JALALABAD (Pajhwok): People living near the Kunar River and natural streams in eastern Nangarhar province say the government should construct retaining walls on the river’s banks to protect their crops and homes from being flooded each year.

However, officials say the Nangarhar River Basin Authority and the Rural Rehabilitation and Development department have launched joint efforts to resolve this issue.

Residents of districts located near the Kunar River complain due to lack of retaining walls, their crops are destroyed each year by a flooded Kunar River.

Shah Wali, a resident of Zakhel area of ​​Kama district near the Kunar River, asked the government to construct retaining walls on the river’s banks.

He told Pajhwok: “Our houses and farms are close to the Kunar River. The river bursts its banks each year due to floods and damages our houses and agricultural lands. The government should build retaining walls on both sides of the river so that people can get rid of this problem.”

Ghulam Siddiq, a resident of Samarkhel area in Behsud district, said local residents lived with fear each year that their homes and farms would be washed away by floods.

Residents of some other districts living near natural streams say they face the same problem.

Mohammad Qasim, a resident of Fateh Abad area of ​​Sararud district, said when snow on mountains started melting in spring, the water inundates their crops each year. Crops near the Khogyani stream were often washed away after heavy rains, he said.

Saeed Khan, a resident of Haiderkhel area of ​​Kot district, said floods not only destroy people’s lands each year, but also damage roads.

Thousands of acres of land and 500 houses were destroyed in Nangarhar due to rains and floods in earlier this solar year.

Maulvi Mohammad Sadiq Hashmi, deputy director of Nangarhar River Basin Authority, said construction of retaining walls had been started in some areas facing greater threat of destruction. He said the most vulnerable areas were given priority.

“A 1,500-meter retaining wall has been built on the banks of Kunar River in Muslimabad area in cooperation with an aid agency. Retaining walls will be constructed in all areas currently under threat of flooding.”

When the retaining wall project is completed and the Kunar River’s banks are consolidated, thousands of hectares of land and residential houses will be protected from the threat of floods and rising water.

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BOSTON – The owner of a residential and commercial landscaping business operating in southeastern Massachusetts was sentenced yesterday for failing to report approximately $1.5 million in income to the Internal Revenue Service.

According to the Department of Justice, Scott Herzog, 47, of Norwell, was sentenced by US District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton to a year and one day in prison, one year of supervised release and a fine of $100,000. Herzog was also ordered to pay restitution of $499,958 to the Internal Revenue Service. On June 3, 2022, Herzog pleaded guilty to one count of filing a false tax return.

Herzog owns and operates Herzog Landscape Solutions. From 2016 through 2018, Herzog received gross income of at least approximately $4.1 million from landscaping customers but provided his bookkeeper with only partial information about that income from customer payments. Herzog directed customers to pay him personally for jobs and then cashed many of these payments or deposited them into bank accounts unaffiliated with the landscaping business. Herzog then failed to report approximately $1.5 million in these receipts in the tax returns his tax preparer filed on his behalf. As a result of this conduct, Herzog underreported his personal income tax obligations, causing a loss to the Internal Revenue Service of nearly $500,000.

United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins and Joleen D. Simpson, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation in Boston, made the announcement. Assistant US Attorney David M. Holcomb of Rollins’ Securities, Financial & Cyber ​​Fraud Unit prosecuted the case.

PADUCAH — Beautiful Paducah, the beautification organization that organized this year’s Barbecue on the River, says the votes are in, and part of the proceeds from last week’s festival will be used to develop a proposal to improve landscaping downtown.

during the festival, Whitney Ravellette Wallace with Beautiful Paducah told local 6 that the organization’s goal is to raise money for various beautification projects through the festivals it hosts. At Barbecue on the River, attendees could go to Beautiful Paducah’s tent and vote from among three initiatives by buying a $1 ticket.

In a news release sent Wednesday, the group says the initiative that received the most votes was to create a proposal to improve landscaping in areas of downtown Paducah and a continued maintenance plan. Beautiful Paducah says the goal is to begin the initiative sometime next spring.

The organization says the event supported 59 local charities. As for how much money was raised, Beautiful Paducah says it will publicly announce the total once it has all the information from the vendors who participated.

In the news release, the organization says it knows many of the elements of this year’s festival were a big hit, and that there’s room for improvement. Beautiful Paducah says it looks forward to making those improvements for the 2023 festival, and organizers with the group plan to meet with the other parties who helped make the event possible to analyze what worked and what adjustments need to be made.

This was the first year Beautiful Paducah took on Barbecue on the River, and the organization says it was “an incredible learning experience.”

“We can’t wait to see what 12 months of planning, as opposed to 5-6 months of planning, will bring for 2023,” the news release says.

Landscaping Improvements Coming to Emerson Lake

by Town of High River

29/07/2022

community
Parks & Recreation
Construction

HIGH RIVER – Work will begin Aug. 2, on renovating the shrub beds at Emerson Lake. The project will see dead plants removed and the beds renovated to create new more sustainable wild scaping design. Wild scaping creates a more sustainable and diverse space for wildlife, pollinators, and people by using native and drought tolerant plant species.

The new beds will include native plants that provide nectar, pollen, leaves nuts and berries for wildlife and people. Plants in a variety of colors, shapes and sizes will be used to provide food for bees, hummingbirds, butterflies and other pollinators. The wild scaped design will also require less maintenance, such as weeding and watering over time as the new plants mature. The renovation of the shrub beds completes the planting program of life cycle improvements for Emerson Lake approved by Council in 2019 that included the planting of about 35 trees in the park.

The Town is pleased to support this project to enhance and keep our green spaces beautiful or residents to enjoy now and into the future.

Thank you for your understanding and patience during this construction. Follow the Town’s social media for updates on this and other news.

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For more information:

Town of High River

403-652-2110

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In the Garden With Debra and Steve Koenig

Joanne Kempinger Demski
| Special to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Debra and Steve Koenig describe the 5 acres that surround their River Hills home in various ways.

She calls it a labor of love.

He calls it a tremendous amount of work.

They both say it’s central to their lives.

“There’s no question about that. We spend most of our time in the growing months working on our property. It takes constant work when you have a property this big,” she said.

“Gardening mixes the pleasures of physical exertion, intellectual stimulation, problem solving, creativity and beauty. Neither of us gardened growing up and we have no formal training, but we both love the outdoors, and we were influenced by people close to us who treasured their flowers,” as well as travel destinations, she added.

Today their land is a park-like setting with a large vineyard, stands of nut trees, a mixed fruit orchard, espaliered apple and pear trees, a vegetable and flower garden, beehives, a wildlife pond, a Japanese-inspired garden, a garden with plants and pathways in an old barn foundation, a meadow, a large shade border, an area where mushrooms are grown on logs, and a shade garden at the front of the house.

“It’s edible landscaping,” Steve said. “We have chosen plants that give food for people, for insects and for animals. We also have the fruit trees, nut trees and pollinator plants for insects and butterflies.”

“We also grow grasses for shelter for insects and small mammals. … We are trying to restore some ecological balance to the property. We also added a pond last year so we would have a habitat for frogs,” Debra said.

Their gardens, along with two others, will be featured in this year’s Garden Conservancy 2022 Open Day Program for Milwaukee County on July 30 and 31.

Debra is president of the Milwaukee Art Museum Garden Club and regional ambassador for The Garden Conservancy, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to preserve and share America’s gardens and diverse gardening traditions.

Debra said a trip to France influenced them early on.

“We were lucky enough to travel to Europe when we were first married. We were in the Loire Valley and we saw the gardens at the Villandry Chateau and Gardens. They’re famous for their large kitchen garden, called a potager. It’s a vegetable garden that is ornamental.

“At the time, each section of the garden had little espaliered trees at the edge. We loved it and wanted to try doing that. We were really struck by that,” she said.

Steve, a retired physician, said they were looking for a larger piece of land when they bought their property in 1985. Until then, they had been living in an apartment downtown.

“We bought it with the hopes that we would garden, but we had no idea what it would become,” said Debra, a retired attorney.

They began working on one area of ​​their land at a time, with no clear plan in mind.

A 5-acre River Hills garden, packed with edible landscaping, will be on Open Days tour

Their land is a park-like setting with a vineyard, nut trees, a mixed fruit orchard, espaliered apple and pear trees, vegetable and flower gardens, beehives and a pond.

Lou Saldivar, Wochit

The first things they did — before they even moved in — were to clear buckthorn and add a vegetable and cutting garden.

“It was overgrown with buckthorn and invasive weeds. We have spent over 30 years battling the buckthorn and weeds,” he said.

“There were truly some wild areas,” she added.

Their work didn’t always go smoothly. They lost a number of ash trees about seven years ago, turning a large shady area sunny. The couple had to put in plants that would thrive in sun.

“Unfortunately we had to remove the trees because they had emerald ash borer. We lost 70 trees,” he said.

But today their property is nothing short of stunning.

One unique space is where Steve maintains his espaliered trees.

“Some are more than 30 years old,” Debra said. “Steve likes the challenge of training a tree to grow in the shape he wants. This style of gardening was developed in Europe as a way to get more fruit in a small space.”

“We have been working on our land 36 years now. It’s highly developed. We have touched a lot of the property, but there are still some small areas we haven’t touched,” she added.

They recently talked about their gardens and the upcoming tour.

Question: How much time do you typically spend gardening?

Debra: Some days we spend 10 hours in the garden. We spend a lot of our time harvesting things. And we are always baking and cooking the things we grow. Our lives are very centered on our property.

Q: Who does what on your property?

Debra: Steve does the vegetable garden, the grapes and the espaliered trees. He also does a lot of the heavy work. I do a lot of the weeding, and reading about different native plants and trees and how they help the environment.

Steve is also really good at making new areas. We have an old barn area we excavated, and we put in paths made from 19-century bricks. He also put in a Japanese-inspired garden with conifers and ferns. We have little pocket gardens. We try to have different areas.

Q: Do you have help tending your country?

Debra: We have someone cut the grass, but we don’t treat our lawn. We have dandelion and creeping Charlie. We don’t irrigate it. In the last five years or so, we have had a man who is a good gardener who helps us out five to 10 hours a week.

Q: Can you tell me about your vineyards?

Steve: The biggest area on our property is the vineyard. It used to be a horse pasture, and it has the original fence around it. It’s probably over 2 acres and it has all cold-hardy grapes. They were developed by the University of Minnesota for our climate and are all wine-making grapes. We don’t make the wine, but we do work with a winery. We have 500 vines and assorted varieties of grapes.

Q: What kind of nut trees did you plan?

Steve: Shagbark hickory, butternut, black walnut and hazelnut trees. They were put in 30 years ago.

Debra: We did it by planting nuts and whips, which are 1-year-old trees.

Q: What fruit trees are in your orchard?

Steve: We have pear, plum, nectarine, peach and apple trees.

Q: How many beehives do you have?

Steve: I have three hives. I added them at least 20 years ago.

Debra: We will be selling the honey from the hives at the tour. The proceeds will go to a community service project the Art Center Garden Club has.

Q: What kind of mushrooms do you have?

Steve: Shiitake and oyster mushrooms. You can only grow them on certain kinds of logs. You can use ironwood, oak and hard maple. The logs are inoculated with mushroom spores.

Debra: Once you put the spores in the wood, they will produce mushrooms for years. You will usually get two to three flushes a year.

Q: Did the property change much after you removed your ash trees?

Debra: We took them down about seven years ago. The loss of the trees changed a lot of our property, but it enabled us to put in a lot of native plants because when the trees were removed we had full sun. Before it was all shady. Now the area is a large meadow with native grasses, native plants, oak trees and river birch.

We forested it with native species of trees to restore the ecological balance. Oak trees support the most variety of native insects and native caterpillars. We also added river birch because part of it is wet.

That’s part of being a gardener. One of the challenges and also one of the joys is that things change. Things get too big, they don’t thrive, or pests come in and you are left with a different environment. Adapting to them is a challenge.

Q: Can you describe the allée near the front of your home?

Debra: It’s an allée made up of Norway Spruces. It was one of the reasons we bought the property. Those trees are around 100 years old. It’s a very peaceful and beautiful area. We have great horned owls living in the trees.

Q: What are your favorite spaces?

Debra: I really love my entire property, but right now my favorite place is sitting on a high point overlooking our new wildlife pond. We have a bench we sit on. It’s a great way to appreciate the wildlife in the pond. It’s set in the woods, and it’s very peaceful.

Steve: My favorite place is the vineyard. It’s amazing that we can grow grapes in this climate.

Debra: I tell people it’s like Napa Valley in Wisconsin.

Q: What are your three favorite plants?

Debra: One is verbena bonariensis. I love it so much because it’s a self-seeding annual. It pops up in different places, and it’s a magnet for butterflies and other pollinators. I harvest the seed heads and sprinkle around the seeds. So Salvia. There are all kinds of salvias on the property. The hummingbirds love salvia. My third choice is hostas. They aren’t native, but when you have a lot of shade like we do, they are great. We have a lot of them in front. The bees like the flowers, too. I also like them because they are so diverse. We have some huge ones, and some small ones. They are great for shading out weeds.

Steve: I like blue flag Iris. It’s a native plant, and it grows in low-lying wet areas. Also Canadian columbine because it has such beautiful flowers, and foxglove. I like its tubular flowers. The bees like them, too.

Q: Have you been doing a lot of work to get ready for the tour?

Steve: We’ve been mulching and pruning and weeding.

Debra: We are also replacing things that died over winter. It was a tough year for some conifers. Being on this tour is a real honor. We really want a premium experience for our guests. This is our second time on The Garden Conservancy Tour; we were on the tour in 2018.

Q: How do you cook with the food you harvest?

Debra: We make pizzas and pasta dishes with our mushrooms, and cook a lot of things with the honey. Every year, the amount of honey is different. Some years we don’t get any, last year we got 150 pounds. It’s a good sweetener. We also give it to our friends.

I have great recipes to use our fruit in cakes, and we make fruit compote and we freeze it. We also grow a lot of fresh vegetables. What we don’t eat, we give it away. We don’t harvest the nuts from the nut trees. We have squirrels that harvest the nuts.

Steve: We also make jam and pickles.

Q: What is the style of your home?

Steve: It was an unfinished caretaker’s cottage. It will be 100 years old in 2024. When we bought it, there was no plumbing upstairs. It was very rudimentary. We bought it and renovated it and ultimately added on to it.

Debra: It sits on the highest point of the land, so it gives us a great view.

*****

If You Go

What: The Garden Conservancy 2022 Open Days Program for Milwaukee County: Sponsored by The Garden Conservancy with the Milwaukee Art Museum Garden Club. Tour three private gardens totaling over 11 acres on the North Shore of Milwaukee County. They include a 5-acre property with a 2-acre vineyard, a vegetable and cutting garden, espaliered trees, and a wildlife pond; a property with an abundance of color and textures in sun and shade plants; and a large property with a prairie garden, an apiary, a vintage stucco and beam barn with an art studio, a perennial garden and an English garden.

When: 10 am to 4 pm July 30 and 31.

Tickets: $10 per person per garden. Children 12 and younger free with a paid adult admission.

Other events: Digging Deeper events will be 2 to 4 pm Aug. 20 and 10 am to noon Aug. 21 in Fox Point in conjunction with the tour and will focus on integrating native plants into an established garden. Admission is $40 a person.

Grade: Advance purchase is required for Open Days gardens and Digging Deeper, and tickets are limited.

For more information and tickets: See gardenconservancy.org/open-days/milwaukee-2022.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

The Water Resources Department (WRD) is contemplating constructing two more retaining walls in the city to protect the people living on the banks of the Krishna river from floods.

The WRD already began the construction of a 1.5-km-long retaining wall to protect Krishna Lanka and its neighborhood. Now, it is planning to construct a retaining wall from Kanaka Durga Varadhi to Padmavati Ghat, and another from Prakasam Barrage to Bhavanipuram.

According to information, the retaining wall from Varadhi would cost Rs.129 crore and the other one Rs.6.23 crore.

The department has sent the proposals for government clearance. People living in two municipal wards would benefit from the retaining wall from Varadhi while the one near Bhavanipuaram would be helpful to the fisherfolk living on the river bank.

The retaining walls were expected to withstand even 12 lakh cusecs of flood, the WRD officials said.

The department has taken up the retaining wall project to protect the people living in the low-lying areas of Ranigari Thota, Bhupesh Gupta Nagar, Taraka Rama Nagar and other localities of Krishna Lanka prone to flooding. The project cost is estimated at Rs.122.90 crore.

The retaining wall project started way back in 2011 but was set aside for a few years due to a lack of funds. Now, the works on the retaining wall up to Koti Nagar are going on at a brisk pace.

The localities on the banks of the Krishna in Vijayawada get inundated during the monsoon floods every year. The local people have been demanding that a retaining wall should be constructed along the bank to prevent the floodwater from entering the Krishna Lanka and other areas, for more than a decade.

“The Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) has to set up rehabilitation centers until the flood waters recede. The retaining walls are expected to address the problem,” officials said.