Garden Accents

Garden accents can be a great way to have fun in your garden and personalize your landscape. Here are some tips to help you enjoy your outdoor space while tapping into your creative side.

Accents can be any type of artistic touch. Some people use gazing balls. Others distribute statues, gnomes, wind chimes, and birdfeeders throughout their yards and gardens. A garden accent can be virtually anything — just be sure it can hold up in stormy weather.

Night lights are another way to showcase your landscape. They can show off the unique branching structure of a Live Oak or highlight a delicate Japanese Maple. The shadows they generate on a hardscape at night create an inviting atmosphere for sitting outside and enjoying the stars.

The City of Aiken, South Carolina, recently refurbished an iconic fountain in the middle of downtown. The fountain is dedicated to Thomas Redman Morgan, who was mayor of Aiken from 1899-1900. It depicts a boy and girl standing in the rain holding an umbrella. The fountain has been very popular — it appears in numerous photographs and postcards that showcase Aiken.

Brookgreen Gardens, on the coast in Murrells Inlet, is well known for its lavish display of statues and fountains among the wide assortment of flowers, plants, and trees within the botanical garden.

Gardens are a great way to express yourself. Accents that complement the design, and that are attractive year-round, will inspire you to keep nurturing and adding to your landscape.

The Morgan Circle Fountain. Photo courtesy of the City of Aiken.

Holidays and the Gathering Spirit

Celebrations have social and emotional motivators Grandma Anderson made delicious meatballs with a secret ingredient called Rusk that is no longer found in stores. She taught my brothers and me to play Rook, which may explain why I still get the creeps when black birds soar overhead. Grandma Harper made prize-winning potato pancakes and stuffed cabbage. She taught us how to play pinochle and we would dance around the table if someone got what she called “a thousand aces.” My mamma was the most creative in the kitchen. She ventured away from traditional meat and potatoes and delighted us with recipes from our South American lifestyle. Gold Coast Stew served

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My sister Ursula lived in Berlin. By 1989 she was chief oboist in the Theater des Westens, taught a number of oboe students, substituted at the Berlin Opera, and owned a woodwind repair shop. And she was in Berlin during the time when the Iron Curtain separating East from West began to crumble. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a foregone conclusion once Hungary opened its borders to Austria, which permitted more than 13,000 East Germans to board trains and flee to the West. On Thursday evening, November 9, 1989, the Wall “fell” when the border between East and West Berlin opened. In her words, continued: Nov 12 Sunday

Traditions!

“But it’s a tradition … because of our traditions, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do.” Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof Traditions are funny things. They occur one moment at a time over a lifetime, and often we don’t even realize they are happening. I remember our granddaughter’s face crumbling into tears one Thanksgiving Day when I mentioned that I had prepared a different sweet potato casserole than our usual. The 4-year-old sobbed, “But Mimi! We always have the one with marshmallows on top!” Guess whose Mimi beat a path to the kitchen to make a real sweet potato casserole! Traditions are nothing to

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The first time I saw my boyfriend wearing loud plaid pants with a white belt and a clashing shirt, my thoughts were something akin to, “What a dork.” He is now my husband and his golf attire has evolved to become more sedate. We have been married 40 years. I decided 35 years ago that I would not become a “golf widow” who wonders where her husband is after five (or more) hours. My mother and sisters-in-law knew how to play, so I decided I had better learn or else be left babysitting all of the children on weekends. At the time, we lived across the street from a golf