave. It will be open to the public throughout May from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. for a $12 donation. .

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No New Landscaping

No new landscaping. That would be the result of a new water use efficiency management ordinance proposed by Lake Arrowhead Community Services District.The ordinance, which would supersede existing ordinances, is made necessary by the recent series of dry years, the limitation on LACSD’s draw from Lake Arrowhead, and restrictions on the amount of water available for purchase from CLAWA (Crestline-Lake Arrowhead Water Agency). The landscaping standards and penalties laid out in the proposed ordinance would be in effect so long as a water shortage emergency is in place. LACSD declared such an emergency on June 27, 2006.LACSD draws its authority for such an ordinance from the state constitution and water code. Article X, section 2 of the constitution says “the water resources of the state shall be put to beneficial use to the fullest extent of which they are capable and the waste or unreasonable use of water shall be prevented.”Water Code section 106 provides “it is the declared policy of the state that the use of domestic use is the highest use of water and that the next highest use is for irrigation.”LANDSCAPINGSTANDARDSUnder the proposed ordinance, “no customer shall use district water to irrigate property outside the boundaries of the parcel to which service is being delivered.” This provision follows discussions between LACSD and the Arrowhead Lake Association about lakefront property owners who are using district water to irrigate the easement strip owned by ALA.The ordinance would prohibit the installation or maintenance of any new landscaping that would require the use of district water.

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CIT Group swings to loss on home and consumer lending losses

Financial services firm CIT Group Inc. said Thursday it swung to a loss during the first quarter due to losses in its home and consumer lending divisions.

The first-quarter results led CIT Group to cut its dividend 60 percent to 10 cents per share.

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YouTube Fuels Home Burglaries

Word on the street is that social networking sites such as YouTube are fuelling home burglaries across the UK as they feature detailed footage of how to break into a property in seconds, using the new �bumping� and �molegrip� methods.

Now this is one of the funniest things we�ve heard in a while, but we�re not sure why. The topic is serious, but YouTube scaremongering is just so yesteryear. It does make you wonder why someone would post on the topic though…

Using molegrips to snap off cylinder locks from doors or simply buying a skeleton key over the Internet and bumping the lock, burglars can gain access to your home within seconds. Social networking sites, like YouTube, who feature detailed videos of these methods, are said to be making it easy for a new generation of burglars to learn the tricks of the trade.

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Who’s to blame – Jiawei or Susilo?

The National Parks Board (NParks) and Singapore Land Authority (SLA) – tapping on each other’s resources and expertise – have embarked on their biggest tree-banks project, nurturing young trees to meet Singapore’s future landscaping demands. – PHOTO: NPARKS » Full Story .

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