Some Landis Homes residents are sharing their passion for model railroading by operating a garden railroad in one of the courtyards on the retirement community’s campus near Lititz.

Luke Bomberger, a member of the Landis Homes courtyard railroad club, said he and other model railroad enthusiasts with G-scale equipment approached Landis Homes in fall 2005 about creating a garden railroad on the campus.

They found a home for the railroad in the courtyard of the assisted-living area. The layout, which first opened last year, is approximately 50 by 30 feet and features about 300 feet of track.

Members of the courtyard railroad club include Frank and Wanda Wilson, John Jake Oberholtzer, Vernon Schroeder, Ken Noll, Mel Burkholder, Roy Horst, Howard Witmer and Charles Longenecker.
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ELECTION posters have been hanging on every lamppost in the country for weeks, but now they are about to be turned into sewer pipes and flower pots.

The posters, with their smiling faces of candidates and their election promises, will be cleaned, shredded and then melted down into recyclable plastic.

Leinster Environmentals, the Dundalk-based company behind the initiative, said it would take posters free of charge from politicians around the country.

“Anywhere else they go, they will have to pay to get rid of them. There’s no reason for any one to dump them or to throw them away,” sales manager James Loughran said.
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A cold start to summer saw Waikato grape growers’ harvests slashed by up to 30 per cent, despite the national harvest climbing 11 per cent this year.

Judge Valley Vineyard owner Kevin Geraghty said the harvest at his 5ha operation, halfway between Cambridge and Te Awamutu, was down by about 30 per cent. This was due to a cold November and December, which had prevented grape flower buds from setting, leading to fewer grapes in the malbec, cabernet franc and merlot planted vineyard.

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” said Mr Geraghty. “All the malbec is reliant on warm, sunny weather, but the quality is right up there.”
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It’s not too late to fill your garden with color that will last through the sultry summer season. That’s the word from a green-thumb who knows this area well: Kim Fogarty, manager of Blooming Colors Nursery and Landscaping in Grapevine. Here are the top 10 plants she recommends planting now if your yard still needs some sprucing up.

“These are what I consider staple plants,” Kim says. “They can all handle the full, hot sun.”

1. BLACK-EYED SUSAN (Rudbeckia):

The daisylike flowers of this native plant are not only beautiful outside, they are great for cutting to bring indoors, too. Black-Eyed Susans get their name from their prominent dark centers. The flowers are most often a golden yellow, but some types have flowers in shades of orange and red. Butterflies like them all.
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GREEN-FINGERED residents had a fantastic weekend brightening up flower beds in Royston.

Guides and Brownies were up early to fill new flower planters at the Guide hut, near Greneway School in Garden Walk.

And the Royston in Bloom team then headed to the Coombs Community Centre in Burns Road where they helped members of Royston Time Bank replant the flower beds.

Angela Louch, chairman of Royston in Bloom, said: “Girl guiding in Royston has been working hard raising money and enlisting volunteers from Brownies, Rainbows and the Guides.
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