Okay...the winged visitors just got weirder

Not that parrots are weird enough....now I have turkeys. What the hell is going on??? She was hanging out right by my office window yesterday. I thought Eric was yanking my chain when he yells into my office there's a female turkey in our yard. Wow....just wow.

Shout out for organic lawn care

Eric asked me to mention to my clients that he is starting to offer organic lawn care with All Island Landscape out of Portsmouth. He is their Turf supervisor and this is something he's wanted to do for some time. I really do think he's on to something here with the organics. So, if you are interested and live in the East Bay area and the Providence/Cranston/Warwick/East Greenwich/ North Kingstown areas, give him at shout. At this point, he's not servicing the western and northern parts of Rhode Island. He wants to as he hires fertilizing minions.

Eric Larson
All Island Landscape, Inc.
Portsmouth, Rhode Island
(401) 683-1588
http://www.allislandlandscape.com/home.html

Margaritaville, Rhode Island

The tropics seem to have taken over Garden Consultant HQ this week! Orchids in full bloom and parrots...yes parrots outside near Bird Central. I know I have mentioned the parrots that fly over our house at least a couple times a day. I'm usually met with looks of "Yeah, sure Cris...you have parrots flying over your house. Whatever." I have photographic evidence of said parrots now. They were camped out in the oak by my front door and then the oak where my bird feeders are. I have been trying since we moved here to get them to come down and feed. This was the closest they have been to the feeders. Maybe someday they will come and dine.

See, I'm not 10 pounds of crazy stuffed into a 5 pound bag. Those look an awful lot like parrots to me. :) After doing some research of them...I discovered they are called Monk Parrots (or Parakeets) and flocks have been seen in Providence, Riverside, and Warwick. That's pretty freakin' cool.

Inside tropical reports are of the orchids which have been blooming for a while!

My Walking Iris which I took the photo too soon. (Above)

Here's the latest update on the Pooch Front. We finally have some answers to Sam's extreme weight loss and a bunch of other odd things which have been going on with him for the past several months. He's got Cushings Disease and we've started treatment for it. Hopefully, we can help him out and make him more comfortable. He probably be on meds for the rest of his life but hey, if it makes him feel better...that's what we're going to do. Lars is growing like a weed (pun intended!) He's started puppy classes and is already showing glimmers of working dog greatness. Here's the monkey in an explosion of naughtiness!

Rhode Island Flower Show 2008!

Well, I survived the flower show again! LOL It was a long, crazy, and fun week! I had designed the RINLA exhibit for the third year in a row and I do believe this year's was the best and I was very pleased with it. The theme this year was "Fairy Tales" and I wanted to design up something that people could take ideas from and use in their landscape. So, I chose to design a garden that would attract fairies and elves. Most of the plants I used in the garden had some sort of use to the fairies. The guys started to build the hardscape of the garden on Sunday and I came on Monday to start placing plant material.

Tuesday the flowers came and we worked feverishly to get everything placed and basically finished. Wednesday, we tweaked things and had little detail things to do like placing moss around rocks and making sure that pots were hidden.

I am pleased to say that the judges liked the exhibit too! We placed second place in the non profit catagory! Hooray!!

Here are a bunch of photos of the completed garden -

For the fourth year in a row, I've also had my booth in the markplace part of the flower show. It was a good show despite the snowy weather on Friday. Saturday and Sunday were jammin' and I got to see a lot of clients of mine who I had met at previous shows. I met a ton of nice, new people who I may look forward in helping them achieve their landscaping wishes.