How Does Your Winter Garden Grow?

And now, for something very different, dear Minnesota Prager fans and others  interested in conservative lives.    I am  a man of several lives competing for my passion and time.  I have been very, very lucky in life.

My passion to reach folks concerned about America’s moral and political decline is paramount, but I hope temporary.   For my life was destined primarily  to be drawn to the art of the landscape garden.   I would like to share the following blog article I wrote a few minutes ago while listening to Dennis Prager’s radio show devoted to  common sense:

 ”WHY IS OUR 2011 LANDSCAPE GARDEN SO BEAUTIFUL?”

If you have been ‘playing’  in your landscape garden the past month you may have noticed that this October of our year, 2011, was special…..If so, why?

My grounds throughout is at its most colorful best this early November   than  in all the 37 years I have lived here in the Hopkins area.  It is a landscape garden about 1/2 acre in size, laid out over the years by my passion to create beauty in the land over which I have domain while I live.

I have noticed I have been  spending more time ‘being there’ in the garden the last few weeks than previous Octobers.   Beauty has its lure.   It sure beats drugs by anyone’s observation, I would think.  I noticed yesterday and today, I’ve been  loathe to  leave  its  beauty, so I  have been manufacturing  various tasks to  keep me here.  

These tasks are governed by the garden’s beauty.    I prune, rake, cut back some perennial foliage, clean fallen leaves from the conifers…..nothing well organized, nothing planned, simply enjoying a daily three mile walk or more walking its paths, “Being there”…..and thinking why is this year’s Autumn so special in my landscape garden?

We have had no killing frost here.   I think that’s the answer.   There have been only two evenings when the temperature dropped to 31 or 32 degrees Fahrenheit.   Statistically,  October 10th has been  the average date for killing frosts in our Twin City area.   That is nearly a month ago.

We don’t have much sunshine these days.   The maples, Ohio Buckeye, Kentucky Coffeetree dropped their leaves by  mid October.   There are no garden  shadows without sunlight.  And November is Minnesota’s most cloudy month, meaning that in the landscape garden there is no shade from the major trees by late October, except from oaks.   If there is no sunlight, there is no shade, and with no killing frost, color at ground level to small tree level is not only still displayed, but not visually  damaged.

Most of all, this color can be seen from left to right and right to left in its entirety.   No killing frost allows many garden perennials to extend their bloom, no longer  in mass but as high lights and small groups.   Their foliage, led by the chartreuse, yellow, gold, and orange of large hosta clumps throughout the grounds, many floppy, still  display a coloring never before seen in such quantity during the growing season.    Some hostas, such as   June and El Nino, are still in their summer season form and  color.  

The fire colors of the major barberries and the maroons of the colored ninebarks, velvet cloak and grace smokebushes and white oaks in the distance, and all of the seed pods, blackened dead or golden brown, the blue from late summer blooming geraniums and reds from fothergilla, my annually pruned red oak at the back door entry to my chocolate brown-red sided house is nearly beyond inspiring.

Then I walk my paths and notice a large clump of Korean lilac , whose autumn color beauty I haven’t seen for many years……a color of soft, dusty, pink, tan, rust, orange all blendings  on leaves the size and appearance  of butterflies resting enmasse on the lilac’s autumn  ’twigs’.

Yet, no matter how beautiful the colors of this scenery I have described  may be in anyone’s eyes, they are insignificant without the most important color and collection of plants to glorify the setting……the greens of our evergreen conifers, from ground covers to magnificent trees.   It is they who are now entering our Minnesota garden world dominating its beauty until mid May every year,  that command its  scenes.

Until this  week, the most inspired I have ever been by  my landscape garden was in early February some nine  years ago, at 3:30 AM in a light snowfall of large snowflakes sparkling from a full moon  peeking through the cloud cover.

I was to go to a colleague’s wedding in Hawaii…..and I thought no place in the world could be more beautiful than the scene  I was leaving.   I went to the wedding in Maui.  Everything was beautiful, but not as beautiful as that morning.

Nor is the color of today’s display, but it is its equal.

Use your own imagination, fellow Minnesotans.   What setting without color  could be as or more beautiful than this year’s extended,  special Autumn,  in Winter?  Picture it yourself.

I doubt it could be a garden scene without the beautiful forms of our Northern  conifers and silhouettes of  what they enframe on a moonlit evening graced by huge sparkling snowflakes.

The most important plants in our Northern landscape gardens are the evergreen conifers!!!

 Winter is our longest landscape season…..as long as Spring, Summer and Autumn put together.

The Ugliness of Democrats Preceded the Ugliness of Marxist Obama’s Racism Politics

Check out the following video of some of George W. Bush’s comments warning about the dangers of financial bankruptcy facing America with its out-of-control commitments to entitlements.    Pay particular attention to the role of then, New York Senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton as cheerleader of ridicule. 

Remember, Democrats had gtained control of Congress the previous November…..and have controled the Senate ever since, the presidency since January, 2009 and the House of Representatives until January, 2011.

http://by165w.bay165.mail.live.com/mail/InboxLight.aspx?n=2138917188#fid=1&fav=1&n=220566633&mid=9fb3cc61-03f4-11e1-9c12-00215ad5bc86&fv=1

Many thanks to Lisa Rich from California, for sending this video.   Every day of Marxist Barack Hussein Obama in the White House becomes more gaunt and gray especially  when compared to the maturity, wisdom, and devotion to his office and country of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Barack Hussein Obama’s attempts to Grab Power from Congress

Emperor Obama:  ‘We Can’t Wait’ for the Constitutional Process and the Representative Rule of Law
by Seton Motley  

President Barack Obama last week unveiled his latest attempt to divert attention away from his horrendously failed economic policies and record.  In his ongoing effort to “fundamentally transform America” and his loomingly piteous campaign to get reelected, the newest phraseology is “We Can’t Wait.”

From his weekly radio address on Saturday:

“The truth is, we can no longer wait for Congress to do its job….So where Congress won’t act, I will.”

There is so much disingenuousness contained in just this tiny excerpt.  The truth is, there is nothing at all new about this.  President Obama has been end-running Congress to unilaterally “fundamentally transform America” since (at least) November 2, 2010. That election day was a stinging, historic rebuke of the Leftist, Big Government policies of President Obama and his Democrats.  Not just in D.C. but throughout the nation, at the state and local levels as well.  It was a crashing, crushing wave that Obama himself described it as a “shellacking.”

 

We the People elected Republicans in huge numbers up and down the ticket to (amongst other things) serve as a blockade to the Socialism being further emplaced by Donkeys. Unfortunately, the will of We the People remains utterly irrelevant to Obama. After the brutal Congressional slog that was the jamming-through of ObamaCare, over the expressed objections of We the People, the President had enough of the legislative (or constitutional) way of doing things, so he began his regulatory fiat power grabs.

Can’t pass the energy sector-assault that is Cap & Trade?  No problem, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will start imposing large swaths of it as if it has. Can’t pass the workplace-assault that is the Big Union-payoff Card Check?  No problem, President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)  and Department of Labor will start imposing large swaths of it as if it has.

 

So for the President this weekend to pretend his democracy denying-dictaorial-ism is something new is mendacious. 

He’s been going at it at a pretty good for years and he’s only announcing that he’s now really going to ramp it up. He isn’t tired of “wait(ing) for Congress to do its job.”  He long ago lost any interest in anything having to do with Congress — save their utility as an electioneering punching bag. Congress is in fact doing exactly the job we (in part) elected them to do: Be an impediment to the President’s overarching, overreaching Leftist agenda. And they have been largely successful when Obama isn’t illegally, serially, wantonly going around them.

 

The best chance We the People (and our representatives in Congress) have to push back against all of this is on Network Neutrality.  Net Neutrality is what Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) illegally jammed through last December and just now beginning to impose (it officially goes into effect November 20).

But Net Neutrality can be stopped by the same Congress Obama ducked in its imposition.

The fight to undo the FCC’s power grab currently resides in the United States Senate, as they have before them the House-passed Congressional Review Act Resolution of Disapproval, which will overturn the FCC’s illegal Net Neutrality action. The bad news is the Senate has but a finite period of time to act (and the illegal order goes into effect on November 20).

 

The good news is because of this short and closing window, only 51 votes are required for passage.  No filibusters allowed. It appears all 47 Senate Republicans are on board, ready to say Aye, which means we need four Democrats.  That’s where the fun begins.

 

23 Democrat Senate seats are up for election in 2012.  Some of the current sitters are retiring.  Many are running to re-up, several in swing or even Republican-leaning states.

 

These Donkey Senators surely remember the less government 2010 electoral “shellacking” of many of their colleagues and likely live in dread anticipation of a 2012 redux. So let us remind them why We the People voted the way we did (and will again): We want smaller, more accountable government, the kind President Obama has incessantly flouted, the kind Obama’s FCC eviscerated with its Net Neutrality power grab. the kind the Senate can take an important step towards restoring by voting to undo said Obama FCC authoritarianism.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Upper Chamber, prepare to vote; rest assured, we’re watching.

 

Lisa Rich sent the above article from California.

Mitt Romney Isn’t My First Choice Either, But OBAMA Is Our Democracy’s ENEMY

………and Obama, this most unAmerican of American presidents  MUST be defeated in 2012.

I really like Herman Cain’s winsome personality, intelligence, good  humor, abilities to manage and understand business, and he is not a programmed politician.  

But,  I don’t think he can topple the Marxist-in-chief, Barack Hussein Obama, however.

Neither Paul Ryan nor Chris Christie are candidates, as you all know.

I suspect Mitt Romney is a pragmatist at heart.   I’d guess it comes from his Mormonism…..’it’ meaning his maleability, controlled dogmatism, his minority condition’s desire  to please all.   Pragramatism isn’t necessarily a bad trait.

 Nevertheless, I strongly believe he  is a  conservative……a good man with a good family, intelligent, business aware, politically …..well….as I wrote a few words ago, maleable……which in Obamatime, may be what the nation needs most.

If he gains Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress, how can be  not be  a  conservative leader?

He should fire his present campaign advisors and blame them for causing rifts with his fellow Republicans, and begin spending time mending conservative fences.     I do hope he will choose Herman Cain as his running mate…..who might use his wit, smile, penetrating eyes, and clever tongue  to pressure Mr. Romney  never to duplicate anything like Romneycare again.

Mr. Romney needs to have a heart to heart cleaning with the American people, so we do know who he is and will be fighting to accomplish……conservatively.

        Conservative case for Romney is …

                            he can’t possibly flip-flop again

      

 by Ed Morrissey   at HotAir

“Can a conservative case be made for Mitt Romney?  Michael Gerson tried mightily at the Washington Post yesterday, leaning heavily on Romney’s business experience and cultural background to argue that Romney’s current positions are probably more natural to him than those he adopted for more than a decade as a Massachusetts politician.  Unfortunately for Gerson, he has to come up with some way to explain why Romney wouldn’t slide back to his earlier positions once he faced some political headwinds on the national stage, and this is the best Gerson can do:

Romney’s main political vulnerability is a serious one. Running for Massachusetts’ governor in 2002, he was a pro-choice, economically centrist, culturally liberal, business-oriented Republican. Running for president in 2008, he was a thoroughly pro-life, orthodox supply-side, culturally conservative, Fox News Republican. Romney’s shape-shifting 2008 campaign only reinforced the impression of a consultant-driven candidate.

But conservatives — unsurprised by human frailty — know that great republics are constructed out of flawed materials. Some of Romney’s transformation is explainable as the result of ideological regionalism. It would be a rare candidate who could run and win in Massachusetts with the same message offered to Republican caucus-goers in Iowa.

Well, I don’t know about rare.  Ronald Reagan did it — twice — and didn’t do it by bending to the political headwinds or aligning himself with the muddy middle.  Dwight Eisenhower did it twice, too, making them the only Republicans to win Massachusetts in the past 60 years.  They did so by being men of principle rather than conservatives of convenience.

Gerson then argues that Romney won’t change direction again because, er, he’s changed too often in the past:

Even conservatives who buy none of these explanations may calculate that Romney is acceptable. Precisely because he has a history of ideological heresy, it would be difficult for him to abandon his current, more conservative iteration. He has committed himself on key conservative issues. Having flipped, he could not flop without risking a conservative revolt. As a result, conservatives would have considerable leverage over a Romney administration.

That’s such a tortured explanation that I’m awaiting a Geneva Convention hearing on the matter.  Are we to believe that a Romney administration would credit conservatives for his nomination and election?  That might have been true in 2008 when conservatives rallied to his side when John McCain’s nomination began to look inevitable, but that’s certainly not going to be the case in 2012. If Romney gets the nomination and the win, he won’t get it carried on the shoulders of conservatives.

The most laughable assertion here, though, is that Romney’s record of inconsistency works as a guarantee of future consistency.  That’s not an argument; it’s a rationalization.  Since when has a history of political expediency been a good indicator of future principled stands?

The one argument for Romney that actually works with conservatives is that he’d be a better President than our current incumbent by a country mile.  That’s also true of most of the rest of the field, though.  If the nomination went to Romney, I’d have no trouble pulling the lever for Mitt in November 2012, and I’d be ruddy pleased to do so.  But while the primaries are still in front of us, perhaps we can be spared the rationalizations aimed at getting conservatives to back Romney rather than test the rest of the field for a more principled conservative who could win a general election and properly lead this country in the right direction.”