Happy Holidays from the Garden Time crew! We hope you all have a memorable holiday and a great new year!
We are trying to get everything done for the upcoming holiday and it will be pulling us away from the computer for the next couple of weeks. We hope that you have finished your holiday shopping. If not, consider a visit to a local garden retailer. We have been stopping by various clients and it is amazing to see what is available at the garden centers. We saw some great discounts too! Everywhere we looked there were lots of last minute gifts.
Before you head out to do your Christmas shopping, check out this week’s popular stories!
This week we featured...
Standard Bed Bug Protection
Bed bugs are an ever increasing problem for a lot of people. As we travel more, and people are more mobile, the chance of running into bed bugs becomes more of a problem. We stopped by Standard TV and Appliance (503-619-0500) to talk to Edie about this creepy problem. Standard is a leader in selling quality bedding and they are very knowledgeable in bedding problems. Edie talked about how bed bugs can create a problem if they are not kept in check. She also talked about bed mites. Mites along with discarded skin cells can double the weight of your mattress in just 5 years if you don’t stop them from infiltrating your mattress.
She recommends a mattress cover that will protect your bed from all the critters and even stains. This will ensure that your mattress warranty will stay in effect for many years to come. If you are interested in more information on mattresses and covers stop by any of the Standard TV and Appliance locations.
Block Restaurant
One of the tastiest places we have been in the past couple of years is the new Block’s Restaurant (503-234-5689) in SE Portland. We were recently invited to try some of their signature dishes during media tasting. They were fantastic! We then had a chance to chat with the owner/chef Shana Block-Lane and talk to her about her restaurant and how it got started. Would you believe that she started as an actress? She was a regular on ‘Who’s the Boss’ as a child actor and then did a few other roles in movies. She soon realized that her passion was not in acting but in ‘feeding’! She had stints as a prep chef and a pastry chef and then decided she wanted to move in a different direction. While she was acting her grandmother was sending her recipes and instructions on making them. These same recipes have become the basis for her new restaurant. Block’s has a wonderful breakfast and lunch menu, and you can even take home some wonderful dinner entrees if you choose. If you are interested in learning more about their recipes and the local ingredients that they use, feel free to check them out.
Fall and Winter Succulents
Most plants love the Northwest and that includes some of the desert succulents. You may think they like the drier and warmer conditions of the desert but Burl Mostel of Rare Plant Research showed us a bunch of plants that can handle the cold and wet of our area. Some of the plants that he liked were agaves, aeoniums and echeverias. The types and varieties that he included were some Agaves (parryii, variegata, filifera, and geminiflora), a couple aeoniums (Salad Bowl and Swartkopt) and an echeveria hybrid. Some of these take a little protection and most like quick drainage, which means they want the water to drain fairly quickly. If you are interested in trying some of these plants you can check at your garden center or you can drop Burl an e-mail to get one or two.
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