Daily Loaf

Welcome to On the Radar, where we preview up-and-coming arts events to mark your calendar for. We don’t need special incentives for a scenic stroll through the hills of St. Pete’s Historic Roser Park, but this weekend there’s even more reason to check out the bungalows, brick-lined streets and moss-draped, overgrown oaks that shade the roads: the Historic Roser Park Art Festival brings together more than 70 artists from all over the country who shut down the streets with their displays of paintings, pottery, jewelry, sculpture, photography and craftwork. Read the rest of this entry »

Woken up this morning at 7:30 again by my neighbor’s “yard guys” with their gas-powered leaf blowers, mowers and edgers (a.k.a.: power tools for the yard). I cant help but wonder why they have to come out, seemingly once a week, to groom his bright green lawn. How is this sustainable? Not only are they soaking their grass with drinking water and chemical fertilizers, but also using gas powered tools to keep it in check, every week!

Michael Manlowe, owner of Twigs & Leaves Florida Native Nursery & Garden Center has a solution: “dig it up, lose your lawn and plant native, it makes sense.”  Florida native plants require a fraction of the water and no mowing or fertilizers.

Native flowers and berries sustain wild life like butterflies (the nursery is swarming with butterflies), birds, bees – a whole native ecosystem will thrive here with little help from us humans. Left to its own, a Florida native landscape reseeds, provides habitats and becomes a beautiful, self-sustaining ecosystem. Native yards allow for free time and much less yard work, compared to a typical labor-intensive lawn. Read the rest of this entry »