Florists in Damp Germany

Leonard Cohen Makes It Darker - The New Yorker

Platonists, pornography-peepers, hair-handed monks and Popists.”Cohen was growing weary of London’s rising damp and its gray skies. An English dentist had just yanked one of his wisdom teeth. After weeks of cold and rain, he wandered into a bank and asked the teller about his deep suntan. The teller said that he had just returned from a trip to Greece. Cohen bought an airline ticket.Not long afterward, he alighted in Athens, visited the Acropolis, made his way to the port of Piraeus, boarded a ferry, and disembarked at the island of Hydra. With the chill barely out of his bones, Cohen took in the horseshoe-shaped harbor and the people drinking cold glasses of retsina and eating grilled fish in the cafés by the water; he looked up at the pines and the cypress trees and the whitewashed houses that crept up the hillsides. There was something mythical and primitive about Hydra. Cars were forbidden. Mules humped water up the long stairways to the houses. There was only intermittent electricity. Cohen rented a place for fourteen dollars a month. Eventually, he bought a whitewashed house of his own, for fifteen hundred dollars, thanks to an inheritance from his grandmother.Hydra promised the life Cohen had craved: spare rooms, the empty page, eros after dark. He collected a few paraffin lamps and some used furniture: a Russian wrought-iron bed, a writing table, chairs like “the chairs that van Gogh painted.” During the day, he worked on a sexy, phantasmagoric novel called “The Favorite Game” and the poems in a collection titled “Flowers for Hitler.” He alternated between extreme discipline and the varieties of abandon. There were days of fasting to concentrate the mind. There were drugs to expand it: pot, speed, acid. “I took trip after trip, sitting on my terrace in Greece, waiting to see God,” he said years later. “Generally, I end...http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/leonard-cohen-makes-it-darker

What to plant in 2017, using the gardening lessons of 2016 - Financial Times

Instead, I have mental vistas of gentians and ranunculus, miles of pale blue asters, thistles beyond recognition and sudden drifts of pink-purple lousewort, or pedicularis, wherever the ground was damp. If you want to see a more-than-meadow garden, hire a horse and gallop inland due south of Lake Issyk-Kul. After days in the saddle I acquired a new taste for pale blue flowers combined with yellow, most readily visible on meadow geraniums and yellow-flowered potentillas which hug the ground. “Prairie gardening” does not have to depend on flowers of a stale pink-mauve and ever more ox-eye daisies. I am growing a stock plant of Aster divaricatus, a tough blue summer-flowering aster from Central Asia, which I will split and space among Potentilla recta Warrenii, a good fresh yellow flowerer on stems up to 1.5ft. This potentilla already seeds in my garden and ought to survive en masse. I will also be combing this year’s seed lists for anything thistly to mix among them where the stems will stand out like silvery candlesticks, centaureas to the fore. Gardeners work with pictures in their mind’s eye, often pictures of gardens which are remembered from the days of childhood. By travelling to see flowers in the wild, they gain a new mental video and the impetus for a new style. Meadow gardens do not have to be made only of native wild flowers. The loveliest “meadows” flower in June in Romania or Central Asia, imprinting images quite different from dull old English scabious and meadowsweet. In Switzerland the subalpine meadows are an inspiration before the cows have had time to graze them to the ground. Gardeners have yet to use these heavenly meadows as their models. My loveliest garden day of the year was spent in a garden which exemplifies this controlled informality. At Hermannshof near Weinheim and Heidelberg, I walked in early May through an avenue of wisteria and looked out on lilac in full flower and rivers of carefully selected tulips. The finest tulip was yellow Honky Tonk, now waiting to honk in my raised beds where its short stems and elegantly shaped flowers will be a revelation in May, badgers permitting. The Hermannshof style is informal, within a carefully designed framework, and its models are the differing styles of differing ecologies, from steppe to marsh to mountain. In Kyrgyzstan I was able to see from a four-legged vantage point similar changes in each ecological zone, from blue aconitums and salvias in the lower pastures to subnival primulas at heights of 3,500 metres. By rethinking wild groupings, gardeners can find a new style. The recently bred David Austin rose, Olivia Rose Austin, is the best value of any bush rose now on the market My second lesson was also taught by absence. Plants which flower for a long season are ever more valuable as they span our times abroad and persist in the prolonged seasons of warmer Britain. Roses had faded when I returned from the mountains and so had most of the low-growing dianthus. However, there were great exceptions, my best finds of 2016. The recently bred David Austin rose, Olivia Rose Austin, is one of them and the best value of any bush rose now on the market. It shows its ...

The garden in Germany that has its planting down to a science - Financial Times

I was once trained, also in Munich, but in the botanical garden’s great alpinum. They require plants to be arranged by habitat and origin: woodland, prairie, steppe or meadow damp and dry. Purists who follow it also segregate plants of the Balkans from American or Chinese families. The aim is not to have a sort of Dutch herbaceous muddle. The ecological principle and the geographic segregation give the planting an underlying coherence. Schmidt recalls meeting the great Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf at a prairie conference in 2003 and showing him the categorised style at Hermannshof. Strict ecological segregation was not central at the time to Oudolf’s thinking. The visit, Schmidt suggests, influenced the types of planting Oudolf then used along the High Line in New York. Stepping out from the main garden house, we follow a grass path into an informal swirl of exceptional tulips. Orange-magenta Dordogne and magenta Menton combine unexpectedly well and neatly match the purple-pink flowers on the Judas tree beside them. “They were an accident,” Schmidt admits, “but a happy one.” A bulb supplier sent the wrong variety. More than 70,000 tulips now flower in early May at Hermannshof, as yet undiscovered by badgers, and about 65 per cent return to flower each year. The combinations are enchanting but my personal gold medal goes to the low growing hybrid Honky Tonk, which has the loveliest yellow flowers in profusion. Hermannshof does not have a classic alpinum. It has a sort of Mediterranean hill, planted partly with bergenias, beyond which Honky Tonk is extraordinarily beautiful. It is now at the top of my autumn order list. With Tulipa batalinii Bronze Charm and bakeri Lilac Wonder, it comes back and flowers every year. Many English gardeners find the same. Tulipa Dordogne © GAP Photos For almost 100 years, keen gardeners have worked on Hermannshof’s design. I sit, stunned, beneath a pergola of long-flowered Wisteria floribunda, a form far better than the best I have seen in Britain. “We do not know its name for sure,” Schmidt reassures me, “as it came here as a gift from Kyoto in the 1920s. We call it Macrobotrys longissima as its hanging flowers are over a metre long.” At that time, the garden was being designed by Heinrich Wiepking-Jürgensmann, a follower of an Arts-and-Crafts style with one eye on English taste. In 1983 his plan was recast and the garden’s modern fame began. It owes much of it to Hans Luz, a professorial expert in the more ecological style of plant grouping and admired for his designs at garden shows in Stuttgart. He gave the garden a more fluent ground plan by including big curving flower beds and, his masterstroke, green grass paths throughout. Under Schmidt’s leadership the style has been improved and extended, and the categories of planting further defined. He thinks in terms of “stress-tolerant” plants for full sun, many of which are evergreen; “competitive” plants for meadow beds; and “ruderal” plants or “pioneers”, which like disturbance. He insists that this sort of zoned planting was not the new creation of the famous Richard Hansen and the garden at Weihenstephan, which he began to plant in 1948. There were forerunners in Germany, and Hermannshof itself is different, more Mediterranean, more “ecological”, a direction it also owes to a previous director, Urs Walser. Beyond the tulips, beds of meadow, steppe and woodland planting have a different rhythm. The blue camassias are superb, particularly one called leichtlinii suksdorfii, far the best blue but one which does not seed itself around. By the entrance driveway, superb white...

Autumn delights that are making a big comeback - Limerick Leader

The site needs to be dug, the deeper the better and lots of well rotted manure or compost added. It is impossible to overfeed cannas. The ideal location for a canna is a warm, damp, sheltered place. Instead of buying canna rhizomes you may buy canna plants already potted up from your local garden centre. Cannas may also be grown in pots or tubs and placed in your patio or conservatory to delight and amaze visitors to your garden. There are dwarf varieties which flower earlier than the larger ones. If planting in pots or tubs, again the message is, lots of rotten manure. The variegated cannas are the most popular. Canna ‘Durban’, sometimes sold under the name ‘Tropicana’, appeared a few years ago causing a sensation. It has stunning colourations with pink veins on a dark purple leaf with an orange flower. Canna ‘Striata’ has yellow veins on a green leaf with an orange flower. Canna ‘Black Knight’ has bronze foliage with dark red flowers. Canna ‘Stuttgart’ is a recent plant, introduced from USA in 1998, has green foliage with large white veins and apricot flowers. Once smitten by these wonderful plants you will want to grow more and more varieties of these wonderful plants. Jobs for the week Gladioli plants which have finished flowering should be lifted from the ground before they are damaged by frost and excessive wet. Dry them off in the greenhouse before cleaning off the soil and cutting back the old foliage and flower spikes. Cut out fruited canes of summer raspberries and tie in new canes that will fruit next year. Select strong, healthy canes and cut out weak, forked or canes that are growing out into path. Outdoor tomatoes should be picked and ripened indoors. The whole truss can be cut off to allow the fruits to ripen on the vine in the greenhouse or on a windowstill. http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/gardening-with-phil-boyce/217876/autumn-delights-that-are-making-a-big-comeback.html

Green party politician remains most popular head of federal state in Germany: poll - Xinhua | English.news.cn - Xinhua

Kretschmann had already been Germany's most popular head of state in the Forsa Trendbarometer of 2017 and 2018. With an approval rate of 66 percent, Daniel Guenther, Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein, was the second most popular head of a federal state in Germany, followed by Stephan Weil of Lower Saxony who was ranked third with 60 percent. At the bottom of the ranking was Berlin's governing mayor, Michael Mueller (SPD), whose work was only rated positively by 27 percent of people living in the German capital's federal state. Following a big win in the European Parliament elections in May, where the Green party in Germany won 20.5 percent of votes and became second strongest political force, support for the Green party in Germany is at a historic high. According to last week's Trendbarometer, the Greens would gain the same number of votes as the governing conservative union CDU/CSU if elections were to be held. With regards to a first Green German chancellor, Winfried Kretschmann recently told the Funke Media Group that a German government led by the Greens would not involve a radical change of policy. "Nobody needs to be afraid of a Green Chancellor. We are not trumps or Erdogans or Orbans who throw everything overboard," Kretschmann told the German newspapers. The head of Baden-Wuerttemberg noted that he did not see "big differences" in alliances with the CDU/CSU and the SPD. "In socio-political issues, we make progress with the social democrats, in economic policy with the CDU/CSU". http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-07/16/c_138229413.htm

Up close with royal fashion: Kate's wedding lace - Royal Central

Middleton’s wedding dress, designed by Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen, was assembled the Royal School of Needlework. The RSN was founded as the School of Needlework Art by Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, the third daughter of Queen Victoria, in 1872. It became the Royal School of Needlework in 1875 when Queen Victoria became its first patron. Housed at Hampton Court Palace, the Duchess of Cornwall is currently its patron and the Duchess of Gloucester is its president. (The Duchess of Cornwall last visited the School in September 2019.) Embed from Getty Images When working on the lace in 2010 and 2011, the RSN embroiders did not know who the designer was. Embroiders ranged in age from 19 to 70, and strict protocols were followed. They were required to wash their hands every 30 minutes to keep the lace clean and to replace their needles every three hours. Embed from Getty Images The lace itself is a traditional Cluny and Leavers lace and was influenced by nineteenth-century Carrickmacross lace patterns. It covers the entire dress, including the bodice, skirt, and train. The pattern incorporated the national flowers of all four nations in the United Kingdom: the English rose, the Scottish thistle, the Irish Shamrock, and the Welsh daffodil. The floral patterns were machine-made and then applied by hand to the netting by RSN embroiderers. Interestingly, the pattern is not unique to this dress but rather draws on traditional patterns. ...https://royalcentral.co.uk/uk/cambridge/up-close-with-royal-fashion-kates-wedding-lace-131269/

German states finalize privatization of HSH Nordbank - Xinhua | English.news.cn - Xinhua

Video PlayerClose BERLIN, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- The German states of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein have finalized the sale of HSH Nordbank to a private investment consortium on Wednesday. "The money has arrived", Hamburg finance minister Andreas Dressel (SPD) revealed at a press conference hosted with his counterpart in Schleswig-Holstein Monika Heinold (Greens). Nine months ago, the two states agreed to sell their controlling stakes in HSH Nordbank to the U.S. investment firms Cerberus and J.C. Flowers among other private investors. The sale had been ordered by European Union (EU) competition authorities and marks the first ever successful privatization of a regional government-owned bank in Germany. Following the formal acquisition of HSH Nordbank for one billion euros (1.13 billion U.S. dollars), the bank will be renamed in Hamburg Commercial Bank from February 2019. A new supervisory board has also been nominated. HSH Nordbank chief executive officer (CEO) Stefan Ermisch said in a statement that the "successful switch from public-sector to exclusively private-...http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-11/29/c_137638058.htm

Couple break with pace 214, on Federal road in order to catch a holiday flight - The Crypto Coin Discovery

This is exactly what happened on Monday afternoon, an 89-year-old pensioner in Harrislee (Schleswig-Holstein). The police announced on Wednesday, handed the man a to him unknown woman more than 20,000 euros in a black leather bag. Thus, had ordered the scammers to the pensioner a Taxi that brought him to his institution in Flensburg city centre. The man took the money and was driven by the taxi driver, the police as a witness, back home, where he handed the sum to the wife. Also, you will be searched by the police. Accordingly, the victim described the fraud as follows: about 20 to 25 years altcirca 160 to 165 centimeters tall neat appearance The taxi driver, as well as possible witnesses to the handover of the money are asked to contact 0461 – 484 0 to the police. The information of the officials, have increased the calls to the wrong police or grandchildren in the space of Flensburg in the last two weeks solid. You have knowledge of more than 100 Calls of this kind. Übach-Palenberg: police to sexual offence witnesses. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Übach-Palenberg the police after an unknown youth was on Tuesday afternoon, compared to a nine-year-old girl sexually grip. Accordingly, the child was playing on a Playground, when a young man approached and led to a mound of dirt. There, the young people should have stripped the girl. The officials, according to two strollers, the speeches, the suspects approached in this Moment. This was run then walk. The passers-by took the girl home. Now the police are looking for both after helping a couple, as well as to the unknown youth who is described as follows: about 15 to 17 years of age, and of robust stature, short, blonde, and upstairs greasy hair, asked to be witnesses at the sides, shorter brown shoes, light brown denim jacket and blue Jeanswar with black-and-white Bicycle on the road to put under the phone number 02452 920 0. news of Wednesday, 20. February Munich: police stops driving school – driving instructor on drugs During a routine control, the police in Munich have pulled a driving instructor. The officers found the 40-Year-old initially glassy and red eyes, and assumed, therefore, that the man navigated his driving students under the influence of a drug through the streets of the Bavarian capital Navi. The locally made drug-test confirmed this suspicion. The police announced, has been canceled, then the hour’s drive. The rider was allowed to go home. The due blood test should confirm the r...https://www.ccdiscovery.com/couple-break-with-pace-214-on-federal-road-in-order-to-catch-a-holiday-flight