CAN ANY OF US?

PURPLE EUROPEAN BEECH...

WITH VERIEGATED LEAVES

TRANSPORTING BIG TREES, TWO AT A TIME

THE GARDEN IS LOOKING GOOD

PARENTING

Thursday, 8:30 AM.  67 degrees F, wind N, light.  It rained earlier but the sky has cleared rapidly to partly cloudy with towering white cumulous clouds.  The barometer stands at 29.76 in. and the humidity is 86%.  It is a pleasant morning overall, and I am waiting for things to dry out so I can mow the lawn.

   While visiting in Columbus  I came across this stunning European beech with purple, variegated leaves.  It will outgrow its location, as it is bound to be a very large tree, more suited to a park setting than a small yard.  I would love to try growing it in Bayfield.

   While traveling through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan we encountered this truck load of two very large balled fir trees. Each was on a cradle that would be unloaded and placed over the planting hole, greatly facilitating transplanting.  It was the first time I had seen this method of transportation.  Transplanting large trees is a horticultural challenge that I found very satisfying over the years, but the technology has changed considerably.

   The perennial garden is looking beautiful, if a bit crowded and overgrown, which is my style, I guess.

   The chickadees are busy feeding their young, and it is amazing how many insects they bring to the nest in a very short time.  Overall, there is no insecticide that can do the job that the birds do in controlling the insect population.

   Joan watches the cooking channel so I see it quite a bit by default, and I am disgusted at what has been done to chef Paula Dean, who has lost her show and sponsors because she admitted to using a racial slur (the N word, so horrible it can't be spoken or written, at least by aging white folks) over thirty years ago.  She is sixty years old, a white southern woman.  I have watched her host The Nealy's,  husband and wife black professional cooks, numerous times.  I never saw them otherwise on the cooking channel.  She treated them like family and as fellow professionals.  If she is racially prejudiced it is not at all evident.  Paula Dean raised two sons on her own after her husband abandoned the family.  She overcame great personal odds of class, education and economics and rose to the top of a very demanding profession.   She has apologized profusely for her long ago language, which was common at the time.  Is this the way society, black or white, should treat her? 

   I would hate to be held to account for any number of things I said or did thirty years and more ago, whether in anger, in jest, or out of stupidity.  Perhaps we should all remember something someone once said about "casting the first stone."
   We are fast loosing the ground we have gained over the past several generations in race relations through unforgiving and unrealistic political correctness  that no honest person can live up to.  I can't.  Can any of us?