flower artical

This web site is about flowers, flower gardens, indoor gardening, decorating with flowers and plants and about misc. gardening topics! You will find a nice batch of informative gardening articles, plus you can submit your own garden and flowers related articles. Enjoy reading and come back often.
How to divide flower bulbs properly
The techniques for dividing each type of bulb vary, so it is important to know which type you are working with. Any good gardening guide will tell you which type of bulb you have, and that information is usually provided when you buy the bulbs as well. (added Feb 16, 2006)

Tulips and Daffodils
This article provides a small sampling of the many types of bulb plants available to the average gardener. (added Feb 16, 2006)

Introduction to Flower Bulbs
Bulbs are wonderful plants for any gardener, from the newest to the most experienced. Their combination of hardiness, color and beauty make them hard to beat for any flower enthusiast. (added Feb 04, 2006)

Understanding Bulb Flowers
Even though bulbs are not quite so highly prized today as they were in 17th century Holland, they are still loved for their scents, their colors and their shapes, and gardeners love the fact that most bulbs are hardy and easy to grow.(added Feb 04, 2006)

Raised Garden Beds © Flowers&Garden.com
You can save money by building your own raised garden bed. These can be used for flowers and even for vegetables. They are gaining in popularity because they are easy and inexpensive to build, making them practical parts of the landscape.(added Nov 03, 2005)

"Where did the tulips go?"
A common springtime complaint among gardeners is, "Where did the tulips go?" The lavish display you planted one year looked great, but it might be turning from glory to gloom as the seasons pass. (added Sep 29, 2005)

Watering House Plants
...is now ‘eau-so’ simple with BILLY™! Whether you are looking to revive or invest in some luscious new greenery to enhance the home this Spring, BILLY™ is every homeowners essential new purchase to kick start the years’ gardening season.(added Apr 19, 2005)

Attracting Hummingbirds
A hummingbird’s blazing speed, agility, amusing squeaky chatter, and tractor like sound of wings as they buzz by, makes them a truly unique and amazing creature. Best of all, there are simple things you can do in you yard to create an environment that is inviting to hummingbirds. (added Mar 08, 2005)

Low Maintenance Gardens
Low-maintenance gardens allow you to leave for a week or more, and your plants can fend for themselves. The most important aspect of a low maintenance garden, besides your choice of plants, is the floor for your garden. It's important to get this aspect of the garden right, as, initially, it will be the most time-consuming and costly part of planning your garden. (added Feb 23, 2005)

Landscaping Ideas 1 ~ Flower Beds
For with planning, it is possible to maintain flowers in your garden during the entire length of the growing season. Borders and beds are planted with flowering annuals and perennials which bloom at different periods during the year. (added Feb 13, 2005)

sports

That's what I do. The world of the World Cup is the one I want to live in. I cannot resist its United Nations–like pageantry and high-mindedness, the apolitical display of national characteristics, the revelation of deep human flaws and unexpected greatnesses, the fact that entire nations walk off the job or wake up at 3 a.m. to watch men kick a ball. There are countries that have truly multiracial squads—France, England, and the United States—while other teams are entirely blond or Asian or Latin American. A Slovakian tire salesman, an Italian cop, or a German concert pianist—having passed the official fitness tests—will moonlight as referee. There are irritating fans: "U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" (Blessedly few.) There are children who hold hands with each player as he walks onto the field. National anthems play. Men paint themselves their national colors and cry openly at defeat. An announcer shouts "GOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL! GOL, GOL, GOL!" on the Spanish-language channel you're watching. (It's often the only way you can see the game live.) There are two back-to-back 45-minute segments without commercials. To quote the book every traveling athlete finds in his hotel room: "Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven." Or, as my copy of "Soccer and Its Rules" says: "Are you ready? Ready to cheer the players to victory, marvel at their fitness, speed, and skills, urging them to win every tackle for the ball, ready to explode at a powerful shot? Ready for the excitement of flying wingers, overlapping backs, curling corners, slick one-two passing and goals scored with panache? Ready for another moment in a fantasy world?"

Mark Andrew Spitz

Mark Andrew Spitz (born 10 February 1950) is a retired American swimmer. He won seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, an achievement surpassed only by Michael Phelps who won eight golds at the 2008 Olympics. Between 1968 and 1972, Spitz won nine Olympic golds plus a silver and a bronze, five Pan American golds, 31 US Amateur Athletic Union titles and eight US National Collegiate Athletic Association titles. During those years, he set 33 world records. He was named World Swimmer of the Year in 1969, 1971 and 1972.

Spitz was born in Modesto, California, the first of three children of Arnold and Lenore Smith Spitz, an American father and Puerto Rican mother, who were Jewish. When he was two years old, Spitz’s family moved to Hawaii where he swam at Waikiki Beach every day. “You should have seen that little boy dash into the ocean. He’d run like he was trying to commit suicide.” Lenore Spitz told a reporter for TIME (April 12, 1968). At age six his family returned to Sacramento, California, and he began to compete at his local swim club. At age nine, he was training at Arden Hills Swim Club in Sacramento with Sherm Chavoor, the swimming coach who mentored him and six other Olympic medal winners.

Before he was 10, Spitz held 17 national age-group records, and one world record. At 14, his family moved to Santa Clara so Spitz could train with George F. Haines of the Santa Clara Swim Club. From 1964 to 1968 Mark trained with Haines at SCSC and Santa Clara High School. During his four years there, Mark held national high school records in every stroke and in every distance[citation needed]. It was a remarkable and unprecedented achievement. In 1966, at 16, he won the 100 meter butterfly at the National AAU Championships, the first of his 24 AAU titles. The following year, 1967 Mark set his first world record at a small California meet, in the 400 meter freestyle, with a time of 4:10.60, and emerged on the world swimming stage.

Family life

When Spitz returned from the Olympics, he began dating the daughter of one of his father’s business acquaintances after seeing her picture. Suzy was a tougher sell. “She was disinterested,” Spitz says. Less than a year after Munich, Spitz and Suzy Weiner, a UCLA theater student and part-time model, were married on May 6, 1973. They were married in a traditional Jewish service at the Beverly Hills Hotel. They have two sons, Matthew (born October 1981) and Justin (born September 1991).

Schooling

From 1964 to 1968 Mark attended the Santa Clara High School. After graduating he went on to Indiana University.

At Indiana University from 1968-72, he was a pre-dental student and member of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. Time Magazine asked him if he wanted to return to dental school after the Olympics. “I always wanted to be a dentist from the time I was in high school, and I was accepted to dental school in the spring of 1972. I was planning to go, but after the Olympics there were other opportunities. I did some television and speaking engagements, and things just went from there.”

Mark Spitz is frequently erroneously referred to as a dentist. According to the Indiana University School of Dentistry, Mark Spitz was planning on attending in the fall of 1972, but instead he moved to California. In 2006, Spitz sued Procter & Gamble as they failed to receive permission to include him in a promotional ‘History of Dentistry’ poster for Crest. He was quoted in the Chicago Tribune in June, 2004 saying, “I’m probably the most famous dentist who never became a dentist in the world.”

women's education

Women's Education is very essential in this world. People are giving importance for women's education nowadays. More steps should be taken to improve education among women not only those who are in urban but also in rural areas.

World Education has a long history of successfully working with local partners to design, execute, manage and evaluate participatory, community-based initiatives to advance the conditions of girls and women. World Education's programs help girls enroll and stay in school and help women gain access to or create new educational, financial, and social resources in their communities. World Education programs help girls and women improve their own lives, the lives of their families and the conditions in their communities. For parents - and especially mothers - this means creating conditions that ensure their daughters have equal access to basic education, are able to make informed decisions about their futures, and are able to protect themselves from trafficking, sexual exploitation, HIV and AIDS, for example.

By improving educational opportunities for girls and women, World Education helps women develop skills that allow them to make decisions and influence community change in key areas. In turn, these programs have a positive impact on some of the most profound issues of our time: population growth, HIV and AIDS, peace and security, and the widening gap between the rich and poor.

Education in India is only one among various other elements that have captured the attention of the world. While the United Nations is worried about the presence of a large number of illiterates, various other countries are amazed by the quality of some of the human resources that the Indian education system has produced.

The growth of the Indian economy in the recent past and the compulsion to sustain it is also forcing the Indian government to accelerate the process of developing all the branches of the Indian education system. Therefore, it would be very interesting to understand and analyze the various structures of education in India, its present condition and future developments.

The leaders of our freedom movement realized the importance of girls' education and had put it as a prime agenda for national development. However, when India attained independence some 60 years ago, it was a formidable challenge that the new government had to face Social and cultural barriers to education of women and lack of access to organized schooling, had to be addressed immediately.

Education has been regarded as the most significant instrument for changing women's subjugated position in the society. It not only develops the personality and rationality of individuals, but qualifies them to fulfill certain economic, political and cultural functions and thereby improves their socio-economic status.

In India, the increase in the educational facilities and opportunities for women and the removal of traditional bars on entry of women to particular branches and levels of education came to be supported by all champions of women's emancipation from the 19th Century onwards. However, the Indian reformers of the 19th Century wanted to educate women to perform their role as good wives and mothers and not to make them as direct active participants in the process of national development of the country. The colonial authorities generally supported this limited view-point of women's education. The expansion of education and health services in the 20th Century, however, precipitated a need for women teachers and doctors which resulted in the incorporation of these two vocations in the programs of women's education.

In spite of the constitutional provision of equality and the recommendations of the committees and commissions about the provision for the same type of education for women as for men, the traditional limited view point of women's education, with a separate role of women in the society. has had a great influence on the planning for women's education.

Thus women's education should be taken as a serious issue and take steps to develop it among every woman both in urban and rural.

Being a good housewife, I am very much interested in social activities especially to improve the status of the women in urban as well as rural area.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shahira_Y

The Obama Delusion
By Robert Samuelson

WASHINGTON -- It's hard not to be dazzled by Barack Obama. At the 2004 Democratic convention, he visited with Newsweek reporters and editors, including me. I came away deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship. Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner, precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken.

As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I'm dealing with known quantities. They've been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.

The subtext of Obama's campaign is that his own life narrative -- to become the first African-American president, a huge milestone in the nation's journey from slavery -- can serve as a metaphor for other political stalemates. Great impasses can be broken with sufficient good will, intelligence and energy. "It's not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white," he says. Along with millions of others, I find this a powerful appeal.

But on inspection, the metaphor is a mirage. Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation's ills. It requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.

By Obama's own moral standards, Obama fails. Americans "are tired of hearing promises made and 10-point plans proposed in the heat of a campaign only to have nothing change," he recently said. Shortly thereafter, he outlined an economic plan of at least 12 points that, among other things, would:

-- Provide a $1,000 tax cut for most two-earner families ($500 for singles).

-- Create a $4,000 refundable tuition tax credit for every year of college.

-- Expand the child care tax credit for people earning less than $50,000 and "double spending on quality after-school programs."

-- Enact an "energy plan" that would invest $150 billion in 10 years to create a "green energy sector."

Whatever one thinks of these ideas, they're standard goodie-bag politics: something for everyone. They're so similar to many Clinton proposals that her campaign put out a news release accusing him of plagiarizing. With existing budget deficits and the costs of Obama's "universal health plan," the odds of enacting his full package are slim.

A favorite Obama line is that he will tell "the American people not just what they want to hear, but what we need to know." Well, he hasn't so far.

Consider the retiring baby boomers. A truth-telling Obama might say: "Spending for retirees -- mainly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- is already nearly half the federal budget. Unless we curb these rising costs, we will crush our children with higher taxes. Reflecting longer life expectancies, we should gradually raise the eligibility ages for these programs and trim benefits for wealthier retirees. Both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for inaction. Waiting longer will only worsen the problem."

Instead, Obama pledges not to raise the retirement age and to "protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries." This isn't "change"; it's sanctification of the status quo. He would also exempt all retirees making less than $50,000 annually from income tax. By his math, that would provide average tax relief of $1,400 to 7 million retirees -- shifting more of the tax burden onto younger workers. Obama's main proposal for Social Security is to raise the payroll tax beyond the present $102,000 ceiling.

Political candidates routinely indulge in exaggeration, pandering, inconsistency and self-serving obscurity. Clinton and McCain do. The reason for holding Obama to a higher standard is that it's his standard and also his campaign's central theme. He has run on the vague promise of "change," but on issue after issue -- immigration, the economy, global warming -- he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates. These issues remain contentious because they involve real conflicts or differences of opinion.

The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the press corps -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- has treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.

Headlines

A monster blaze raging above Los Angeles grew in size today as weary firefighters voiced hope that a break in searing temperatures would allow them to make inroads against the inferno.

The runaway wildfire, which has claimed the lives of two firefighters, gutted 53 homes and is threatening 12,000 more properties, has now churned through more than 49,275 hectares in just six days.

An estimated 10,000 people have been evacuated from their homes and the flames are threatening a critical telecommunications facility as well as a historic hilltop observatory.


A man watches the fire in La Crescenta, California. Photo: AFP
But a cooler weather front which brought increased humidity raised hopes that firefighters could make progress, incident commander Mike Dietrich said.

"The conditions today will be much more favourable for firefighting and we'll take advantage of the weather to try and increase our containment very aggressively, take advantage while it's down," Dietrich said.

More than 3655 firefighters are battling the fire in the Angeles National Forest, which sent Monday a huge mushroom cloud of smoke billowing across the city and east toward Las Vegas.

The inferno threatened communications antennas for numerous television and radio stations, mobile phone providers and law enforcement agencies on Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Firefighters were hacking away at and brush in order to create firewalls and set lines of retardant aimed at protecting the Mount Wilson Observatory.

A squadron of aircraft, including eight air tankers and 13 helicopters, have been deployed to bombard the blaze.

On Monday authorities pushed back an estimate for when the fire would be contained, saying the blaze was now unlikely to be brought under control before September 15.

In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs offered condolences from President Barack Obama to the families of the two firefighters who died when their truck plunged down a mountainside as they battled the flames on Sunday.

"In the last many hours we have seen two firefighters lose their lives, the President and First Lady obviously send their condolences to the two families," Gibbs said, adding that Washington was monitoring the crisis.

"It is a situation which we continue to monitor here and ensure that whatever we can do from the federal end to help state and local governments respond, we are doing," Gibbs said.

The Los Angeles fire was only one of several destructive blazes across California.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger toured the scene of a fire in Placer County, northeast of Sacramento that had charred 110 hectares of forest and gutted some 50 homes.

Schwarzenegger urged residents who received an evacuation order to flee immediately. "I think the key thing is when you hear from law enforcement, anything about evacuation, follow their orders," he said.

There were conflicting reports on Monday about the fate of five people who ignored evacuation orders in Los Angeles and were criticised by authorities after requesting rescue from firefighters.

However one of the five reportedly trapped denied requesting help and said the group was not in danger. Their fate was unclear early Tuesday.

California is frequently hit by wildfires due to its dry climate, winds and recent housing booms that have seen home construction spread rapidly into rural and densely forested areas.

In 2007, the state suffered some of the worst devastation from wildfires in its history that left eight people dead, gutted 2,000 homes, displaced 640,000 people and caused a billion dollars of damage.