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Gardening
Social Climbers: Flowering
vines add summer luster.
Tradmarks
Master Class: The
Maybach limousine makes a splash in New York.
Morsels
True Grits: Mini-reviews of area dining
spots.
Social
Climbers
Flowering
vines add summer luster.
RACHEL FOSTER
I never paid much attention to annual vines
until 1996, when I went to a workshop entitled "Vertical Gardening:
No Place Left to Go but Up." The speaker was offering a few annual
vines for sale. I tried them, I liked them, and I've been enjoying
them ever since. Annual vines (and tender perennials that develop
fast enough to treat as annuals) are inexpensive to grow and fun to
play with. Plant them in the ground or in containers and try something
different every year.
You can support them on fences, trellises or little
wicker pyramids, but vines love the company of other plants. My favorite
way to grow them is to let them scramble up a shrub or large perennial.
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| MINA
LOBATA, A TENDER PERENNIAL WITH LOVELY FLOWERHEADS. |
Mina lobata is a tender perennial related to
morning glory, with dark stems and attractively shaped leaves and
spikes of small, long-lasting, tubular flowers that open scarlet and
fade through light yellow to cream. Plant it where you can get close
to it and admire the structure of the flower heads.
Asarina scandens (Chickabiddy) is a true annual
that produces abundant, violet-blue foxglove-flowers within a few
weeks of planting. There are pink and white flowered varieties, too.
Never too heavy, it is useful for growing up early-blooming clematis
for some later color, and I enjoy growing it where it can climb my
golden arbor vitae.
Tropaeolum peregrinum (Canary Creeper) looks
dainty but it's a vigorous twiner and scrambler. More finely textured
than the nasturtium, its close relative, it has tender, pale green
leaves and thousands of brilliant yellow flowers.
Dicentra scandens is a climbing bleeding heart
that scrambles to great heights. It produces clusters of pale yellow
flowers followed by little scarlet pods. Unlike most annual vines,
it likes some shade. Once you've had this plant in your garden, seedlings
are liable to appear from time to time.
Eccremocarpus scaber has pretty, compound,
gray-green leaves and inch-long flowers like little bulging bottles.
It comes in yellow, orange or red. Like the dicentra, it has fine
tendrils that allow it to ramble easily through shrubs. If you want
it to climb something other than a plant, wrap chicken wire loosely
around posts as a climbing aid, or fix panels of wire mesh to walls
and board fences. Eccremocarpus is actually a fast-growing tender
perennial, and it will usually come back from well-drained ground
after a mild winter.
Annual vines need warmth to grow well, so they don't
benefit much from early planting. July is not too late if you can
buy them already started, and Down to Earth recently received a batch
of plants from Loghouse Nursery. But don't delay any longer before
planting Cobaea scandens, which takes a little longer than
some to produce flowers. It's called cup and saucer vine because each
big, bell-shaped flower sits on a conspicuous calyx. The flowers undergo
an intriguing color change: They start out green, then gradually turn
purple.
I followed KLCC's garden tour last month and encountered
ET in someone's backyard. EWEB's ET, that is. It stands for evapotranspiration
rate, and it's a useful number if you want to conserve water. Reflecting
weather conditions the previous week, it tells you how much water
you should replace in your soil for optimum plant growth. EWEB currently
posts a new figure each Friday on the ET hotline (485-2000-EWEB) and
on the website (www.eweb.org).
ET is given in inches (it is based on the amount of
water needed to maintain a green lawn in full sun and assumes one
inch per week is "normal") but you can also use it as a multiplier.
If your flowerbeds generally get by on three-quarters of an inch per
week, multiply that number by ET to adjust your watering to the weather
conditions. If you have an automated sprinkler system, consider installing
a programmable timer with a "percent" feature that allows you to reduce
or increase the week's delivery simply by entering the ET number as
a percentage (multiply the number in inches by 100).
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Master
Class
The
Maybach limousine makes a splash in New York.
BY
JIM MOTAVALLI
NEW YORK CITY—When you're introducing
a $300,000 car to high society, you aim for a spectacular debut. The
Maybach, a new luxury brand from Mercedes-Benz, made quite a splash
by arriving in New York inside a glass case on the deck of the Queen
Elizabeth II. From there, it was lifted by helicopter to South
Street Seaport for a triumphant parade down Wall Street, home to some
of the car's presumed customers. The Street, as its known, is used
to high rollers, so its denizens were welcoming. Donald Trump says
he's willing to take a look, and maybe join a waiting list that includes
Jay Leno, Jay-Z and P. Diddy.
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|
THE
FIRST MAYBACH IN THE U.S. IS AT HOME IN MANHATTAN.
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Maybach is an unknown name in the U.S.,
but some older Germans recall it fondly as the biggest name in luxury
vehicles before World War II. The flagship Zeppelin model, named after
the airships that the company's engines also powered, was the country's
largest and most powerful car before auto production ended during
World War II.
"DaimlerChrysler is no less than predestined
to resurrect the name Maybach" for a "small but highly exclusive market
segment," said Jürgen Hubbert, Maybach's chief, at an extremely
opulent press preview in lower Manhattan last week. (The menu included
quail eggs.)
Wow, "predestined," that's pretty serious.
There does indeed appear to be something messianic about Mercedes'
devotion to the Maybach name. The companies were always close. Karl
Maybach actually designed and built the first Mercedes car (in 1901)
and he and patriarch Gottlieb Daimler were close collaborators. The
first Maybach, in 1919, had a Mercedes chassis.
But there was some speculation among
the international press assembled for the Maybach launch in New York
that the better-known Mercedes 600 Pullman might have been a better
target for revival. After all, this was the luxurious Mercedes used
by heads of state (and, especially, African dictators) in the 1960s.
The Maybach is certainly in the Pullman
tradition as the most exclusive executive travel in the world, ready
to give Rolls-Royce and Bentley (both also in German hands) a run
for their considerable money. The new limousine (which looks more
like a Lexus than a Mercedes) has a twin-turbocharged 550-horsepower
V-12 engine under the hood, and it cossets passengers with an electronically
controlled air suspension system and reclining rear seats that recall
first-class airline travel. For entertainment, there's a 600-watt
Dolby system and DVD players in the headrests. There are even run-flat
tires for those emergency maneuvers this car's customers could encounter.
For the safety conscious, there are 10 airbags and eight braking circuits.
Tom Mazza, who heads the National Limousine
Association and wrote a history book called Stretching It,
says that run-of-the-mill limo sales were hurt by Sept. 11, but that
"the elite customer of premium ground transportation" is still buying.
New York was certainly the place for the Maybach's debut, since it's
the limousine capital of the known world.
There will be two Maybach models, the
18-foot 57 and the 20-foot 62. Fred Heiler of Mercedes-Benz USA says
that it expects to sell about 400 cars a year in the U.S., and that
most will be the 57 model, driven not by chauffeurs but by their owners.
For a precedent, note the plethora of owner-driven long-wheelbase
BMW 740iL models in the U.S.
The rich, being different, will demand
and get a level of service you and I can only dream about. For instance,
the Maybach comes with its very own "personal liaison manager," who
will be on call 24 hours a day. Owners will be invited to the factory
near Stuttgart to see their car being individually hand-finished.
Don't expect the same treatment if you buy a Kia.
Jim Motavalli is editor of E/The Environmental Magazine.
Questions or comments? jimm@emagazine.com
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True
Grits
Mini-reviews
of area dining spots.
Brails
Coffee Shop
1689
Willamette. 343-1542.
A chatty atmosphere and brown paneling curves into
mismatched paintings of abandoned port towns and flower bouquets at
Brails Coffee Shop. Friendly waitresses swing around the corner, balancing
steaming breakfast plates for truck-driver appetites, while joking
with the regulars. "A dirty table for a dirty old man," a stout gray-haired
man says, grinning at the waitress who had chided him for sitting
down before she could clean up. The place is a true American diner
in all its glory — biscuits and gravy, pigs in a blanket, eggs
benedict. The daily breakfast specials are a good price and fill you
up all day.
But it's not all down-home cooking, get a bowl of
noodles, Kal Bee (Korean style-BBQ short ribs), Bulgogi (thinly sliced
BBQ beef), or another dish from the Korean side of things. Vegetarians
can get an omelet stuffed with spinach or a "Hearty Heart Salad" for
lunch. Or get funky in the morning with a marionberry and peanut butter
milkshake — the shakes are thick and frothy and pretty darn
good.
Best of all the place is unpretentious, the owners
are nice and the atmosphere light-hearted. So hunker down at the bar
with a book and a bottomless cup of coffee, or bring in your family
for a bountiful breakfast.
7 am-3 pm M-SU. $-$$$. — Nicole Hill
Alexander's
Great Falafel
13th
and Kincaid. No Phone.
I love the feel of teeth sinking into soft warm pita.
Then there's the spice of hot-sauced salad running rivulets between
my buds. Finally it's the crunch of delicately fried chick-peas, the
chewing, the swallow, the leisurely recline upon green campus grass.
It's hard to beat a hand-held falafel on a sunny summer day.
Alex's on campus is a trim hut dishing out pita-wrapped
falafel complete with cups of on-the-house lemonade. You've got your
medium, your large or deluxe falafel, the difference between the first
two being three or six falafel balls, and the last includes a generous
scoop of delicious humus for the balls to wade within. Salad decks
the pita and I found it crisp and succulent; I take the hot sauce
for the smooth way it permeates the 'witch.
There's also a humus-pita plate and a variety plate,
the latter featuring falafel, humus, pita and tabouli, all tasty Mediterranean
culinary standbys.
It's all vegan, which means it's also all vegetarian.
It's a food-cart, so as far as seating goes on campus, it's up to
you. Highly recommended.
11 am-4 pm M-F. $-$$ — BF
Govinda's Vegetarian Buffet
270 W. 8th Ave., 686-3531.
The front of Govinda's is unassuming, graffiti occasionally
decorates the windows and walls, the space looks dark. It's located
right downtown, across from WOW Hall, on an unfashionable block. However,
don't judge this book by its cover. Inside welcomes you with warm
smells: exotic spices and fresh baked wholegrain bread.
Now, if the last time you ate at a buffet was with
your grandparents, you'll be in for a pleasant surprise here. The
salad bar is fresh and simple, Jell-O salads replaced with sprouts
and interesting salad dressings, and everything is well maintained
and cared for. Govinda's offers the basics, brown and white rice,
mild veggie curry, pasta, sauces, and soups. Leave some room for a
sweet halva balls.
The lunch deal is great, for less than $5 you can
fill up on the tasty Split Pea Lentil Dahl soup and greenleaf lettuce
salad. The food is light and satisfying, and eating it feels like
you're doing your body a long overdue favor.
11:30 am-2:30 pm, 5-8 pm M-F. $-$$. —
MT
Morsels is a revolving feature that tries to capture
the atmosphere as well as the cuisine of some of our favorite places
to eat in and around Eugene, along with food news. Suggestions? Call
Ben or Marina at 484-0519 or e-mail cal@eugeneweekly.com
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