Monthly Lectures

15 years ago

In the recent thread "Clubs" there was a correlation made between garden clubs and the New England forum and in many ways I couldnÂt agree more. Yesterday while listening to an un-edited lecture on orchids I was thinking of the differences between retrieving information orally and from the written word. Both certainly have their pluses and minuses but for the most part I tend to go to lectures more for the human connection and retrieve a majority of horticultural information from books and of course the internet. The valuable asset of the New England forum is that we have both the human connection as well as collectively we offer a valuable quantity of information.

This all led me to think how wonderful it might be if those folks who were interested picked a topic relevant to horticulture and chose to write about either a topic they had experience with or one totally new to them. Forum members would then respond with Q&A related to the written lecture. These abbreviated lectures could be posted on the first Tuesday of the month for example, with those interested in participating taking turns, with a dozen interested authors it would mean research and writing about a topic of interest to you once a year. Any one interested?

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Comments (13)

arbo_retum
15 years ago
if I were going to go to that much work, i would, myself, want to make it into an article for something like Fine Gardening, where it would reach a wider audience.also, over the years of GW participation, I have seen many labor- intensive posts receiving very little response, and that is both disappointing and dissuading. for me, that is.

however, when you, katy, have gone to the huge trouble that you often have, to do ongoing posts- like your new zealand photo 'hortilogue', i am one of the many who have been ecstatic to reap the benefits of your work. it's certainly worthy of magazine/newspaper inclusion.
best,
mindy
dawiff
15 years ago
kt, I've been thinking about this post off and on today. I really like the idea, I think it's a good one and might work depending on what the topic was and who presented it, and how it was presented. Some topics benefit from, and in fact require, pictures. And would possibly go on for a longer period of time than just a week or a month.

I, and at least two other NE Forum members that I can think of off the top of my head, know a bit about winter sowing. I wouldn't mind putting the effort into teaching how to do that, even though there is a forum devoted to it. Some people don't like to leave the comfort of a forum they've grown accustomed to, and don't want to have to introduce themselves all over again as a newbie to a bunch of new people (although I assure you the folks on the winter sowing forum are very friendly and welcoming). A "course" on winter sowing would cover several months, since it is usually an ongoing process that occupies people from just after Christmas until at least June.

Then there are other topics, such as composting or lasagna beds, that I have experience at, but I am by no means an expert.

Maybe if people posted what they want to learn about, it would help us get some idea of what topics would get the most "action." Personally I'd like to know more about rooting things from cuttings and companion planting (what goes with what), and I'd like to learn more about native plants.

One last note: I would expect "students" to behave themselves. I would be very disappointed if any of the "courses" degenerated into disagreeableness. And I promise I will not be the class clown.
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Journal, Aug.8, 2007
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Thanks you guys. I didn't mean to sound like I was willing to concede on not getting paid. Suzy hit the nail on the head, explaining the bottom feeder pecking order of the small contractor. There's steps or a process that we take to up our chances of getting paid other than running to a courthouse. Surely, you all know that once one opens that can of worms, you can add months,costs and the risk of not collecting the full total amount. In addition, knowing your adversary and treating these situations on a case by case differential is to our advantage. Trust me, it's better to play detective, using your understanding of what is really happening, to get what you want rather than to threaten too early. As far as the guy who has empty promises, we are in the 'squeaky wheel gets the grease' step in the process. We're camping out in his front yard, so to speak. Jimmy and I both know how many aces we hold in our hand. We know when someone's ego and reputation is at stake. I am friends with two of his sisters, one of his brothers and his mama adores me. Jimmy knows the same 300 or so people this guy knows,lol. This alone ensures us that he won't stiff us and is more threatening than any call or letter from a lawyer. My Jimmy is very personable and charming. Yesterday, he exposed a few of his serious peacock feathers, so to speak, to this guy while discussing this debt and handing Jimmy some cash that amounts to not even a lousy tip to what he owes us. Although not being openly discussed, all the players know what's at stake here, where we all are on the time line and when push comes to shove. Jimmy and I know when to burn our bridges. I also know when the ball is in Jimmy's court,not mine. It's to my advantage to let these boys be boys, if you know what I mean. ;o) The good news is, that your kind words,prayers and sunflower thoughts made a big change yesterday. Half of what is owed to us came in the mail! But more importantly, another prayer involving money was answered yesterday. Even more needed, this little miracle made Jimmy and I feel a much missed breeze under our wings that really uplifted us. Oh good lord, you're all gonna get a kick out of this. But first let me tell you about what our day was like after I wrote this journal yesterday. Like I said, I knew writing out my feelings would throw me into some level of action so I started with the basics and cleaned the house while Jimmy was working. We both agreed that we would put 2 hours into chores/work and go to the beach. Heat index predictions were 110 degrees. We had no idea that a thrilling roller coaster ride of utter fear and joy would unfold the rest of our day. While I was cutting up watermelon and lopes for our cooler, Jimmy let me know that he put the cash with the checks we got in the mail in one of our dressers but had 2 twenties and some ones on his person. Boy, did we get lucky with parking. The closest spot to the beach on the street we picked. So rare, we had to high five each other. Virtually impossible when you consider it's the busiest week of the season with 300,000 people in one 13 mile long stretch of beach. We claimed our turf on the sardine packed beach and the oppressive heat got us to the surf sooner than usual. The temp of the water was a perfect 71 degrees. Chilly to the toes at first but easy to wade on in without hesitation. And the there was such a nice sandbar with waves strong enough to keep a good eye but spaced well enough to have a blast. Many of the beach goers were taking advantage of the wonderful surf. It was so nice for us to be exchanging those, "Gosh, this is so much fun" smiles between us. Whew, talk about good for the weary soul. My senses seemed to be in overdrive when leaving the water feeling a formidable under toe against my calves. My sinuses only smelling the sea and my taste buds salty, I was thrown back to a place in time feeling as if I was walking out of the water with Lindsey after a swim. Her presence was so strong I could taste and smell it. I'm feeling better by the minute. For the next few hours we snacked, did some word puzzles and swam about every 1/2 hour due to the heat and the fun surf. I couldn't help but overhear a man behind us, with a new york accent, conducting business on his cell phone. Then his son, about 11, his daughter, about 14 and his wife joined him drying off from their swim. The boy was very loud throwing a bona fide fit yelling at his mom and stomping his feet. Jimmy and I dipped our sunglasses down our noses a tad and exchange that "look" while the people in front of us picked up their sand chairs and reversed them facing us instead of the ocean. It got weirder by the nanosecond after that. The boy gets even louder, screaming at his mother for not bringing his chair to the beach while now the people in front of us that are now facing us are also moving their sunglasses exchanging that "look" to us. Seconds later, bad turned to worse as the father started screaming as loud as his son throwing empty threats of leaving the beach, packing up the car and cutting their vacation short. The teenage girl, who remained quiet through her embarrassment get the brunt of her father's scolding, not the boy. Then all eyes on the jammed packed beach grew large when the man announced to his children "I wished I never had kids". I grabbed the arms to my chair to rise up and Jimmy said: "Oh no you don't Diane." I tried to settle back in my chair. About 90 seconds later with more screaming out of all of them except the mother, the father called his daughter a b--ch then yelled to his two kids: "I wish you two were both dead and buried." I jumped out of my chair like a bat outta he11. "Take it off the beach, now," I said. I said some more stuff but because I was seeing red I can't recall exactly. I know I was brief and didn't curse. I sat back in my chair for only a minute telling Jimmy and the now audience on me that I was going in the ocean, "I needed to cool off in more ways than one." To my hopes, Jimmy soon joined me in the water and was met with, "Lindsey made me do it" with a big grin. "Oh, I know, he exclaimed, but she would of been 10 times worse than you!" When we got out of the water this sad excuse for a father and his family were no longer there. Four people approached me and thanked me. Jimmy dubbed me the "hero of the beach" for the remaining hour we were there before we headed home. After some down time, around 6pm we both decide to run up to the produce stand together to get some corn for dinner. Jimmy pulled into the food store because he wanted something and I went to the trunk to get some money out of our beach bag. Earlier on the beach, I noticed Jimmy threw his cell phone, car keys and what certainly looked like a 100 dollar bill to me in the side pocket of the beach bag. With all the excitement and the fact that Jimmy is ADD, I never asked him about this bill. When I went to the trunk, the beach bag wasn't there. I gasped as I realized I left it on the street next to the car when we left the beach. We set land speed record getting back to the beach where we parked. We're both scared as he11 because even though Jimmy said he put the cash in the dresser he knows himself all too well and might of not put it in the dresser. With me trying to convince him that I did in fact see a 100 dollar bill in the beach bag earlier, we both were so scared that Jimmy somehow put all the 500 in our beach bag earlier before we left the house. I'm convinced that is exactly what happened and I apologize to him for making such a mistake. He graciously offered up, "Welcome to my nightmare. We'll never survive if my ADD rubs off on you!" Meanwhile, it's the busiest week of the season and we are in deep dinner rush hour traffic. I keep closing my eyes and Jimmy weaves in and out of traffic. I prayed. Low and behold, we pull into the street we parked at earlier and there it sat on the sidewalk. He pulled up, I opened my door and yanked it into our car,lol. We gasped as we saw what we suspected and thanked God. So, here our beach bag with 500 dollars in it sat on a public street, in a very crowded resort and the only disturbance was tire tracks. There was no argument that we knew darn well that Lindsey protected it for us! Heck, we felt so good the rest of the night, I skipped watering my plants and excepted their "cooked-look" from the day's oppressive heat and only had ONE scoop of ice cream (with dark chocolate kisses and Heath bar pieces.) That snack choice alone should tell you that things are much better now. ~di, going back to the beach today wishing for more excitement but not as scary as yesterday. :o)
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Caroline and Ya Ya, It was called "witching" for water aound here about 70 years ago ... and Dad had a neighbour who had such a capacity come to do it before he drilled a well. The neighbour carried a forked tree-branch, with about 8" of the unified branch sticking out in front while he held the end of each of two forks, about a foot long each, in either hand. While holding the ends of the two branches, he squeezed them apart, putting tension on the join. Sometimes as he walked over the area, the unified branch sticking out in front would slowly drop, which he said indicated that there was water down below. When he held one end and Dad the other, it worked ... but when Dad tried it alone ... nary a quiver out of the trunk part, sticking out in front. There was one particularly strong pull by the wall of our horse barn, which he said indicated a strong stream. Dad drilled the well by the wall of the house. I don't remember whether the "witcher" had indicated that there was a supply of water there or not. I don't know either whether Dad offered/gave him a tip or honorarium ... and, if so, what it was or what its worth might have been. The neighbour might well have turned it down. This was done in the daylight ... not at any "witching hour"! ole joyful
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runktrun
Original Author
15 years ago
I think I should make it clear right up front that there are very few things in life that I would consider myself as having any amount of expertise in and none of those things come under the classification of horticulture. I will however share with you that I have a remarkable talent for sensing where to find a heavily populated bed of quahogs, can cajole Joe into doing most projects that he would rather avoid around the house, and regardless of the situation I can always make my kids laugh. My lack of expertise in terms of putting together a lecture/presentation is frankly what is motivating me, take for example a problem I have had with my thirty plus high bush blueberries over the last fifteen years, I just simply donÂt understand how to prune them. Yes I have read books (and butchered them), watched videos on youtube (and butchered them), asked friends advice (and butchered them). So for me this is the winter to immerse myself in the language of the blueberry. Sharing my journey to a better understanding of this plant with you all would certainly be helpful to me and perhaps to someone else as well.
dawiff,
Some topics benefit from, and in fact require, pictures. And would possibly go on for a longer period of time than just a week or a month.

I think your right and perhaps we should just let the time frame/frequency evolve based on interest.

I, and at least two other NE Forum members that I can think of off the top of my head, know a bit about winter sowing. I wouldn't mind putting the effort into teaching how to do that, even though there is a forum devoted to it. Some people don't like to leave the comfort of a forum they've grown accustomed to, and don't want to have to introduce themselves all over again as a newbie to a bunch of new people

Sounds Great, for myself winter sowing has always been one of those things I mean to take a look at (IÂve bought the seeds two years in a row) but for one reason or another I have never followed through. Your thread could be just the kick in the pants I would need.

Maybe if people posted what they want to learn about, it would help us get some idea of what topics would get the most "action." Personally I'd like to know more about rooting things from cuttings and companion planting (what goes with what), and I'd like to learn more about native plants.

Topics of Interest
1. rooting things from cuttings and companion planting (what goes with what), and I'd like to learn more about native plants
2. pruning shrubs

I promise I will not be the class clown. I certainly wonÂt make any such promise!!!
diggingthedirt
15 years ago
I think this is a great idea. Katy did something like this with her Lichens 101 thread and I learned a lot; it provided the motivation to do some research at other sites and even in books.

If someone is going to go to the effort to do a "class" like this, it should probably, eventually, have another home besides GW. A thread here could later be excerpted or adapted to another site, like Katy's Rusty Spade blog. Things have a way of disappearing after they've scrolled off the top page of threads on GW, so putting in the effort should have a pay off ... somewhere. I think that would take care of Mindy's reservation about this, and would also provide a more permanent medium for the information.

Things I'd be especially interested in, besides pruning and natives, are mostly related to design. I can grow plants pretty well, but composing (or editing) a garden is way out of the ball park for me.

Class clown? Oh, no, not on this forum.
dawiff
15 years ago
DtD, thanks for pointing me at the Rusty Spade blog, I didn't know it existed. I like the idea of maybe moving the class there , or to some other permanent spot, at some point. I don't remember Lichens 101, maybe I was winter sowing at the time, I missed it.

Kt, you're going to be class clown? Should we make you stand in a corner now? Hehe.... I bet you will love winter sowing, BTW.
runktrun
Original Author
15 years ago
Another topic I would be interested in is Damaging Insects in the New England Garden. Does any one else have a topic they would be interested in exploring?
Topics of Interest
1. rooting things from cuttings and companion planting (what goes with what), and I'd like to learn more about native plants
2. pruning shrubs
3. design
4. Insect damage in New England
nandina
15 years ago
My question is...where do you plan to hold classes on the suggested topics? On this
forum? On the Rusty Spade blog? I have some suggestions re kt's blueberry problems, just don't know where to post.
diggingthedirt
15 years ago
I think the idea is that they'd be here; I just suggested copying them to a blog as a way to keep them available in the longer term.
mayalena
15 years ago
I am a good student, but a poor teacher. I keep bumping up against how little I know! I will certainly participate in discussions, as time permits, but couldn't put together a lecture that would interest anyone other than a novice!
Sorry to disappoint,
C
runktrun
Original Author
15 years ago
Nandina,
I am soooo relieved you have some suggestions re my blueberries but I am going to ask that you hold on to your thoughts for a short time while we consider the best forum to present and maintain whatever information and discussions about that information. Things are pretty slow here right now so I would like to hold on and wait a bit in the hopes of haranguing others to join in on the fun.
Mayalena,
I certainly understand that you may not have the time to commit to researching and exploring a topic right now but we would like to know what topics would be of interest to you.
mad_gallica (z5 Eastern NY)
15 years ago
If I might barge in and interrupt, currently what are people doing for server space? Back in the dark ages, the local ISP bundled a certain amount of space in with a basic account. While most people seem to have totally ignored this feature, we did make use of it for a variety of things, including a couple of hardy rose articles. Last month, we finally joined the 21st century, and got high speed access. While I haven't cancelled the old account yet, I will, and have no idea what will happen to to our web page then. The photographs can, hopefully, go to some picture hosting site (for some reason, Photobucket hates me) but I don't know where people are currently storing text.
diggingthedirt
15 years ago
MG - We recently switched from a commercial-grade DSL account that came with lots of server space, which we used for one web site; we were also able to serve several more sites from our home using a little linux computer - an old PC. I've moved all of those sites - some have gone to pro web design-host outfits, one (a band) moved to MySpace, and one (local league of women voters) is being hosted by Network Solutions (that's the main registrar for domain names).

Garden photos, which I used to slip into one of the little non-profit sites that were on our home server, are now on Google's Picasa server (highly recommended for ease of use). I also have a blogspot blog - that's another Google thing - which I completely neglect most of the year. It's easy to insert images stored at Picasa onto blogspot pages. The blog format takes a little getting used to, and it's not perfect for everything, but is a great way to store things like short articles.
runktrun
Original Author
15 years ago
Thought I would update. I have been working on a new blog specifically for archiving written information that would not be appropriate for FAQ and you may not want lost in the continuous roll of conversation.
1. So far I have decided that blogger would be a preferred location as when I last looked it was the only one that was set up to have multiple contributors. Of any one knows differently or has a strong opinion re Wordpress ect please let me hear about that sooner than later.
2. Thought the title "Digging Deeper" might work.
3. Any thoughts?

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