Alex Copeland is currently the editor for the Lewisville, Flower Mound and Highland Village editions of Community Impact Newspaper. He was previously a reporter, freelancer and journalism educator before joining Community Impact Newspaper in 2021.
June 01, 2021 at 10:50PM
https://communityimpact.com/dallas-fort-worth/lewisville-flower-mound-highland-village/impacts/2021/06/01/flurrys-market-to-bring-fresh-seafood-and-meats-to-flower-mound/
Flurry's Market to bring fresh seafood and meats to Flower mound - Community Impact Newspaper
On Wednesday, the Flower Mound Police Department will host its first in-person Coffee with a Cop event in over a year.
Coffee with a Cop was started in 2011 in Hawthorne, California because the police department wanted to interact more, and more successfully, with the community. The effort has become a popular event among many police departments across the country, as they look to meet more residents and engage in conversations with them.
FMPD has held some virtual Coffee with a Cop events during the coronavirus pandemic, but it is returning now to in-person events. The first one is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. at Novell Coffee Roasters, 2650 Flower Mound Road, Suite 116.
Macy’s will open a new store in Flower Mound in an old Stein Mart location.
A spokesperson for the town of Flower Mound said that Macy’s applied Thursday for a finish-out permit to remodel the 30,438-square-foot space at 6101 Long Prairie Road, in the Highlands of Flower Mound shopping center. The store’s opening date is not yet known, the town spokesperson said, but the Dallas Morning News reported that the store is expected to open this fall and could be a smaller concept instead of Macy’s’ typical large department store.
The Master Gardeners enjoyed an educational field trip to a local Peony Farm last week. Educational field trips are one of the many activities that support our tag line “Let’s Grow Together!” and is also what sparked this week’s article, the Peony.
The suggested original cultivation of Peony began in China, maybe as long ago as 2,500 years ago, then to Europe, and its arrival to the United States in the 1800s. I love learning the history of the many flowers I remember as a kid. Once a peony gets established, it can likely remain in that spot for decades. I moved my family peony and it has been transplanted now for over 30 years. The preferred soil environment is a clay loam mix that will drain and also remain moist. Provide this plant full sunlight with enough space to allow circulating air around it and you will be able to set your spring seasonal clock to the blooming of this reliable gorgeous plant.
Peonies have many cultivars but most often are identified by Types; mine is a Single. I have a Japanese and I have an Anemone. There are also Double and Semi Double types. These plants are hardy with a robust root system, fairly easy to maintain and come in all colors of the rainbow. They most always survive Indiana winters. They even like these cold temperature drops we have had lately, however will likely remain in the bud stage a little longer.
Peony plants are available now in garden centers: however, the recommended season to purchase is Fall. Also, wait until Fall to divide your established plants.
Peonies have a reputation. Ants! “Peonies draw ants into your house” is a familiar quote. Ants do like the pollen from peonies. If you are going to cut your flowers and vase them, take a few minutes to swish your blooms in a container of water. This will remove any ants and the blooms love the water. One more thing, should you still see an ant or two, entomologists tell us the few ants you might see will not grow in number. This is not how ants populate.
Harvesting peonies should be done while in the bud stage, golf-ball size, and when the petal colors are visible. An ideal stem length is 30 inches applying the practice of disbudding. Disbudding is the procedure of leaving the larger terminal bud on the stem and removing the tiny lateral buds during the growing period. Wrapping harvested stemmed plants in wet newspaper and refrigerating them can extend their freshness as much as 30 days. There are other gardeners like myself who just like to walk outside with a pair of sharp pruners, find a stem with full flowers, lateral buds, and snip! Simple works too. I want to add caution that cutting flowers does not cause damage to the bush, but removing too many leaves will. To avoid damage to the bush, leave at least two leaves per stem on the remaining stems after cutting the flower.
Known disease concerns for peonies are both fungal and bacterial with bacterial being the more recently identified. Both present with measle-like spotting on the leaves, disfigured buds and eventual loss of the plant. Both diseases are easily transmitted. The final recommendation of treatment after unsuccessful attempts of chemical applications is to remove and discard the plant taking precaution to avoid contaminating surrounding plants by removal of the remaining plant litter from the infected plant and disinfecting your tools with a mild bleach water solution.
In summary, there is much more that can be shared about these lovelies but for now, I will sit back and daydream of my grandma’s backyard and her pink peony bush.
June 01, 2021 at 05:00PM
https://www.shelbynews.com/news/let-s-grow-together-the-indiana-state-flower---peony/article_e502f57d-2937-5001-88fc-4da15ff6ca9d.html
Let's Grow Together! The Indiana State Flower - Peony - Shelbynews
As the coronavirus pandemic ushered people into their homes, worlds contracted to the ecosystems contained within four walls and whatever nearby landscapes one might encounter on a walk. Confinement didn’t quash curiosity, though, and many people became diarists of their own humble, local wildernesses. Some chronicled the way that buds gave way to flowers. Others picked up binoculars and met the neighborhood birds. More humans logged interspecies encounters on the iNaturalist app last year than ever before.
Many of us doted on houseplants, but probably not the way that Solomon Leyva did. Levya lives in Alameda, California, an island just west of Oakland, where he raises and sells cacti, succulents, and rare plants. One of Leyva’s pandemic-era pals was a titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), a gargantuan plant better known as the corpse flower on account of the unmistakably unsavory stench of its blooms. The plant usually shows off like this only once every several years—and when it does, its glorious fringe wilts after just a day or two. So, when Leyva’s titan arum bloomed in May, he lugged it onto a wagon and rolled it to a patch of asphalt in front of an abandoned gas station, so human neighbors could come say hello.
Atlas Obscura talked to Leyva about caring for the plant, gas station gawking, and cultivating patience.
Is titan arum a finicky plant? How do you grow it?
The plant lives in a giant, twin-wall polycarbonate greenhouse that’s about 3,000 square feet. I’m able to control the climate somewhat inside the greenhouse. This particular species isn’t very hard to grow at all: It likes to stay above 60 degrees, but it can go below that. It just doesn’t want to freeze. I have heat mats, and run them at 75 degrees, 24 hours a day.
When it’s growing, you really want to feed it a lot. Before it flowered, it was getting watered three times a week—soaked all the way through. I use a hose that’s connected to my well, and the water is usually around pretty neutral acidity. They like a lot of calcium, and there’s dozens of liquid fertilizers that can provide that. I was using just this cheap, generic plant food, but it was getting a little bit every single time it got watered.
This plant has filled its 25-gallon pot. Usually when you see one of these, you’ll see that [the custodians] either constructed or purchased a giant pot for the bulb to be in. I think what happens is a lot of the water and nutrients escapes the bulb through the medium around it. I can put it in a pot five times this size and it would look normal, but I’m not planning on doing that. This one, whenever I water it or fertilize it, it’s getting most of [the nutrients] because there’s nowhere else for the stuff to go. In Sumatra, where it’s grown, the land is very rich, so that’s what it wants. Once you get [plants] in a controlled environment, you can accelerate the growth on almost anything.
This particular plant bloomed three years ago, and it was already ready to do it again. I’ve kept titan arums for years in my greenhouse. I’ve had three mature ones in the past, and I currently have 16 or 18 of the plants. This particular one hasn’t been with me forever, but I’ve always had them around. They’re pretty indestructible. The only enemy they have is nematodes.
The bloom is brilliant and brief. Courtesy Solomon Leyva
When did you realize that it was about to bloom?
When the stalk came out. It’s almost conical, or the shape of a spear. It came up sort of oblong, fat on one side and tilted. So you know right off the bat, “That’s going to be a bud and a bloom.” The lack of symmetry is what gave it away.
What has the pandemic been like for you? Did it change your relationship to plants?
I think a few things are happening at once. I think people are less enthusiastic about having children, but they still have the need to nurture; I feel like all the people getting into plants now are sort of doing it in lieu of having children. And I think the human species has lost its connection to nature, and it’s passionately trying to get that back. And I don’t think it was just the pandemic. I quit my job doing logistics for a high-end antiques company [in favor of selling plants] because [demand was so high] it was costing me money to go to work. That was already happening before the pandemic. Plant sales had been up since before this happened. And then when COVID happened—people being stuck at home and looking for things to do—my sales went up 300 percent, at least.
I’ve sort of found myself shuffled into a life of symbiosis: I care for a massive collection of plants and they care for me by providing seeds and cuttings that I sell to pay my bills. So I’m caring for them, they’re caring for me. Since I was young, I felt like I just didn’t fit in on Earth at all. I mean, I failed from second grade all the way up to sophomore year. All my grades were Ds and Fs. I didn’t get along with school. I didn’t get along with anything.
All I ever did was as a kid was catch bugs and lizards and look at plants, and I had two treehouses. Then I got sidetracked with all this school bullshit and career bullshit. I thought for a while that I was wrong and that I just needed to pursue work, but then I ended up finding out that, nope, I was right—we’re supposed to be connected to nature, and it’s good for us. I’m happily working with plants now.
The plant thrived in the greenhouse before Leyva loaded it up onto a wagon and wheeled it out to meet some neighbors. Courtesy Solomon Leyva
What made you decide to take the flower out on the town?
What’s the point in having it? It was only going to bloom for a day—I mean, I have to share it. I don’t know what else I would have done.
There’s a really great, cute little community in the city that I live in, and I just thought everybody would enjoy seeing it. I was out from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., and again the next day. The first day, it was really cold and [the plant] wasn’t enthusiastic about opening all the way. The second day, it had been in my greenhouse and opened more. Everybody was fascinated and happy—they’ve had their [vaccine] shots and are wanting to come out.
The cute Art Deco gas station that’s been out of commission for over 30 years across from city hall—I couldn’t think of any better place to bring it. Everywhere else has sidewalks or patio seating for restaurants. Also, I had to put in a wagon and was pulling it down the street, and I didn’t want to go across town. I couldn’t fit it in my van; it was too tall. I’m 5-foot-10, and it was a few inches shorter than me.
Nearly everyone remarked about the smell, but some didn’t find the smell until it wafted up with the breeze. Everyone took their mask off to smell it. I let kids play with it, dogs jump up on it. There’s no sense in protecting something that’s only going to live for a day. Everybody just has their memory, and that’s all you get. What better way to say goodbye to the pandemic than to watch a corpse flower bloom?
What’s the plant up to now?
I beheaded it and left the bloom there and took the rest of the plant home. People played with [the bloom] for a few days—I saw some little kid holding it, and an old lady took some petals and made an ink print and made some art with it.
I think everyone really needs to learn how to take care of plants. Everyone needs to learn how to plant something, wait for it, grow it—there are so many metaphors in life that are tied to understanding and the process of growing things from seed and watching them mature. I’m going to do another event in my city. I’m trying to get a bunch of kids to plant. I just feel like every kid should understand growing and patience and that what you do has an effect on things.
The whole stalk turns into pus and fiber and other mucus-y-like substances, and then dries out, then it’ll sleep for a while. After a bloom like this, it should go dormant for a while—a few months, if not an entire year, where it doesn’t do anything. It’s probably really tired and spent.
Sara Gorstein and Missy Poth PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBIN SUBAR
It wasn’t that long ago that M on the Square’s Missy Poth was a bride. This September, she’ll celebrate her second wedding anniversary with her high school sweetheart, Johnny Poth.
“Our wedding was just beautiful,” Poth says. “No one was at all surprised that I was so into planning our big day—my friends have always called me the ‘flower girl.’ But I really leaned into the process and realized how much I loved all of the details that go into making a wedding such a memorable experience.”
As Poth marks her third year at the helm of the floral design shop and retail space once owned by Molly Flavin in Lake Forest’s Market Square, weddings are becoming more and more of her focus. “I am a constant student of what’s popular and trending and can execute any style that a bride is looking to achieve,” Poth says, having spent time studying under some of the nation’s award-winning floral artists and describing her personal aesthetic as romantic. “When you have one team work on the full event, it truly makes it so much more cohesive. Our goal is to design a fully dressed event—where we assist you with everything from choosing your color scheme, to selecting your invitations, to finalizing the linen choices that we will accent with our flowers—everything you need to make your day just as you have dreamed it.”
Poth says all of this is possible with the assistance of her longtime friend and head floral designer, Sara Gorstein.
“I’ve always been so impressed with Missy,” Gorstein explains. “She is incredibly creative and so pulled together—these are wonderful things to have in someone you’re hiring to help you with your wedding or special event.”
M on the Square is poised to help a number of brides this summer who were forced to reschedule their weddings because of the pandemic.
“When we first meet with a couple and their families, we present them with an entire mood board for how we envision their event,” Poth says. “For some of our brides, this conversation happened a long time ago, way before the pandemic began. It’s been so nice to have them call and ask me if we can meet again to go over things. They love to talk through all of the details—and so do I.”
While Poth is known for the large weddings she has done in the past, many of the current weddings she and her team are working on are smaller, more intimate affairs—and M on the Square is reveling in this.
“One of my favorite things to come post-2020 are the long tables being used at wedding receptions,” she adds. “There’s something so special about all of the guests gathered at one table.”
Smaller guest lists are also giving brides permission to make bolder color choices.
“Two years ago, many of our weddings were using greens, whites, with a touch of blush,” says Poth. “But today, because of the smaller scale of things, I’m seeing more bright fuchsias and deeper purples—it’s so much fun! This rich color combined with the high quality of the flowers we’re working with—you can’t even imagine what they add to an event.”
Poth loves working alongside a bride’s wedding planner, so appreciative of their skill set.
“A wedding planner is focused on the timeline of the day and the schedule that ensures everyone is where they need to be,” she says. “Our focus is on making the day beautiful.”
M on the Square is located at 259 Market Square, Lake Forest, 847-604-4255, monthesquare.com.
A tour of the Roebling Museum and a stroll along the riverfront are options when visiting the historic community of Roebling, NJ. Cherry Hill Courier-Post
A South Philadelphia park will be transformed into a garden paradise of flowers, trees and other plants for 10 days as the first Philadelphia Flower Show ever to be held outdoors kicks off on Saturday, June 5.
More than 75 exhibitors (39 of those major exhibitors) – the highest number ever to display at the show — will occupy 15 acres of historic Franklin D. Roosevelt Park at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue near the pro-sports complex in South Philadelphia.
They are there to interpret the 2021 show’s theme: "Habitat: Nature’s Masterpiece.''
The nonprofit Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the show sponsor, decided last year to hold this year’s event outside as a public safety measure in response to the coronavirus pandemic that has limited indoor gatherings for more than a year.
Another deviation from tradition this year is the admission process, which is by advance reservation only with two sessions daily, morning and afternoon, and shorter evening hours.
Opening day begins with a morning session from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and an afternoon session from 1 to 5 p.m. Sessions all other days will be 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 2 to 7 p.m.
Food and beverage will play a much larger role this year at the flower show – the first in its 193-year history to be held outdoors. For decades the show has been in the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Center City, remaining the nation's largest and the world’s longest-running horticultural event.
As always, visitors can anticipate wandering into scenic landscapes and among other exhibits, dining in style, learn gardening techniques and visiting the beer garden and an Alpine Village food court.
This year, the show's entrance will be the bold work of iconic floral designer Jeff Leatham, artistic director for the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia. He is creating a display of overgrown vines and flowers in vibrant hues of orange and purple sculpted around the iconic columns of the park’s columned Olmsted Pavilion.
“We’re working outside with sunlight, wind and rain, so it’s a challenge,'' said David Off, who designed the Waldor Orchids exhibit of a house split in two, a gazebo and a greenhouse visitors can enter.
"We are focusing on the intersection of people, plants and their homes,” he said.
Here are six things to do at the Philadelphia Flower Show:
Explore landscapes and floral designs: Stroll by or even through a wide range of landscaped environments ranging from the Australian Outback to a backyard hummingbird paradise, a campsite, as well as Off's house split in two.
Could the elusive and legendary Jersey Devil be lurking in an exhibit by Arrange LLC of Haddonfield, a floral and event design company? You'll have to come see for yourself.
Subaru of America, with world headquarters in Camden, will have not one but two exhibits. One features an Outback campsite with a bird habitat and birdwatching opportunities, as well as a pollinator garden grown to attract bees and butterflies
East African horticulturist Wambui Ippolito is landscaping a show garden influenced by her upbringing in the Great Rift Valley in Africa and its moorlands, where man’s earliest ancestors lived. It is inspired by her childhood memories of that region.
Check out the Butterfly Garden: Walk through a myriad of species of the fluttering, feather-light creatures that fascinate and pollinate. And don’t be surprised if they land on your arms, shoulders or atop heads. When they rest on your or your friends, you can get a close-up view and better photographs. There is an additional $5 fee for admission to enter the Butterfly Garden.
Gardener's Green: Gardening experts will demonstrate techniques, and offer gardening tips and suggestions every day of the Flower Show. They will address topics ranging from kitchen gardens and edible landscaping, to trellis or wall growth of fruit trees and gardening in a greenhouse.
Blume Village Food Court and Beer Garden: Philly’s LOVE Park’s Christmas Village, an Alpine-style food court in Center City at the holidays, will join the Flower Show for a summer run! German favorites like bratwurst, raclette, Belgian fries and more can be found at this unique offering nestled in the Garden District.
The beer garden will feature the Stella Artois airstream and a variety of foods from local vendors such as Philadelphia Eats, Festival Foods, South Jersey's own Just Fork It! and Boardwalk Specialties.
Dine in Style: The park boathouse will be transformed into the show’s only sit-down dining experience. Built in 1914 for the sesquicentennial celebration, this historic structure overlooks tranquil Edgewood Lake. The menu will feature snacks and sandwiches and complete meals, such as pan-seared Maryland crab cakes with purple cabbage, cilantro slaw and citrus crema; or slow braised beef short ribs with Jersey corn succotash, creamy Parmesan grits and smoked tomato glaze.
American Swedish Museum: The backdrop to the show is the park's massive American Swedish Museum, which will offer free admission during the show to Flower Show ticket holders.
Picnic Under the Tree: As a new offering this year, Brûlée Catering has created a picnic bag lunch add-on charge option for online ticket purchases. Pre-order and a special picnic area will be designated for those who want to BYOB, which in this case means bring your own blanket.
Ticket info: Flower Show tickets are $45 for adults (for either a morning or afternoon session), $20 for children 5 and older; children 4 and under get in for free. A "young friend" price for visitors 18 to 29 also is available for weekday afternoon sessions from 2 to 7 p.m.
Annual Pennsylvania Horticultural Society memberships begin at $50, with a $150 membership including tickets to the Flower Show. Visit PHSonline.org/support-phs/membership or call 1-888-850-8718.
Go: Flower show at Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, 1500 Pattison Ave., Philadelphia; hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 5 and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. June 6 to 13.
Carol Comegno loves telling stories about South Jersey quality of life, history and our military veterans for the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and Vineland Daily Journal. Her book, “The Battleship USS New Jersey: From Birth to Berth” is a definitive history of the ship, now a museum. If you have a story to share, call her at 609-533-0306 or email ccomegno@gannettnj.com.
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