Latest news with #FlowerPower
The Citizen
01-08-2025
- Climate
- The Citizen
Get ready for spring
August is the month to lay the foundation for the spring and summer garden. Getting busy this month will reap rewards throughout the summer to come. Feed the soil Plants need fertile soil that contains plenty of carbon that feeds microbes in the soil and they in turn make nutrients available to the plants. Well-rotted compost, dried leaves or dried grass cuttings mixed with compost are natural sources of carbon. Dig compost into the top 30cm of topsoil around perennials and shrubs as well as into beds that are intended for summer flowering annuals, new plants or vegetables. Loosen compacted soil and pull out the roots of invasive creepers or shrubs that are affecting the performance other plants. Trim and tidy up groundcovers, cutting them back a bit to get rid of any stalky growth. Finish by fertilising with a granular fertiliser like Vigorosa 5:1:5 and water in well. Feed the flowers Keep winter annuals flowering by feeding them every with a liquid fertiliser like Margaret Roberts Organic Supercharger and increase watering as temperatures rise and the days lengthen. Pansies and violas that were planted in late autumn may be looking tired but there is still time to replace them with a new batch. Plant them in a shadier position for summer and they will keep going until end October or later. If you didn't do it last month, fertilise perennials, roses, shrubs and bulbs with Vigorosa for better flowering. Fill the gaps Brighten up the wintery garden with cool season spring flowers like Osteospermum 'Flower Power' or 'Serenity'(Cape daisies) honey scented Lobularia 'Easy Breezy (alyssum) double or single flowered Argyranthemum 'Madeira'. For more info visit Ball Straathof. Try this Euphorbia hypericifolia 'Flurry' has tiny snowflake white flowers but is a garden toughie that doesn't melt in the heat. It is ideal for waterwise gardens and it can be planted almost anywhere because it grows in full sun and is also shade tolerant. Plant in free draining soil or in pots if the garden soil is on the clay side.. It flowers non-stop, even in winter in warm, frost free gardens as well as in sheltered containers. Water lightly and fertilise once a month. For more info visit Ball Straathof. Spruce up the lawn Scarify lawns that have a dense thatch of undergrowth. To do this rake the lawn to remove the thatch, then cut it down low with a lawn mower. Water well. Don't fertilise until it starts to grow. If the ground feels compacted take an ordinary garden fork and push it into the ground and wiggle it to loosen the ground. Do this over the whole lawn. Watering first will help. If the lawn does not need scarifying just apply 5:1:5 fertiliser and water well. Top dress the lawn if it needs to be levelled or hollows have formed. This only applies to Kikuyu. Top dressing LM grass or the cool season grasses like Shade over or All Seasons evergreen will kill them. Start veggie seed indoors The soil is still too cold for sowing or planting out seedlings but you can start seed in seed trays indoors or in a warm area outside. Start with fruiting crops like tomatoes, eggfruit, peppers and squash as well as cool season salad greens and garden peas. Try this: Honeynut squash looks like a mini butternut but is twice as flavourful and has a soft edible skin. Each squash is about 12cm long (the size of a small hand) and is a single serve or just enough for two. Plants are most productive grown in full sun in a large container or in fertile soil that drains well. For adequate pollination by wind or insects, grow at least three squash plants, the more the better. Fertilise once the flowers start of form. The fruit changes colour from dark green to green and gold and finally a honey orange. For information visit Raw Living. Sharpen up Take the lawnmower for its annual service which includes sharpening the blades. Blunt blades can damage the grass. Clean and sharpen your garden tools like secateurs, hedge clippers, loppers and hand saws. Sand down and revarnish or treat wooden garden furniture, clean out ponds and birdbaths. Article and images supplied by Alice Coetzee. For more on gardening visit Get It Magazine.
Time Out
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
KAWS will transform the New York Botanical Garden with colorful, graffiti-inspired artworks
We're only halfway through 2025, but the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is already looking ahead. Way ahead. NYBG announced that it will bloom with a very special exhibition in 2027: a full, 250-acre takeover by Brooklyn-based artist KAWS, debuting May 22, 2027. Known for his pop culture-inspired sculptures, KAWS (aka Brian Donnelly) will present an outdoor installation of enormous proportions, turning the iconic Bronx gardens into a collision of nature and contemporary art. KAWS' work seems especially suited for NYBG, with his sly, gigantic takes on figures like The Simpsons and Snoopy, plus his famous Companions series, inspired by Mickey Mouse (and a year spent as a Disney animator) and threaded throughout his career as both paintings and three-dimensional sculptures. The melancholy of the figures, with their gloved hands and X'd out eyes, will no doubt feel even more powerful against the idyllic natural backdrop. NYBG has long held a reputation for creating opportunities for artists to engage in dialogue with its landscape, including landmark exhibitions by Yayoi Kusama and Ebony G. Patterson. Now KAWS will continue this tradition, inviting visitors to consider how human-made objects inhabit, disrupt, or enhance their environment. The Garden also announced a 2026 exhibit, Flower Power, opening May 23, 2026, and channeling the '60s with a celebration of the flowers as symbols of peace and love. The gallery exhibit will include photography and art from the 1960s, as well as installations throughout the grounds. Other upcoming exhibits include the beloved annual tradition, Holiday Train Show (November 15, 2025–January 11, 2026), and The Orchid Show: Mr Flower Fantastic's Concrete Jungle (February 7–April 26, 2026). Additionally, NYBG revealed that it will begin offering a new two-year membership option, which will include unlimited access and early entry to future exhibitions. No word yet on when tickets for the KAWS exhibit will go on sale, but NYBG members will receive priority access. Currently, the NYBG hosts the exhibit Van Gogh's Flowers, pairing his paintings with contemporary interpretations and living installations, including a field of real and sculptural sunflowers from French artist Cyril Lancelin. That remains on view through October 26.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sly & the Family Stone's 10 Best Songs (Staff Picks)
Funk, rock and soul maverick Sly Stone died at 82 on Monday (June 9). According to a statement from his family, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's passing came after 'a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues,' while he was surrounded by family and loved ones. More from Billboard Cardi B Stresses 'Music Is a Collaboration' While Accepting 2025 ASCAP Voice of the Culture Award The Doobie Brothers On 'Civic Duty,' 'Limitations' in Today's Music & Writing Songs With Charlie Puth Liam Gallagher Gushes About Oasis Reunion Drummer Joey Waronker: 'This Guy Is Special' 'While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come,' the statement continues. That legacy is indeed a singular one, and he built most of it with his eponymous '60s and '70s group Sly & the Family Stone. With the band, Sly Stone both scaled the greatest heights of Flower Power utopianism and plumbed the lowest depths of Nixon-era disillusionment, with incisive lyrics, brilliant hooks and grooves that could be as lock-step tight or as meanderingly loose as the song called for. Over the course of their original run, Sly & the Family Stone scored three Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits, released at least two albums considered among the greatest of the entire rock era, and played one of the signature sets at 1969's iconic Woodstock festival. Though the band largely fell into disarray in the mid-'70s, and neither the Family Stone or its leader ever were able to quite recapture their peak prominence, the music lived on through subsequent generations — and could be heard sampled and recycled on major hits by Janet Jackson, LL Cool J, Cypress Hill, the Beastie Boys and countless other later acts. Below, Billboard rounds up our picks for Sly & Co.'s 10 all-time greatest — songs that captured turbulent times and spoke to universal truths, and remain just as potent over a half-century later. Opening with a drum roll and the shouted titular command, Sly & the Family Stone made sure their first masterpiece LP immediately snapped listeners to attention. But 'Stand!' is too melodic and empathetic to ever risk coming off didactic, with even directives like 'Stand for the things you know are right/ It's the truth that the truth makes them so uptight' delivered so tenderly it sounds like the band realizes it's not telling you anything you don't already know. And unlike too many protests, this one ends in unequivocal victory, as the song closes with a glorious parade of trumpets and jubilant 'na-na-na-na-na's. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER With lullaby organs and a drum groove so clipped and woozy it almost sounds like it's predicting J Dilla, 'Just Like a Baby' made it clear early in There's a Riot Goin' On that the Woodstock-era triumphalism of Stand! was well over. While even that album's angriest songs had energy and purpose to them, the band's uncertainty is felt throughout the narcotic groove and buried, often wordless vocals here, but with results just as spellbinding — and arguably even funkier. Future generations would agree, as you can hear traces of 'Baby' in everything from D'Angelo's Voodoo to Childish Gambino's 'Awaken, My Love!' — A.U. A Doris Day song from an Alfred Hitchcock movie might seem like unlikely material for a gospel-inflected funk cover, but Sly Stone never played by anyone's rules (even his own). Stone spent much of There's a Riot Goin' On and follow-up album Fresh tearing down the utopian hippie view of America he'd built in the '60s, and 'Que Sera, Sera' — which arrived on the latter album's side two – seems to be his shoulder-shrugging admission that just like everyone else, he ultimately has no idea what the hell is going on in this life. But when the funk is this mellow and the organ playing this heavenly, uncertainty doesn't sound so quite so scary. — JOE LYNCH Underpinned by a bold lead bass line, this 1973 hit that reached No. 12 on the Hot 100 features one of Sly's most impressive vocal performances, as he both growls and croons in due course to a girlfriend about what he needs to stay in a relationship. One of the most iconic basslines in funk, its genius is in its steady simplicity, allowing the organ, piano and horn flourishes to really breathe, and Sly's voice to shine, with no line delivered in the same way twice. Its parent album, Fresh, is one notorious for its overdubs, but even still 'Stay' has an improvisational feel, melding the backline rigor with the expressive fluidity that is a hallmark of great funk records. — DAN RYS Something of a thesis statement for the Family Stone, 'Family Affair' — which became the band's third and final No. 1 on the Hot 100 in late 1971 — is a more laid-back groove, with Sly's voice melting and oozing all over the track as he sings about sibling, parental and newlywed relationships, and what keeps them all together. Trading off vocals with his sister Rose, Sly keeps it simple, with a bass, rhythm guitar and keyboard holding down most of the track, a breezy wah-wah guitar providing flourishes here and there. But as with much of Sly's work, it's the sum of its parts that makes 'Family Affair' such an enduring cut more than 50 years later. — D.R. As the multi-racial, multi-gender Sly & the Family Stone emerged in the mid-'60s, its demographic composition wasn't the only radical thing about it – it also fused the worlds of R&B, soul, and rock and roll in ways that thrilled audiences, but confounded the suits. When the band's 1967 debut, A Whole New Thing, flopped, management told Stone it was 'too funky' and that he should 'just do something simple.' 'I said, 'OK, something simple, huh?'' Stone later recounted. That something simple: 'Dance to the Music,' which with its relentless rhythm section and direct lyrics, commands listeners to do just that. Stone would go on to make higher-concept music, but 'Dance To The Music' is a foundational text in psychedelic soul — and, perhaps more importantly, was a big enough hit that it afforded the ambitious musician the considerable creative freedom he would need moving forward. — ERIC RENNER BROWN Opening in medias rock, 'I Want to Take You Higher' is a blunt battering ram of blues, psych, soul and funk that was initially stowed away as the B-side to 'Stand!', but hit America's eardrums so hard that it went top 40 in its own right. This rallying cry is the sound of Sly Stone and his merry pranksters pushing James Brown's meticulously timed funk off its foundations, destabilizing it with the untethered energy of an off-the-rails rock n' roll jam session. The studio version feels like it might fling off into the ether at a moment's notice — and in concert (including at Woodstock), it often did. — J.L. For those rare times in life when there's no riot goin' on and nothing immediately pressing to take a stand over, there can simply be 'Hot Fun in the Summertime.' Sly & the Family Stone's most classic-sounding pop song — tone down a couple of those vocal ad libs and it could've easily been a Nat King Cole composition — remains an essential seasonal standard for its sun-tanned horns, nostalgic lyrics and impossibly breezy sway, one of the most topical bands of its era proving it could be be just as potent blissing out in the shade for two and a half minutes. But like all truly great good-time songs, 'Summertime' also comes tinged with the unmistakable sadness of knowing it's all too good to last: 'First of the fall, and then she goes back/ Bye, bye, bye, bye.' — A.U. This is the rare example of a band figuring itself out in a transitional period while still delivering its best work. Sly and the Family Stone achieved so much and evolved so quickly from 1967-69, it's no wonder that Stone felt compelled to craft a song that served as both a meta victory lap and farewell to his bright, buoyant first chapter before segueing into a lyrically and sonically murkier second act. But how many artists can write a song about their biggest, most beloved hits that's also better than damn near all of them? Larry Graham's slap bass gets a lot of the credit, but the tightly wound guitars, woozy horns and staccato vocals are equally hypnotic. — J.L. Sly & The Family Stone's first of three No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100 was more than a massive hit – it was a reflection of contemporary American society. Released in November 1968, as one of the most tumultuous years in American history drew to a close, 'Everyday People' uses near-childlike simplicity ('There is a blue one who can't accept the green one/ For living with a fat one, trying to be a skinny one') to urge Americans to come together despite their differences. The song had an immediate impact and a lasting influence, from helping to mint a new catchphrase ('different strokes for different folks,' originally popularized by Muhammad Ali and later the inspiration for the title of the TV show Diff'rent Strokes) to featuring an early instance of the slap-bass technique. And few moments in Sly's catalog are as singularly stunning as when he and his bandmates arrive at the first chorus shout: 'I am everyday people!' — E.R.B. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
ABC News
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
John & Yoko doco covers activism, music and life in 1970s New York
In 1971, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono swapped their Ascot mansion and 70-acre estate for a two-room loft in New York's Greenwich Village. They threw themselves headfirst into the political and social movements of the time, helping the counterculture pick up the pieces after what Lennon perceived as the failure of the 'Flower Power' movement in the years prior. It was a significant move for arguably the most famous singer of all time. Lennon turned his back on what could have been an enviable life as part of high society and instead invested his energy and money in ensuring the youth of America didn't become apathetic in the quest for non-violence and equality. "I'm happy as Larry," Lennon said at the time. "I feel like a student again. We're like a young married couple." One To One: John and Yoko is a fascinating, fast-paced collage of old footage and taped phone conversations that take us inside the couples' movements at this time. The phone calls are particularly compelling as we hear the couple scheming, cycling through a variety of causes, seemingly aching for places they can lend their celebrity clout to raise awareness. There are a few recurring narratives throughout that keep us engrossed. One of them involves capturing thousands of live flies for a Yoko Ono art exhibit, another sees them convince infamous Bob Dylan stalker A. J. Weberman to back off his target, while there are chilling moments where Lennon — who was shot dead in 1980 — ruminates about becoming a target when appearing at key demonstrations. Another through line revolves around the only full-length concert John Lennon gave after The Beatles's split and before his death. The concert, which happened across two sessions at Madison Square Garden in 1972, was a benefit for the children of the Willowbrook School — an institution caring for children with intellectual disabilities. Footage from the show is great, but even more interesting is learning how the couple arrived at the idea to play the show. Because there are so many individual examples of John and Yoko's activism, it makes for a fast-paced video diary with a frenetic energy that perhaps speaks to the couple's own chaotic momentum. "I thought: There's enough here that we could just let them speak for themselves, allow the audience to eavesdrop on them and allow that to be part of the fun of the film," director Kevin Macdonald said in publicity materials around the film. "I think that's much more interesting than a traditional biopic, where the filmmakers are trying to present a very coherent version of things. As we all know, life is chaotic and contradictory." Even if your interest in John and Yoko themselves is negligible, the film will still offer a captivating snapshot of the social and political climate of the time. Whether it's Carole Feraci's protest against Richard Nixon, the railing against inhumane conditions at Attica State prison, or the case of poet John Sinclair, who was jailed for 10 years for cannabis possession, the film covers plenty of historical moments that paint a riveting picture of the counterculture of the time. And people with a love for old New York City will revel in the way the film plops us right in that space and time. The treatment of Yoko Ono by Lennon's adoring fans and even his Beatles band mates is laid bare in some confronting conversations, where the artist bluntly recounts the comments and violence she'd been subjected to. Speaking of violence, Lennon's past behaviours are only vaguely hinted at. The takeaway message is that the John Lennon of the early 70s was a more enlightened man than the one who grew up scrapping in Liverpool and was violent towards his first wife, Cynthia, in the 1960s. "I fell in love with an independent, eloquent, outspoken, creative genius," Lennon says at one point. "I started waking up." While there may be a touch of hagiography about One To One, it's a rare example of a John Lennon documentary that offers something many fans might not have seen or even known about before. As far as history lessons go, it's totally compelling. As we learned in the eight-hour 2021 documentary Get Back, which took us inside the recording of The Beatles's final album, being a fly on the wall for historical moments is a captivating prospect. This film moves far quicker, but the same idea applies: we're always shown what John and Yoko do rather than merely told about it. "Very early on, I decided I wasn't going to try and chase old men on their deathbeds to get their last John Lennon anecdote — which they've probably told before," director Macdonald said. One To One: John & Yoko is a truly intimate capture of what drove this couple at a key point in their life, and how their very presence at this key moment had an impact on the countercultural movement of the time. One To One: John & Yoko screens at the Sydney Film Festival this weekend.
San Francisco Chronicle
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Book Review: Sheriff hunts for a missing postal worker and tussles with a cult
The longest mail route in the U.S. runs more than 300 miles through Wyoming's unforgiving Red Desert, and Blair McGowan, the delivery person, has gone missing. Her disappearance is odd, not just because McGowan has always been reliable but because her personal delivery vehicle, a 1968 International Travelall that looks like a hearse and has a quarter of a million miles on it, was left behind. Authorities in Sweetwater County haven't made any progress, so Mike Thurman, the postal inspector, asks Walt Longmire, sheriff of (fictional) Absaroka County, to find her. The desert is way out of Longmire's jurisdiction, but Thurman is family on the sheriff's wife's side, so he agrees. So begins 'Return to Sender,' Craig Johnson's 22nd installment in a series that inspired a TV show that ran for 6 seasons on A&E and Netflix. Given the size of the desert and the length of time McGowan has been missing, Longmire puts his chances as 'not likely.' Going undercover as a postal worker, which fools nobody, he and his dog named Dog head off into the desert in the ancient Travelall and follow the woman's delivery route. Johnson is known for creating memorable characters, and perhaps the most memorable this time is Dog, a German Shepherd-Saint Bernard mix who is as smart and loyal as they come. The Travelall emerges as something of a character in its own right, with its quirks and an odd body shape plastered with Flower Power, Grateful Dead, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and Age of Aquarius stickers. Eventually, Longmire discovers McGowan in the clutches of a weird-as-they-come religious cult, shoots it out with its gun-toting members, and commits several remarkable acts of heroism. Near the middle of the story, the author inserts characters and elements from a previous novel that might confuse newcomers to the series. Fortunately, that section, which hints at what may be coming in the next instalment, is short. Johnson's plot is suspenseful and fast-moving, the prose is tight, and the landscape is vividly drawn. ___ Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including 'The Dread Line.' ___
