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daily dish

May  10

If You Dig It Up, Drain It, Then Sod It, They Will Come
Rolling_sod_in_brookdale_park

We're seeing green again, finally, at Brookdale Park, where the $1 million drainage project appears to be entering its final stages. Industrial quantities of sod were being laid out and sprinkled, and even attracting an audience. At least it's not all plastic.

May 10, 2006 in Seen around town | Permalink | Comments (28)

daily dish

May   6

Droolworthy Decorator Designs

Img_0482  Img_0501_2

Divaroom_1  Babyrm

Here's your Baristanet peek at what's going on inside at the JLMN Designer Showhouse and Gardens. 
Top Left: Crewel De Vil Lounge, La Bossiere Associates. Right: Room With A Point of View, Polo M.A.
Bottom Left: A Diva's Study, Sepia Home. Right: Fleur de Lis Nursery, Prince & Company.

But don't forget the fabulous gardens:

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Img_0467  Rockgdn_1

Top: Left, Back patio, Right: Lush Life, Nancy Aufiero -Lush Landscapes Botton: Left: Classic Poolscape, Landscape Techniques, Inc. Right: Outdoor Matters, Great Notch Landscape and Gardens of Distinction.

May 6, 2006 in Seen around town | Permalink | Comments (5)

daily dish

May   5

Pretty Posies for Sale

Get your impatiens (New Guinea and traditional) petunia, geraniums and other premium annuals locally. Today and tomorrow (9 am to 3 pm), plants are being sold outside St. James Church (corner Bellevue and Valley) in Montclair. Proceeds go to keeping Upper Montclair clean.

May 5, 2006 in Seen around town | Permalink | Comments (1)

daily dish

May   3

A Grass Menagerie
Menagerie_in_glen_ridge_1

There was a fire drill at Forest Avenue School in Glen Ridge today, and unexpected bonus for the kids. Across the street from the school, at 281 Forest Ave., garden designer Barbara Miller is showing off her new collection of animal topiary, inspired by her visit to the Philadelphia Flower Show in early March.

The charming collection of a dozen pieces, which are actually filled with sphagnum moss, is already half sold. Many of the pieces are going to be for sale at Watchung Plaza Home, which has its grand opening on Saturday. Barbara's prices range from $75 for the hanging monkey to $500, for a lifesize llama (not shown.) The giraffe is $110 and the elephant is $175. There are also cats and a rooster. Recommended for a "touch of whimsy," appropriate in formal or informal gardens, and (best of all) no maintenance required if you don't plant anything into them. The display will be up for several days.

May 3, 2006 in Seen around town | Permalink | Comments (8)

daily dish

April  27

Don't You Hate When That Happens

Truckstuck_1

A tipster sends in the above...

Truck stuck under the parkway overpass, between Blmfd. Ave. and Franklin St. opposite the new Dunkin Donuts. Taken around 5PM.

April 27, 2006 in Seen around town | Permalink | Comments (9)

daily dish

April  19

Can You See Me Now?

Fios1Tipster Michael Garrett snapped this picture as Verizon trucks rolled through Upper Montclair last week installing fiber optic cable for the phone company’s new blazing fast FIOS service.

Verizon’s Richard J. Young confirmed that parts of Baristaville were indeed being wired with the thin transparent fiber, usually made of glass or plastic. Bundled services featuring high speed internet, phone service and a multitude of on demand movies, sports programming as well as standard and high definition programs would “soon be available.”

Comcast is also moving in on Verizon’s turf. We’re hoping that the Verizon crews are neater and cleaner than their cable cousins. When Comcast upgraded us last year to make us phone call worthy, here’s the mess they left behind:

Mess  Mess2

Let the price wars begin…

April 19, 2006 in Seen around town | Permalink | Comments (49)

daily dish

March  11

Thin Mint Fix

Girl scouts selling cookies this morning, at the corner of Bellevue Ave., and Valley Road in Montclair. Post any other sales here...

March 11, 2006 in Seen around town | Permalink | Comments (9)

daily dish

March  10

New Guys In Town

Siegelsculpture2

A renowned sculpture by George Segal, Street Crossing, was permanently installed yesterday at the Alexander Kasser Theater plaza of Montclair State University. The sculpture (photo above by Scot Surbeck), made in 1992, shows seven figures in the act of moving through a crossroad. While these figures  were being set up in their new home, a tipster who saw them commented "they were actually covered with blankets, leaving those on campus with quite a creepy visual (bodies in blankets with only their feet showing)". Each sculpture is connected by steel reinforcing bars, to deep concrete foundations. Up-lighting in the pavement will light the sculptures at night.


Statues3

Segal’s famous Street Crossing is a gift from the George and Helen Segal Foundation. For information about the grand opening ceremony of the George Segal Gallery at MSU, click here.(photo above by Jenny Mundell)

March 10, 2006 in Seen around town | Permalink | Comments (14)

daily dish

March   8

What's Wrong With This Picture?

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There are some killjoys hell bent on making a trip to the post office a completely joyless experience. Remember the happy ending with the birds who were removed, then returned to the Watchung Plaza post office following a petition asking for their reinstatement? Unfortunately, no good deed goes unpunished -- now everything that gave this Post its personality has been removed. Lucille Ball memorabilia - gone, four parakeets, gone (given away to customers), local signed celebrity pix - gone, and most of the lush potted plants, were banished at the insistence of post office marketing muckity mucks who want all the branches to have a standardized look where nothing detracts from those exciting product displays. Needless to say, folks behind the counter are not thrilled. In fact, a peace quilt made by Montclair children and a framed American flag -- both received following the 1995 shooting at the branch's former location on Fairfield Street -- also came into question, but employees fought for those to stay.

Workers tell us..."They want it to be a normal everyday post office, just a place where people come in to get stamps." Since when does normal mean void of any personality? And what's next? Will pleasantries and chit chat at the counter be outlawed, too?

March 8, 2006 in Seen around town | Permalink | Comments (32)

Dude, Where's My Tree?

The nerve of us -- wanting our appliances to stay on. The Montclair Times reports on what PSE&G really thinks of Montclair's very vocal power challenged...

Residents throughout New Jersey expect that, when they flick on their lights, televisions and computers, they will stay on. According to PSE&G Division Forester Robert Hagglund, many Montclair residents are more insistent than most people: they demand that their appliances stay on.

“There’s been an outcry by some residents,” he acknowledged. “They want the reliability to be better.”

And of course, if you've got outages, there has to be a scapegoat. This time, it's the trees. And they will pay. Seems PSE&G is in the midst of massive trimming sweep of Upper Montclair, the area where power outages have occurred most frequently.

“We will be aggressively, and I do mean aggressively, trimming the trees away from the high-voltage lines,” Hagglund said. “The bottom line is, we’ve got to come into your town and trim trees. The [state Board of Public Utilities] mandates this.”

PSE&G also cites sabotage by those pesky suicide squirrels (...why do you hate our power?)

Power has been cut due to squirrels fatally chomping through lines or getting zapped in transformers.

When the dust settles, inappropriate trees that dare to grow tall in Montclair will be eliminated. On Hagglund's hit list, too-tall oaks, sycamores and maples. Instead, look forward to more “appropriate” and harder-to-pronounce trees such as a hybridized myopi maple and Japanese zelkova.

March 8, 2006 in Seen around town | Permalink | Comments (32)

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