Today's Features

Maggie Stephens will start sixth grade in the fall, and she is already considering a career as a crime scene investigator.

Like thousands of other students in Brunswick County, she is preparing for Aug. 25, the first day at her new school—Shallotte Middle.

Maggie says math is her best subject, and after spending the summer in a school-age kids program at Tiny Tots Child Center near Shallotte, she’s ready for the challenges of middle school.

Last week’s article was about some of the issues people have brought up about the use of mulches in the landscape.

I promised this week we would look at the benefits of mulching, but before we proceed, I want to let you read what our specialist from N.C. State provided to ease some of the concerns about the use of mulch and the presence of termites. Excerpt from Mike Waldvogel:

The bottom line

South Carolina is the ‘Palmetto’ state in honor of the cabbage palm or sabal palmetto. This trunk-forming palm is native to coastal regions as far north as Bald Head Island, but it does pretty well all the way up to Onslow and Carteret counties in the ‘Tarheel’ state.

The techniques necessary to successfully transplant a sabal palmetto are similar in some ways to what we try to do with typical trees and shrubs, but vastly different in others.

"Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French; sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek; soy sauce makes it Chinese; but garlic makes it good," said Alice May Brock (of Alice's Restaurant fame).

Garlic has been alleged to perform everything from curing countless illnesses to warding off evil spirits and vampires. The Egyptians fed garlic to the slaves who built the pyramids believing it increased their physical strength.