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Thomas Shahan likes to photograph bugs. Using macro lenses on digital SLR cameras, he gets up close and personal with all kinds of insects and shows us their beauty. Click HERE for Shahan’s web site and more photos. Click HERE for 20 up close photos of ladybugs.
My good friend, Jeff Lowenfels, help create and market a product called Macroscope, which if all you want to do is look at insects up close and not take pictures, that is the product to use.

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After three hours of just standing around and chatting with each other, the stranded garden writers were starting to get bored or was it stir crazy?
The tow truck, “Oliver” kept trying to pull the bus out of the ditch but only made it more stuck… after some more “good ol’ boys” drove up they decided to winch the cable around a big tree to get more leverage. After a good half an hour of trying different angles they were finally successful! The garden writers wildly cheered. We were free from the chain gang imprisonment in Nowhere, North Carolina! Actually it was Mt. Olive, N.C. but it seemed like Nowhere.
The bad news was the bus had a flat tire and we had to get another bus. The old bus could limp down the rural roads at 25 miles an hour with the tow truck following us from behind. The plan was for the garden writers to be delivered to a local Wal-Mart where the new bus would meet us. Unfortunately, that became an almost hour wait.
So sixty or so garden writers hung around the front of Wal-Mart. One of the back of the bus crowd went into Wal-Mart and bought some beer to pass our time away. Others bought food. It became known as the Wal-Mart garden writers’ picnic. Hopefully, it won’t become an annual event.
During our picnic we met this old guy who had a medal around his neck. He was the state champion in croquet. Since I only play croquet occasionally at parties in the summer I asked him some tips. He practices with narrow wickets so when he plays in the tournaments with wider wickets he has a better aim. He said he went through a complete course with only one turn. When I get done playing ice hockey, I might take up croquet instead of golf.
The regular Wal-Mart customers kept giving the garden writers hairy eyeball looks as they went in to get their low priced Chinese made goods. Fortunately, the garden writers made it out of Wal-Mart without anyone getting arrested (drinking in public is illegal) as we were starting to get really stir crazy after this ordeal.
A new bus arrived with the bus driver and his wife dressed in their Sunday finery since we yanked them out of their Sunday church service.
On we went to two out of the three remaining gardens. We skipped the third since it had a road like the one we got stuck in. Nobody wanted to see a garden with a road like the one we were just on.
All in all, in the 20 years I have been going to Garden Writers Association symposiums, this ranks right up near the top with other outrageous garden writers symposium episodes like at the San Francisco one where at Fetzer winery some of us blew off the workshops so we could sit and swim in their swimming pool drinking a lot of fine wine and in St. Louis where the Shriners were riding their Harley motorcycles inside of our hotel. There is never a dull moment when some garden writers get together, that is for sure.

The bus kept going deeper into the mud until the good ol' boys tried more cables around more trees. Leverage baby!

The trail of mud where the bus was stuck.

The garden writers partying in front of Wal-Mart. Nothing like partying in front of a North Carolina Wal-Mart!

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This was the last day of the Garden Writers Association’s garden tours with two different tours available—one to private ornamental landscape gardens and one to sustainable food gardens. I picked the sustainable food tour. Hmmm, bad selection.
The tour started out at A. J. Bullard’s rural farm of a diverse selection of fruit and nut trees—many of them rare but native to his area of North Carolina.
After a walk through of the property with A. J. we thanked him, climbed aboard the bus and headed down the very narrow, very wet and soggy dirt road.
At one point in the road the bus sort of collapsed the shoulder of the road, with our bus becoming stuck in a ditch in the middle of Nowhere, North Carolina…
Some of the action photos from from the site of the little mishap… the tow truck was named “Oliver” and wasn’t successful in getting the bus out…

Everybody filed out to the paved road with the hopes another bus or tow truck would show up.

As Oliver tries to pull the bus out, it only drives the bus deeper into the mud.

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Took a red eye flight and arrived in Raleigh, N.C. for the Garden Writers Association symposium but today had no garden tours. There was a trade show where the latest and greatest plant material and garden products where on display for us garden writer types to take home and write about. A lot of swag to lug on the plane home.

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I am traveling today to the annual Garden Writers Association symposium in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. It is jam packed with speakers, workshops, tours of both public and private gardens, a trade show of new gardening plants, seeds and products, dinners at botanic gardens and sponsored parties. It is hard work but somebody’s gotta do it. Actually I learn a lot and enjoy the beautiful gardens we visit. This will be my 20th Garden Writers Symposium, meeting up with around 500 other garden communicators from the U.S., and Canada.
Check this site for pictorial reports each day of the gardens we visit and tour. I have never been to N.C., so it should be interesting to see gardening in another part of the country with a different climate and plants than western Oregon. That is one of the benefits of the GWA symposium—it is in a different city, in a different part of the country each year.

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