I have noticed that my memory has improved since I started gardening. I believe the brain cells have created more synapses as I have tried to memorize all the Latin names that I was not familiar with before. I also have to keep up with all the names of new hybrids of various flowering plants.

Gardening forced me to become better organized in filing names and catalog orders. I could imagine getting aggravated at myself if I could not find the name of the new flowers in the garden when I was ready to post them on projo's Your Garden Shots slideshow.

Having to check and recheck the spelling of many difficult names, such as the lily Rudy Triteleia, above, also kept me on my toes.

Gardening, I believe, not only gives physical benefit from all the stretching and bending (and also justifiable reasons to go and get a body massage); but also improves or at least preserves one's memories.

Oh don't be like that. This country was founded on bad behavior.

Burning the Gaspee, taking unsporting potshots at the Redcoats, throwing all that perfectly good tea into the harbor.

Declaring our independence without a Hall Pass from the king.

Speaking our minds.

So praising doing something a bit naughty, for a good reason, is really an excellent way to celebrate July 4th. Don't you think?

To that end, I really liked getting "On Guerrilla Gardening: A handbook for gardening without boundaries", by Richard Reynolds, (Bloomsbury) in the mail awhile back.

It's kind of hard to believe, but gardening upsets some people.

I'm not talking about planting something illegal or dangerous or anything bad like that.

Reynolds advocates maybe planting a garden someplace where you don't exactly have official permission, like on abandoned plots of land, making something beautiful or useful where there was only blight before. In some cases, these gardens can grow food for the hungry.

He praises people who do things like make "seed bombs" -- balls of earth and flower seeds that can be furtively thrown from bags or car windows to scatter beauty along the roadside.

The book lays out a history of rebellious gardeners, like Johnny Appleseed. And records big moments in People versus Land Owner history. Sometimes you win, sometimes you get plowed under.

On a more practical level, the book has a lot of advice for people for whom gardening isn't as simple as "step out back door, turn on hose". For someone whose garden may be on an empty lot, a roof, in a crack in the sidewalk, at a community garden or other off-site site, issues like where soil, soil and water are coming from, and how much room roots have to grow become important.

To be sure, some activities in this book can get you in trouble. Trespassing is illegal. You might think that plant is nice, but it may be invasive or cause a problem where you plant it. And it's a bad idea to throw anything out of a car window; it's dangerous and you'd probably get a ticket.

Don't do stupid stuff. Seriously.

But to think of gardening in a new way.

To question the status quo.

To think for yourself and love your community.

That's not just cool, that's downright patriotic.

Have a great July 4th.

You notice a lot more when you walk than when you drive.

When I drive I mostly notice all the people who slow down at every 3-foot break in the curbing on Benefit Street, wondering if they can fit the Sequoia in, or stopping the car in traffic to drop someone off and THEN have a conversation about what to have for dinner through the window.

Breathe. Relax. Be nice.

When I walk I notice:

* Trees are cool. Literally. The temperature drops noticeably between treeless areas downtown, even areas shaded by buildings, and the leafy East side. That’s like nearly free air conditioning.

* Plants like water. Believe it or not, a lot of people neglect to water, and plants die. Plants are particularly vulnerable early in the season. Sometimes the weather report promises rain, and doesn’t deliver, so check on them, Stick your fingers down into the soil if you need to.

* Overwatering is bad though. A mature tree is fine with about an inch of rain or watering a week. Even a vegetable garden in peak season requires only about 2 inches a week. A slightly dry plant will bounce back, but a waterlogged one will probably die. Don’t water the sidewalk, deck or other hardscaping, or create runoff.

* RISD does a lovely job with their landscaping, particularly down by the river. Thank you for making my walk home nicer. I hope the new guy keeps it up.

* There are a lot of amazing new colored plants and flowers these days, whether it’s restrained leaves in green and white or pale yellow, or frilled leaves and flowers in crazy colors. They’re fun. But I think it’s a mistake to make a steady diet of them and only them. I think they work better when you mix them in with a few rest strokes of something more sedate in the background –– a plain green leaf.

* I hate red bark mulch.

* OK. I hate pretty much all mulch.

* When you plant a garden, at great expense, you really should take the trouble to pull a few weeds. Weeds are nature’s success stories, they’re going to succeed at the expense of anything they can take advantage of, using up available water, soil nutrients, space and sunlight. It’s amazing sometimes how when you pull the weeds, other plants that have been languishing just take off.

* The Bajnotti Fountain in Kennedy Plaza is just beautiful with all its jets going.

* And the city and Clean and Safe Team downtown do a nice job of keeping things tidy. Thank you, too.

* My colleagues have been admiring the large colorful basket planters hanging from lamp posts downtown and want to know where they came from. If you know, please let me know so we can say thank you.

I believe I have more company nowadays, people trying to walk or bike at least part of their commute. If it’s at all a possibility for you, I recommend it. You never know what you’ll notice when you take the long way home.

And I am so glad I decided to go.

Out in the back of the fields at Schartner Farms, I had already picked a 10-pound basket, one that I'd brought from home, and set it between the rows so I could fill another, when I heard a woman say that the full basket made a pretty picture sitting there in the sun. I looked up and she showed me her basket – the type you buy at the farm, made of white cardboard. It had darkened some and was a bit worn by time and use and it had that heftier look of older things. Then she told me why it was so special. On the bottom, was a year-by-year record of all the times she'd been picking with her daughter, who was only five when they began picking together (she's a college student in Boston now). Some of the entries said "We didn't go" and many had descriptions of picking conditions, such as:

1998 - Strawberries rotting on vines due to rainy season

The beauty of it was that Elaine Goryl, of Smithfield, took that treasured basket to pick yesterday afternoon, even without her daughter by her side, just because it held so many memories and because it was the next best thing to having her there.

I've done something similar, I told her, where, every year, at our annual Mother's Day picnic at Blithewold, we take a picture of my twin daughters in front of the same tulip bed near the entrance to the grounds. From the first year when they were just two years old, fiddling with a Chapstick, to this year's photo, ear buds securely in place, I've documented their growth and personalities as they've evolved. Each year, the photo is more meaningful as the chain of tradition grows longer.

If you have a tradition you decided early on to record, let me know about it by commenting here. If I have a chance to scan some of the tulip photos, I'll add them later. Check back!

Once I’d seen it, it was clear I had to make a decision.

But What. To. Do.

What I did do was panic.

Another American, bested by garlic scapes.

Enticed. They’re green. They’re garlic. They’re twisty and bulbous and weird looking. And they’re GARLIC.

Repelled. I have no idea what to do with them. Absolutely no clue.

I totally blew it.

Walked away like the big vegetarian coward I am.

But this week I’m prepared. You know, if I see them again. Like, around.

A garlic scape, my personal Internet informs me, is the stalk sent out by the bulb of the hard-neck garlic early in the season.

Farmer types (including home gardeners) nip the scape off to discourage the bulb from putting all its energy into above-ground activities, and divert them into more covert ops.

They’re apparently mildly garlicky, without the bite. Don't know personally. Never bit one.

Yet.

But oh, I plan to.

So the big question: What to do with them?

A lot of people seem to make pesto with them. Whir the scapes (raw or blanched) with olive oil, Parmesan and perhaps walnuts, season with salt.

Others say use them as you would green onion –– in mashed potato, onion pancakes, hummus, or in sandwiches with hoisin sauce and cucumber.

Others seem to treat it as a vegetable like asparagus, slicing it up and using it in pastas or omletts, often pairing it with lemon –– lemon spaghetti, lemon butter etc.

So, scapes, if I see you this week, I’ve got the perfect comeback.

A week late. As always.

My next door neighbor offered me all of her moribund pansies. They were once grown in small containers, placed on her front steps and front porch. I said, “ No, but thank you anyhow”.

A week later I found them in the brown paper-recycling leaf bag on the side-walk, seemingly all dried up and ‘dead’. I did not have the heart to let go of them. I gave them plenty of water and immediately planted them in the ground in my back yard. During the hot dry spell, I made sure that they had extra water.

It is my pleasure to report that they have all recovered and are doing “very well”. I wish I had taken pictures to show what they looked like before the rescue mission.

The photo above was shot this morning.

Dan Meyers at the helm of Numbers -- Dan Nerney photo

Anticipation ran high throughout the New York Yacht Club's 154th Annual Regatta presented by Rolex, in Newport over the weekend.

"Competitors, designers, journalists and spectators alike were anxious to see how the newest, hottest IRC boats measured up against one another in seven IRC classes," said Barby MacGowan, spokeswoman for the event. "Five other classes (one each J/105 and Farr 40 one-designs, one each for 12-Metre Modern and Classic Traditional, and one for Classics) stirred up their own excitement. A total of 110 boats competed.

"In the end, it was Dan Meyers' Numbers that took IRC Class 1, where most of the attention focused. The boat sails out of Newport. In that class were such show stoppers as the 99-foot super maxi Speedboat, owned by Alex Jackson of Old Greenwich, Conn. and skippered by Mike Sanderson of New Zealand, and Il Mostro/Puma Ocean Racing, skippered by Ken Read of Newport, which both suffered around the buoys, due to their size and optimization for straight-line speed, which will be better tested by next week's Newport to Bermuda Race. Numbers instead contended primarily with Hap Fauth's Belle Mente out of Newport, which trailed Numbers by seven points in overall standings after Numbers won the last three of that class's four races."

In IRC Class 3, Blair Brown's Sforzando out of Newport won overall, with Bermuda's Star class Olympian Peter Bromby serving as tactician. "Yesterday's winds were patchy," he said, after his boat had won the day. "You were either in it or you weren't."

In IRC Class 4, which was comprised entirely of NYYC Swan 42s, new owner Phil Lotz of New Canaan, Conn. aboard Arethusa, made his initial power play yesterday as well, winning two races before posting a 1-5 yesterday to seal the deal.

Kevin Grainger of Rye, N.Y. won the J/105 class with his Gumption3 after six races in his series.

The Great Corinthian Trophy, awarded to the yacht club team with the best score in the two-day series went to Annapolis Yacht Club, with team members Rush, Flying Jenny VI and Tsunami.

Complte results are available by clicking here.

You could go to the beach. Fight beach traffic, walk across a giant parking lot with 100 pounds of gear, scald your feet on hot sand, have some kid shake their towel out on top of you while the people next to you play the Worst Music Ever and talk nonstop about golf.

Or you could get a private boat launch to a secluded spot, where you and a few like-minded folk will pursue a couple of hours of cooling aquatic activities, enjoy free lunch and snacks, before motoring back, with a souvenir of your day’s activities.

Yep. Save the Bay is still looking for Eelgrass Project volunteers for this week, Thursday through Sunday.

They need divers and nondivers for the harvest phase and the transplant phase. Divers dig up eelgrass from existing beds , or plant it in new areas by tacking it to the sandy bottom with bamboo skewers. Other volunteers sort the shoots and bundle them up, or kayak or walk between the divers (eelgrass only grows in shallow water, where the sun can reach it) to deliver supplies and keep things organized, supervised by Save the Bay staffers. Others may stay on the shore or boat. If you’re interested, call or e-mail them and talk it over.

STB supplies wetsuits in a range of sizes to keep everybody comfy. Bring sun and wind protection though -- you're out on the water. Divers must supply all their own gear, although STB may supply some tanks if requested in advance.

Don’t be frightened. Eelgrass contains no actual eels. But it does provide a vital environment for Bay creatures to live in. I wrote last summer about how tiny crabs are literally brawling with each other to move in as you are planting, and little fish swim in and start nibbling on the blades. It’s a very rewarding project.

If this week’s not good for you, check out other harvest/plant dates at savebay.org

Underwater gardening not your thing? They also occasionally need volunteers to plant coastal buffers and other on-shore plantings.

I could not help thinking about flowers for celebration again, as today happened to my No.2 son’s birthday. We celebrated his 13th birthday at the Biltmore Hotel in June 1982.

By then, we had made several trips to Hawaii and Thailand and had grown special fondness for Anthurium. We decided we would use only anthurium for this occasion.

I happen to believe in "less is more” when it comes to any floral arrangement. My beloved florist (the late Gale Potter) used all white anthurium for some tables, all pink and all red for others. We also alternated the height – half of them high above the table. The Biltmore Ballroom has very high ceiling and the concept of unevenness (high and low) placement of the center pieces made the whole place looked very special and different.

Our guests still remember the beautiful sight of assortment of anthuriums as they entered the ballroom 26 years ago. I could just close my eyes and relive that happy moment, accented by the exotic-looking flowers.

But tomorrow, it begins its yearly transmogrification into –– The Hope High School Farmer’s Market.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that this is my market. My nearly every-Saturday destination. I bring my mom (who thought it was too fancy for her, until she actually went and found bargains). And I usually run into a few people I work with.

There are some nice dogs, and occasionally an alpaca.

The market is open from 9:30 a.m. (exactly –– they ring a bell) to 12:30 p.m.

Because it’s a farmer’s market, what’s offered varies: The spinach you loved last week might have bolted this week. So give the chard a try. That’s part of the fun.

The selection gets more plentiful as the season rolls on, all the way through November.

But it’s not just fruit and veg. There’s coffee and baked goods, cheese, seafood, eggs, plants and more.

Green with envy that you don’t live nearby? Don’t be, little sprout.

There are many farmers markets all over the state, including these, and you may well grow as fond of yours as I have of mine.

Not even a week later, before I began this new gardening method, my landscaper dropped by to see how things were progressing with last fall's plantings and he asked me about my garden. I told him my plan and he agreed with the cashier, adding that the worms don't like it when you dig up the soil and that disturbed soil is an invitation to weeds. For 32 years, I've been breaking my back every summer needlessly?

Green beans (my dad may get some of these, too).

An heirloom tomato, but I can't remember the name...

Well, whether or not it was the right option to choose, that's what I've got this year. And the best part is that it is D-O-N-E! It isn't pretty, but it's looking pretty healthy. It took me the better part of one Saturday. As it grows, I'll post new photos. I put in peas, lettuce, tomatoes, green beans, basil, spinach, peppers, potimarron squash, butternut squash and pickling cukes (for my father).

Hopefully this is going to keep the weeds down so I can spend more time with the family – at the beach, eating tomato, mozzarella and basil sandwiches, of course! Anyone know where I can buy mozzarella plants?

Just threw in this photo because the colors of these flowers always impress me!

Among all the flowering plants in my garden, there have always been the oriental poppies – the classic reddish-orange and the salmon colors -- at both the front and the back of the house.

When we had a graduation party for my daughter and her friends in June 1993 ( in those days Brown’s commencement was a three-day event held the first weekend in June), just about everyone fell in love with the Poppies.

The Poppies grew bigger and taller each year. I added a few more over the years. I have tried the white and the maroon red, but had no luck with them.

I think all of us also fall in love with the images and paintings of Poppies by Georgia O’Keeffe and Monet .

Growing up in Bangkok, Thailand, I never saw poppies or a poppy field in all my years there. I also did not see them during my several return visits to the northern part of Thailand near Burma, now called Myanmar, or to the Golden Triangle area near the Mekong River. The Thai government, with assistance from many European countries, tried to eradicate the poppy growing and opium production.

I remember that when I was very young, someone had pointed out to me the doors or entrances of supposedly the opium dens along some canals and streets in certain sections of Bangkok. I was told that those were ‘bad’ places where men would go in to smoke some kind of pipes for hours and hours. Such places are no longer existing, but I heard that heroin and other street drugs are still being sold quite rampantly in the streets of Bangkok, despite the official effort to crack down.

Morphine and Heroin are derivatives of opium poppy. Morphine has been used as an opiate analgesic drug, to relieve all types of pain. Heroin is synthesized from morphine and is highly addictive. The word ‘Morphine’ was coined by the German pharmacist, Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertuner, after Morpheus, the Greek God of dreams.

It is also of worthy interest that Morphine has been found to be endogenously produced by humans and animals, by the cells in the heart, pancreas and brain.

In my research for this blog, using the information available on line; I have stumbled upon The Wonderful World Wizard Of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The original novel had Dorothy, the Scare crow, the Tin Man and the cowardly Lion walked through the field of poppies that put Dorothy and the Lion to sleep, while the Scarecrow and the Tin Man were unaffected, because they were not made of flesh and blood and they carried Dorothy to safety, beyond the poppy field. (So much one can find out from Wikipedia.)

Poppy seeds are also used as a condiment on bagels and bread. Poppy oil is used as a cooking oil.

Yet when I look at the beautiful Papaver orientale or Papaver somniferum; I only see it’s aesthetic beauty and seldom ever pay any attention to its other lethally harmful or medicinal properties.

I love to watch them dancing in the breeze.

There are also beautiful poems written about the poppies.

POPPIES

“The strange bright dancers are in the garden

The wind of summer is a soft music

Scarlet and orange, flaming and golden

The strange bright dancers move to music.”

Yes. I am exactly that boring.

Everyone always recommends you plant seeds in sterile potting soil, or advises you on ways to sterilize soil to kill anything that might kill young seedlings.

I’m not saying this is wrong at all.

It just made me wonder: People planted seeds for hundreds of years before they could drag home hundred pound bags of seed-start, or had access to ovens to heat trays of soil, or even had any clue what a bacterium or a fungus was, much less that it would harm seeds, or that heat would kill it.

They probably stood around in fields of slimy seedlings and scratched their heads a lot.

But that, in turn, made me remember a bold experiment in gardening that I visited a few years ago. An experimental vegetable garden employing the most up-to-date technology of its age, in Cornwall, UK.

And the thought made me happy. Happy enough to write about it days later.

If you’re thinking about the Eden Project — BZZZZZZZT! Sorry.

But you’re not far off.

Heligan, “The Willows” in Cornish, is down the road from the futuristic biodomes in the clay pits of Bodelva.

Heligan, on the other hand, in the village of Pentewan, St. Austell was the Tremayne family home for 400 years, inhabited by gardeners with some advanced ideas before the workers set down their tools in 1914 to fight in the Great War. Sixteen of the 22 gardeners died, and the estate went into decline. Cue the theme from Sleeping Beauty.

But in 1990 …. (This image from their site says it better than anything I could possibly write. If it’s working. If it’s not, you’re thinking I’m a complete mo-ron.)

“The Lost Gardens of Heligan” (the name of the book by Tim Smit, the main man behind both Heligan and The Eden Project) have been restored, and offer skeptics like me a view of how forward-thinking gardeners would have handled things before electricity, chemical fertilizers and search engines.

But their showstopper is their pineapple pit, currently the only working “pine” pit in Europe, but once common until fast sailing ships could speed you a fruit from the islands with less trouble than growing your own.

The pit is a wonder: Resembling a cold frame, it heated only by rotting manure. According to the book, chambers maintain varying temperatures to serve differing needs in the growth and ripening cycle of the plants. An underground pipe carries warm effluent away, warming an area of soil for other tender plants to grow in. Wish I knew the Cornish word for "cool".

The trouble, apparently, isn’t getting hot enough – it’s that the pit gets so hot it kills the plants or spoils the fruit. Sometimes the pits even burst into flame!

If that doesn’t wow you, The Jungle, home to tree ferns, gunnera and other exotic species that survive in Cornwall’s sub-tropical climate, looks like something a dinosaur might call home.

I visited both Heligan and The Eden Project a few years ago and much preferred Heligan. But travel, and gardens are very personal things, so your experience might be different. If you’re pressed for time, you could see them both the same day.

Or just travel by photo or book.

At any rate, remember the clever people who had high tech gardens before the word “tech” even existed.

As the wedding season is approaching, I look back at my only daughter’s two weddings with nostalgia. Leila met Chaka at Brown, back in 1989 -1990. When they decided to get married on the beach in Marina Del Rey, Calif. in 2003 they wanted a very small and informal wedding, with just her two brothers and very few friends in Los Angeles, without the bride’s and groom’s parents. ( We had a relatively more formal wedding in R.I. planned for the summer of 2004 ). I said, “Just don’t think of me as a parent. I’m going as your friend.”

I said, “You’ve got to have some flowers – at least, a bridal bouquet. ” I picked pansies from her yard, using just the purple (her favorite color) and yellow (Chaka’s) and simply tied them together. It looked fabulous! I also made a garland of white flowers, picked from her yard as well and that too looked “just right ” – with no expense.

Centerpiece: Yellow roses, purple Lisianthus, the closed buds are white Lisianthus; the tiny flowers on the stem are Sea Lavender and the green, shiny leaves are fatsia japonica - a fairly common house plant.

For the wedding in 2004, at the Alton Jones Campus, URI, which was a whole weekend event, the late renowned R.I. florist, Gale Potter, whom I had known for over 30 years, took care of the all the details. We worked together on the colors, the size of the centerpieces and flowers for each guest room. I have been to weddings where the centerpieces were just ‘outrageous.’ I have seen much too large arrangements, with too many colors and all kinds of flowers in one piece. Some took up a lot of space on the tables and guests could not see some people across from them. I have also witnessed people starting to sneeze and the centerpieces having to be removed.

The yellow and purple colors were carried out for the whole event. I thought it was a lovely touch for the overnight guests to have flowers in their rooms. We chose to do small centerpieces and decorated the reception area with a larger show piece, below.

Ligularia (the rocket) and Agapanthus plus Giant Allium.; the little yellow flowers are Solidago (goldenrod).

Yes, yes, yes. Flowers play a big part of celebrations, especially at weddings!