Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

Long-time Beach resident Barb Hill has a vision to color Fort Myers Beach a purplish tint.

The life-long gardener and her committee recently conducted a first round of plantings of the Jacaranda tree (15 in one day) on Estero Island. They have a second round of plantings slated for the third week in May, roughly the time when the tree reaches full bloom.

The 'Jacaranda Project' doesn't stop there, however. Hill is encouraging the planting of at least 200 Jacaranda trees on Fort Myers Beach during this spring/summer of 2014 and 2015. Then, in 2016, at the height of May's Jacaranda bloom, the committee is envisioning an inaugural Jacaranda Festival on the island. The proposed weekend long festival would be "community wide and attract both locals and tourists with its unique activities and focus."

BOB PETCHER Barb Hill's backyard tree looks like it could be in full bloom a month before the Jacaranda is expected to reach that point. She is pushing to plant more trees on the Beach and hoping to inspire a Jacaranda Festival in 2016.

Hill pitched that idea to Town Council members on April 7, and then to FMB Chamber business members last Thursday.

"I'm thinking of the different things we can do as a town to promote this tree and its color," she said. "To those who say I can't plant that tree because it will block my sign, I say it might draw an eye to your whole building if your tree is in bloom. That burst of color makes such a difference."

While the Jacaranda tree is not indigenous to the state (South America is their native home), it is designated as Florida friendly. Having a town tree festival in a state whose name originates from 'flora' would makes sense, wouldn't it?

"These trees grow all over the world," said Hill. "In the United States, you can find them in California, Texas and Florida. But, Australia is the only place in the world that has a festival."

When Hill took a Master Gardener course with Steve Brown of Lee County Extension services after moving to Florida from Tennessee, she approached him about the flowering tree.

"He told me that it was noninvasive, it didn't need much fertilizing except when you get it started, and that it was a well-managed tree," she said.

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JAC'D UP: Purplish-blue trees hope to inspire Town festival

Yesterday at 5:26 PM Six of the unions that represent city workers are up for raises each year for the next three years.

By Keith Edwards kedwards@centralmaine.com Staff Writer

AUGUSTA New three-year contracts with six of the citys eight union employee bargaining units are up for City Council approval Thursday.

click image to enlarge

PROPOSED FOR CITY ACQUISITION: This aerial taken in late March shows Howard Hill, 164 wooded acres that serve as the scenic forested backdrop for the State House.

Staff photo by Joe Phelan

The new deals would provide those employees with raises of 1.5 percent this year, 2 percent next year and 2.5 percent in 2016, according to Ralph St. Pierre, finance director and assistant city manager.

The contracts would continue insurance benefits changes agreed to by the unions a year ago in previous contract negotiations, which gave the employees 2 percent raises but saved the city money overall by reducing insurance premium costs, savings expected to continue through the term of the new contracts.

Employees represented by the six bargaining units include police supervisors, patrol officers, general government workers, public safety dispatchers, Augusta Civic Center maintenance workers and public works workers.

The two remaining units without a new contract represent firefighters, ambulance crews and Fire Department battalion chiefs. St. Pierre said negotiations are underway with those two units as well.

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Augusta council to consider employee contracts, Howard Hill agreement

Anger at increase in flytipping in Little Horton, Bradford

6:00am Wednesday 16th April 2014 in News By Rob Lowson, T&A Reporter

The owner of private land blighted by flytippers has been served notice to clear it by Bradford Council.

Residents have been left angered at mounting levels of rubbish being dumped by their homes behind Chislehurst Place and Pennington Terrace, Little Horton, Bradford.

And they fear no-one is taking responsibilty to deal with it.

Ian Thompson, of Chislehurst Place, said: Its absolutely disgusting out there.

I open my curtains and thats the first and only thing I see. At the moment, it is the worst its ever been.

The Council used to clear up the area every few months, but I spoke to them recently and they said they dont know who owns the land and theyve no intention of clearing it.

Mr Thompson said an increasing amount of old furniture and white goods had been dumped at the site in recent months, which he feels now poses a health and safety hazard.

Someone obviously had new windows fitted a few weeks ago and theyve just dumped all the old stuff here, he said. Since then everyone else has been dumping their rubbish too. It gets worse every day.

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VIDEO: Anger at increase in flytipping in Little Horton, Bradford

Interior designer in pune
Sudhir Pawar and Associates are well-known and respected Interior designers in pune. Combining concepts and experience to form an unbeatable quality in interiors that you will cherish for years...

By: sudhir pawar

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Interior designer in pune - Video

Interior Designer Pieter Porters in Caf Corsari - part I
Top Designer Pieter Porters talks on Belgian television about the trip he took to Moscow in April 2014, together with ORAC. He elaborates on his own style as...

By: Orac Decor

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Interior Designer Pieter Porters in Caf Corsari - part I - Video

Six months after Sudhir Yerunkar, 42, husband of an MHB Colony police constable went missing from Mira Road, his employer and two others were arrested on Monday by the Baramati police for having murdered him.

On January 22, DNA had reported that Yerunkar, an interior designer, who worked for a Baramati-based jeweller, Shrenik Bhandari, had gone missing since October after he misplaced his employer's jewellery worth Rs 9 lakh.

His wife, Sunita, lodged a complaint in November, after which a case of kidnapping was registered. She had alleged that the police were hand-in-glove with the jeweller and hence her husband's whereabouts were not known.

Sunita said: "The Baramati police were not cooperative. Had they been pro-active, I would at least have been able to conduct the last rites of my husband. The investigation gained pace only after I approached commissioner of police Rakesh Maria last month."

The four accused are Bhandari, 48, his wife Ashiwni, 40, son Saurabh, 25, and their accomplice Zameer Pathan, 42.

S Patil, senior PI of Baramati station, said: "Bhandari is the primary suspect. But since he was absconding we couldn't question him. Last week we took him into custody, and he has confessed to the crime. The fourth accused, Zameer, hasn't been arrested as he is hospitalised."

Yerunkar was working for Bhandari and used to travel from Mumbai to Baramati thrice a week. In the last week of October, Bhandari asked Yerunkar to collect a Diwali gift from a Zaveri Bazaar jeweller. After collecting it, he came home and on October 30, took a rickshaw to the ST stand near Borivli station from where he was to travel to Baramati. He, however, lost the box on the way. After having failed to find it, he returned to Pune. Following this, the jeweller threatened him, and he has been missing ever since.

The police said Yerunkar was killed the same day he had returned. They allegedly smashed his head with a sharp object and dumped him in an isolated spot in Osmanabad. "We took the three accused to the spot. The Osmanabad police, who found the unknown body, buried it more than five months ago. We will extricate the body for further investigations. The arrested have been remanded in police custody," added Patil.

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Mumbai interior designer who went missing 6 months ago, was killed by employer

Oakville Beaver

A free home safety seminar dealing with the potential hazards of aluminum wiring will be held tomorrow night at the Holiday Inn, 590 Argus Rd.

Aluminum wiring poses hazards that many homeowners dont understand, Tim Birnie, president of Birnie CurrentSAFE, said in a press release.

The Mississauga-based electrical contractor is hosting the seminar.

It has been shown that homes with aluminum wiring are 55 times more likely to experience an electrical fire than homes with copper wiring, noted Birnie.

The seminar, titled Aluminum Wiring: Debunking the Myths, will feature a presentation by Michael Harrison, public education officer for the Oakville Fire Department.

Harrison will discuss the three lines of defence against residential fires and help families prepare a fire-escape plan.

The Electrical Safety Authority (ESA) has issued a number of warnings about potential hazards of aluminum wiring related to overheating and failure of aluminum wiring terminations at outlets, light switches and other termination points.

Aluminum tends to oxidize at termination points, and this can lead to failure and the potential for a serious electrical fire without proper maintenance, Birnie said. Our goal with this seminar is to give people the information they need to protect themselves and their families.

The seminar runs from 7-8:30 p.m., with registration opening at 6:30 p.m.

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Free home safety seminar Wednesday night in Oakville

Red Cross volunteer finds two feet of water in basement of rental bungalow in Sherwood after heavy rains Monday

File photo

The Red Cross was called to assist a university student who needed food and lodging for the night after the home she was renting with two other students flooded Monday.

Three university students had to find a place to stay after heavy rains contributed to flooding in the basement of the bungalow they've been renting for the school year.

One of the students, who is from British Columbia, accessed support for lodging and food from the Red Cross to get her through the night.

The Red Cross has not been asked for more nights of accomodation for the student, said Dan Bedell, media spokesman for the Atlantic provinces.

"I haven't heard if that (support) needs to be extended, which is something we can do," Bedell said in a phone interview.

"In fact, the volunteer told us she was due to be heading home to B.C. in a week for the end of the school year."

Her two roommates found places to stay with family and friends.

All three women were able to collect clothing and other necessities before vacating the home.

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Home rented by university students floods

hide captionA salmon fillet cooked sous vide, with miso-ginger glaze, gets a crisp finish under a broiler or torch flame.

A salmon fillet cooked sous vide, with miso-ginger glaze, gets a crisp finish under a broiler or torch flame.

Sous vide. Not that long ago, it sounded so exotic or, at least, so French. It was a phrase that belonged in restaurants, amid white tablecloths and flower arrangements and hushed conversations. Alternatively, it was a word that belonged to the modernist kitchens just beyond the swinging doors kitchens filled with gleaming dehydrators and transglutaminase "meat glues" and spherification siphons and more.

I first heard it in the kitchen of now-famous Wylie Dufresne's first restaurant, 71 Clinton Fresh Food, where I was a clueless intern in the spring of 2000. There in New York City's still-scruffy Lower East Side, early hipsters with interesting facial hair waited the tables, while in back we fashioned fish crusts out of edamame. It was a forward-thinking place, yet no one even there imagined that the mysterious vacuum-and-water-bath technique chefs were whispering about would be part of many home cooks' arsenal in just 15 years.

What is sous vide anyway? Briefly, it's cooking "under vacuum" i.e., in a vacuum-sealed bag at a specific temperature. Usually, that means in a temperature-controlled water bath. Why would you want to do this? Because careful temperature control results in a kind of protein sorcery. You can get perfectly cooked delicate fish because it can't dry out or overflake. You can coax meats into meltingly soft braises because the protein never gets hot enough for the fibers to turn to string. You can get eggs that are never rubbery. You can melt the layers in pork belly without liquefying them in the process. You can even keep chocolate from losing its glossy temper when melted.

The exactness of the temperature allows you to be loosey-goosey with the time. No matter how long you hold a water bath at 155 degrees, it will never boil and toughen your chicken tenders. And you cannot accidentally toughen a filet mignon if it's just sitting there, relaxing, at 145 degrees. All in all, sous vide is a strange mix of the precise and the forgiving. It's the forgiving part that makes it a natural for home cooking.

But it's the precise part that scares people. At the dawn of home sous vide a mere five or six years ago you could buy an industrial thermal circulator to submerge in your water bath. It cost, oh, a mere $1,000. Then came the Sous Vide Supreme, an all-in-one unit that cut the cost in half. Or you could rig your own, using a rice cooker or slow cooker, a thermocouple and a temperature controller. There are wiring diagrams on the Web, and in books such as Jeff Potter's Cooking for Geeks.

Last December, having the urge but not the funds to sous vide, I brought one such diagram to my technically proficient spouse, with a pleading expression. He cocked an eyebrow and went back to shopping on Amazon. On Christmas Day, I found a Dorkfood Sous Vide Temperature Controller under the tree. All you had to do was plug it into your slow cooker, and it only cost $100. (Yes, you could buy a set of at least three cast iron skillets for that, but none of them will hold a water bath within 1 degree Fahrenheit ... forever.)

And the fact is, you don't even need to do that much. I have friends who cook steaks sous vide in foam beer coolers, keeping track of the temperature with an oven thermometer probe and adding some hot water from time to time. You don't even need a vacuum sealer you can make do with heavy-duty Ziploc bags, as long as you've displaced the water out. (You do that by slowly lowering the bag into your water bath, so the pressure of the water squeezes the air out, and then you seal it the usual way).

There is, of course, the question of food safety. Maybe you've heard the stories about city health department officials forcing chefs to pour bleach on their sous vide meats. It's a story that always makes me want to cry, but for years public health has relied on a firm food safety rule: dangerous germs live at between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Even the pink interior of a medium-rare burger falls above this range, and most cooking techniques take place around or well above the boiling point of water (212 degrees F).

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Sous Vide Makes Its Way To The Home Kitchen

AC Tuneup - Landmark Home Warranty
Landmark Home Warranty includes A/C Preseason Tune ups with every home warranty plan. This comprehensive tune up includes: LHW will calibrate thermostat, tes...

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AC Tuneup - Landmark Home Warranty - Video