Tag: baby boomers

Living centerpieces feature coastal plants

~ Karen J Rieley, M.A. ~ 2 Comments
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Philip takes advantage of a backyard filled with native landscaping and large pots filled with native plants to create his living centerpieces. I snapped a photo of some of the more interesting plants.

My second article for First Coast Magazine is in the Front Door section of its August issue! Read about “Living Centerpieces.”

I may try making my own for our next dinner party. Philip and Chris were fun to interview, and their work is creative and exciting. I enjoyed watching Philip spontaneously gather native plants from the backyard and experiment with shapes, colors, textures and sizes. He used jars and vases he had around the house and grouped them together with plants in them and around them. Chris is about to graduate from the University of North Florida, my most recent alma mater, with a degree in finance. He plans to continue working with Philip in Rockstar Gardens.

You can read my original version of the story here.

Create a succulent centerpiece for your dining room table. Sounds more interesting and natural than the usual vase of cut greenhouse flowers, but where to begin? Philip Standifer, owner of Rockstar Gardens, makes the whole experience a freeing process, and you feel better about your connection with the plant world, to boot.

There are only a couple of rules to remember. Placement, space and scale are important. Use natural, native and arid plants that don’t need or want water because they’ll last longer.

Beyond that, anything goes. Throw a handful or two of crushed, recycled glass pieces into some interesting glassware or vases, start placing a variety of native plants in the bottom paying attention to varying heights and complementary colors (Standifer prefers a palette of greens, gold, purples and reds), add some interesting plants – shoestring acacia with long, willowy leaves, bamboo cuffs and palm boots – around the glassware and voila! You have created a conversation-starting centerpiece.

Where do you find the materials? You may find them at some local garden shops, and Rockstar Gardens can recommend other shops. You can go roaming and try to find the native plants you want, what Standifer calls “wild harvesting” or “foraging.” Just make sure you aren’t doing so on protected land or private land without permission.

Preferably, you have thought ahead about your love of entertaining by incorporating native landscaping into your yard – good for the environment and always available, free of charge, once you’ve paid the initial cost of planting.

Supplies

Setting the stage:

  • Crushed, recycled glass pieces
  • Various sizes of glassware, pitchers and vases
  • A small tool (knife or tweezer, perhaps) to manipulate the plants in the glassware

The props:

  • Reindeer moss – not actually a moss, but instead a light-colored, fruticose lichen
  • Chartreuse moss – a type of reindeer moss with a beautiful golden green color
  • Echeveria – rosettes ranging in size with colors from white to orange to pink to red
  • Retro succulent – rosettes of pale green foliage stippled in creamy white, with coral-fringed leaf edges.
  • Purple coneflower – showy, easily grown garden plant
  • Shoestring acacia – evergreen with weepy branches
  • Agave
  • Lavender
  • Palm boots and bamboo cuffs – remnant wooden bases
  • Bamboo cuffs
  • Spanish moss
  • Pelican feather – Standifer promises that no bird was hurt in the design of this centerpiece!

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About Philip L. Standifer:

Philip L. Standifer exudes free spirit, creativity and passion for all things in nature. He is a freelance horticulturist and garden designer, combining “aesthetic manipulation,” as he calls it, with his knowledge of plant behavior, the result of a bachelor’s degree in ornamental landscape horticulture from Auburn University, Alabama. Rockstar Gardens is his growing business.

Standifer moved to Fernandina Beach 11 summers ago after working in landscape and garden shops in Atlanta and then Savannah. A network of friends helps him reach his horticulture goals. Chris Igou, a University of North Florida finance major, handles Rockstar Gardens’ finances and is a co-designer. Carolyn Carr, who was a marketer and is now a consultant for Coca-Cola helps Standifer with the marketing of his business. And Gogo Ferguson, with her unique nature jewelry inspired by Cumberland Island flora and fauna that she transforms into wearable art, is his muse.

“Cumberland Island is a true virgin study – no pollution, largely unspoiled and some of it private property in which I can forage,” Standifer said.

Standifer plans to open a shop that will include native plants and a clothing line, offer tours and launch a lecture series. For now, you can view some of his designs and ask questions by visiting http://www.rockstargardens.com.

 

Not for Sissies

~ Karen J Rieley, M.A. ~ Leave a comment

You’ve heard the saying, “Getting old is not for sissies.” Well, it is a cute saying, but it really doesn’t describe the maturation process very well. Truth is, as a baby boomer, you can’t afford to get old – literally or figuratively.

Maybe you could in the world our parents lived in, but today, if you allow yourself or you allow others to think of you as old, you’re forgotten and irrelevant. And, if you’re irrelevant, you are at risk. You’re more likely to live longer, but with much less, which means that your quality of life will suffer.

Frankly, our parents didn’t prepare us for this reality … at least mine didn’t. First of all, they died early – my mother just before her 51st birthday and my father at 63 – so I never had a chance to see what life would be like for them at my age and beyond. Secondly, they and others like them seemed to have embraced the concept that they would just work until they could receive full social security benefits and then slide into peaceful retirement. They didn’t feel the need to stay current by learning about computers and technology such as smartphones, GPS, Googling and the Internet. They believed they could continue living their lives the way they always had and let the rest of the world move on. And, mostly, they were right in their assumptions, because at retirement age not much more was expected of them than to take care of their health so that they could stay in their homes as long as possible. They weren’t even expected to manage their finances; they could turn to their children to help them with that.

We baby boomers seem to have higher expectations for ourselves, as well as others of us. I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but I don’t want to give up, sit in a rocker on the front porch, and let younger people take care of me. I’m not ready to concede that younger people are smarter, quicker, and more effective than I am at doing those things I’ve done for at least four decades.

I’ll admit that the seemingly daily barrage of new software, new media, and new ways of connecting with people is daunting, but I haven’t given in yet. I’m trying to add new ways of communicating on a regular basis and, trust me, the computer doesn’t blow up when I make a mistake. One of the best things I’ve been able to do is lead a PR Writing Lab class at the University of North Florida this fall semester. The professor for the online part of the course, who is a full-time professor at UNF, has been very supportive of my efforts. She reminds me regularly that, in truth, the students in my class understand the social media less or maybe only slightly better than I do and that I’m the PR expert who can teach them about the real world. Trying to navigate the new ways to communicate to target audiences with the students has encouraged me to keep learning and exploring for my own purposes, like this blog.

I have to acknowledge that my daughter often shakes her head over what I don’t understand about technology; however, she is always patient to explain the 21st century to me. Mostly, I feel pretty comfortable that I am still in the game. I do wonder how employers view me. I suspect they think that I am too close to retirement and too “out of it” to be useful to them for long.

What they forget is that when they hire someone young, they may get the newest, freshest talent, but they also get someone who doesn’t know workplace politics and how to navigate them to be successful, someone who wants to run things and doesn’t understand the concept of “paying their dues,” and someone who will leave them in five years or less, just after the company has had to expend professional development funds to get the inexperienced worker up to speed.

That’s the long and the short of it, then. The struggle to be relevant occurs at the beginning and the end of careers, it seems. Enjoy being in the middle of your career and extend it as long as you can or as long as you want to be working. Start making plans now for what you want to do after you leave “regular” work, unless that rocking chair really was your goal.