sa国际传媒

Dear Tony: Our strata corporation just completed a three-year major upgrade and envelope renovation. We have been planning for this project since 2010, and the outcome was well worth the effort.

Dear Helen: My rose garden has been spectacular this summer. The carpet roses in particular have given a fine display of colour; however, I have a number of small rose bushes and climbers with flower buds that did not open into full bloom.

In a mid-month column I passed along a message from a gardener lamenting the lack of bees in his garden. On the morning of the column鈥檚 publication, a friend called to say: 鈥淭ell him to plant lavender and cotoneaster.

Dear Debbie: I was debating with a friend what was an 鈥渆xtra鈥� piece of furniture she couldn鈥檛 do without. We agreed that a bed, a table and a light were givens. As I have an entire room lined with bookshelves, that was my choice.

The owners of this handsome 120-year-old home used to live in a custom-designed, ultra-modern house on the waterfront near the Chinese Cemetery on Gonzales Bay. But Dan Sharp and Pamela Russell grew tired of that chilly, windy location.

Vacation market activity is hyperlocal and hypersensitive to regional influences, says broker

Dear Helen: My husband, like you, loves growing nasturtiums every year and nurtures the ones that self-sow. This summer, however, I have pulled up the nasturtium plants because they were all infested with black aphids.

Dear Tony: Our building is 30 years old and we are under attack. The flickers and woodpeckers have been boring holes into our stucco siding.

As I was gathering raspberries near the back fence recently, my new next-door neighbour came up to the fence to express his delight in a patch of tall, self-sown larkspur that filled an end portion of a plot housing strawberries.

There is much talk of mindfulness today, an energizing, freeing state where you listen only to the quiet that is around you, blocking out negative thoughts, past or future concerns.