Illinois believes its upset of Wisconsin last year showed how far the program has come. The oddsmakers are reminding the Illini how far they still have to go.

Even after beating a Wisconsin team that was favored by 30 points last year, Illinois heads into Madison as a 19 -point underdog as the two West Division rivals prepare to open the pandemic-delayed Big Ten season Friday night.

I guess were going to have to go prove them wrong again, Illinois quarterback Brandon Peters said.

Illinois took a big step forward last year in coach Lovie Smiths fourth season by earning its first bowl bid since 2014, but the Illini are still searching for their first winning season since a 7-6 finish in 2011.

Beating Wisconsin for a second straight year would be a major move in the right direction. The 14th-ranked Badgers want to make sure that doesnt happen.

Illinois definitely deserves a butt-whooping from last year, Wisconsin running back Nakia Watson said earlier this month.

Watsons comments notwithstanding, Wisconsins players generally have downplayed the revenge motive.

Obviously last year didnt go the way we wanted it to, but we try not to dwell too much on the past, Wisconsin wide receiver Kendric Pryor said. Obviously theyre not the same team as last year and were not the same team as last year.

Wisconsins offense definitely isnt the same as it was last year.

The Badgers lost two-time Doak Walker Award-winning running back and Indianapolis Colts rookie Jonathan Taylor as well as All-America center Tyler Biadasz and leading receiver Quintez Cephus from last years team. Redshirt freshman quarterback Graham Mertz will make his first career start for Wisconsin after preseason foot surgery left returning starter Jack Coan out indefinitely.

Yet the Badgers still have enough talent in place to believe they can win the division for a fourth time in five seasons, whereas Illinois is still attempting to move its way up the standings.

Illinois stunned Wisconsin last year by showing the ball-hawking mentality that the Illini have adopted under Smith, a former NFL head coach and longtime NFL defensive assistant. Illinois had a Big Ten-leading 28 takeaways last season, including an interception against Wisconsin that led to James McCourts game-winning 39-yard field goal as time expired.

Now they want to take the next step.

Last year we were a six win-team, Smith said. And I think were a strong football team right now. We lost a few guys, but for the most part, our best players are back, and weve added quite a few players. So were excited about seeing exactly how we fit into the landscape in 2020.

PLAYING WITHOUT FANS

There wont be any spectators for the first Big Ten game of the season as part of the protocols in place due to the coronavirus pandemic.

STRONG ON THE LINE

Illinois returns four starters on the offensive line. Kendrick Green, Doug Kramer, Vederian Lowe and Alex Palczewski have 125 combined starts.

Wisconsin must replace three of its starting offensive linemen from last season, but the Badgers return Associated Press preseason All-America second-team tackle Cole Van Lanen. Wisconsin also got a boost from the return of Jon Dietzen, who has made 32 career starts but stepped away from the football program in 2019 due to injuries.

REPLACING TAYLOR

Watson and fifth-year senior Garrett Groshek figure to get the bulk of the carries Friday as Wisconsin attempts to replace Taylor, though sophomore Isaac Guerendo also should have a role.

Groshek rushed for 198 yards and two touchdowns and also had 29 catches for 289 yards last season. Watson ran for 331 yards and two touchdowns.

ILLINOIS TRANSFERS

Illinois will be counting on big contributions from plenty of transfers this season.

Some transfers to watch, with former schools in parentheses, include running back Chase Brown (Western Michigan), tight end Luke Ford (Georgia), wide receiver Brian Hightower (Miami), tight end Daniel Imatorbhebhe (Southern California), defensive tackle Roderick Perry (South Carolina State) and defensive back Derrick Smith (Miami).

SHOWCASE FOR MERTZ

Coans injury provides a showcase opportunity for Mertz, one of the most hyped recruits in recent Wisconsin history.

When Mertz signed with Wisconsin, it marked the first time since 2007 that the Badgers had signed a 247Sports Composite top-100 recruit who wasnt an offensive lineman. Mertz went 9 of 10 for 73 yards last season while playing in blowout victories over Central Michigan and Kent State.

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Illinois seeking to surprise No. 14 Wisconsin one more time - Greater Milwaukee Today

Town of Waynesville will conduct its bi-annual cemetery cleanup, beginning Nov. 9.

Items not collected by that date will be removed by Town staff and stored for 60 days.

Any article not contained in an approved memorial box, or that is deemed to be a safety hazard will be tagged and removed.

Such items include any trinket, toy, shells, sand, artificial material or object not permanently affixed to the headstone; glass jars, tin cans or glass vases; any border, fence, railing trellis, shepherds crook or yard flag stand/holders; bird houses, coping, hedge shrubs, tree or any other bounding or enclosing object or material constructed or planted in or around any lot or space.

Only one solar-powered or artificial light source is permitted per burial spot; no light source shall exceed 8 x 10 inches.

For additional assistance, please contact the Public Works Office at 828-456-3706.

See more here:
Cemetery cleanup to start Nov. 9 | Briefs | themountaineer.com - The Mountaineer

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football, where Massachusettss season began and likely ended with a 410 loss Saturday:

MORE DASH: TheUndefeateds| Big Ten Preview| Coach of Year?

How bad was Tennessee (11) Saturday? Bad enough to lose to Kentucky by 27 points, which is its largest margin of defeat against the Wildcats since a 270 loss in 1935. Last time the Volunteers lost by more than 27 to Kentucky was the first time the teams ever met, in 1893. So you could say this was a once-a-century calamity for Big Orange, but that would actually be understating it.

This was an outcome so galling that it led one Vols fan to throw a beer bottle through a window. Said fan felt compelled to call in to a postgame radio show and report his meltdown, adding that his wife left the house over it. Honey, Tennessee football done it, the man said he told his wife. I didnt do it.

Thats questionable accountability, but the beer bottle bomber isnt alone. Head coach Jeremy Pruitt (12) also found someoneother than himselfto blame, firing defensive line coach Jimmy Brumbaugh on Sunday. Brumbaugh was the scapegoat after all of four games at Tennessee, and no spring practice with his unit. (Tennessee fans had already started the Must Be Fired list, and Brumbaugh wasn't at the top of it.) The firing will cost the athletic program $830,000, according to the Knoxville News-Sentinel, though that could be mitigated if Brumbaugh gets another job.

Throwing around money is what Power 5 athletic programs do, though, and Tennessee is among the industry leaders in that area. Less than a month ago, athletic director and former coach Phillip Fulmer (13) announced a contract extension for Pruitt through 2025 that will increase his salary to $4.2 million next year. Per the release announcing the extension, Pruitt was credited with establishing a culture of toughness, a bowl appearance following a six-game winning streak and a top-10 recruiting class.

Calvin Mattheis/Pool via News Sentinel-Imagn Content Services, LLC

(According to USA Todays coaching salary database, Pruitt has not taken a pandemic-related pay cut in 2020. Many of his peers at public universities have. Given that, plus Pruitts comical inability to wear a mask correctly against Georgia, this might not be a guy who is taking the COVID-19 situation too seriously.)

At the time of the extension, Pruitts record was 1312. There is no reason to believe anyone was preparing to poach him. Today his record is 1514, with a 20 start followed by humbling losses to Georgia and the Wildcats. Butch Jones, Pruitts much-pilloried predecessor, was 1712 in his final 29 games at Tennessee. So the quick turnaround noted in the release announcing Pruitts extension has actually been a downturn to date.

Next up: Alabama. Things are fine.

The slightest glimmer of progress is over-rewarded so quickly in college football that schools often box themselves into ruinous buyouts when, stunningly, that progress turns out to be fools gold. Look around college football right now, and the landscape is rife with buyers remorse.

Syracuse (14): Yahoo Sports reported Saturday that Dino Baberss buyout is at least $17 million, which is a ton at a school that isnt raking in Big Ten or SEC-level media revenue even in the best of financial times. Baberss record at the school is 2430, just 611 since getting an enhanced contract in December 2018. His tenure at the school began with consecutive 48 seasons, then came a 103 breakthrough in 18 that earned him the new deal. It was Syracuses best season since 2001, but it was built on nonconference wins over Western Michigan, Wagner and Connecticut, plus a very weak Atlantic Coast Conference. Since then, Syracuse has regressed.

South Carolina (15): After going 94 in 2017 and beating Michigan in the Outback Bowl, Will Muschamp got a $1 million-a-year raise to $4.2 million. A year later, he got an extension through 2024 (11 days after that deal was announced, the Gamecocks lost the Belk Bowl 340 to Virginia to finish 76). Since then, South Carolina is 610 with two notable wins: upsetting Georgia last year and holding off Auburn Saturday. The nine-win season that got South Carolina administrators so excited came four seasons after Steve Spurrier competed a third straight 11-win campaign. Muschamps buyout currently stands at $13.2 million.

Nebraska (16): Last December, flush with the thrill of 48 and 57 seasons, the school extended the contract of Scott Frost through 2026. Frost was paid $5 million a year to come back to his alma mater after big success at UCF. His victories to date at Nebraska: Minnesota, Bethune-Cookman, Illinois twice, Michigan State, South Alabama, Northern Illinois, Northwestern and Maryland. His record against ranked opponents: 07. His buyout will be just north of $25 million as of Dec. 1. Since awarding that deal, athletic director Bill Moos has complained about how unfair it is that the Cornhuskers must open this season at Ohio State on Saturday. Maybe hell pay Frost another million or two for having to take on such a burden.

USC (17): After winning the Pac-12 in 2017 and finishing 113, Clay Helton received a 40% raise from then athletic director Lynn Swann to $4.5 million. Since then Helton has gone 1312, clinging to his job. Last we saw of the Trojans, they were being run out of the Holiday Bowl by Iowa, 4924.

LSU (18): Hey, if you go 150 and win the national championship, youre entitled to get paid. That said, what LSU gave Ed Orgeron is pretty amazing: at $8.9 million this season, the only coach earning more is Nick Saban. That more than doubled his previous salary. Without Joe Burrow, Joe Brady, Dave Aranda and many others, Orgeron thus far has delivered a 12 record while serving up the only wins of the season to both Mississippi State and Missouri. The one-hit wonder comparisons to Gene Chizik (19) may be premature, but Coach O hasnt done anything yet to dispel them.

Is Indiana (20) next? Well see. The Hoosiers gave coach Tom Allen a seven-year, $27.3 million deal last December after an 84 regular season, more than doubling his salary from $1.7 to $3.9 million. His overall record is 1820, and he lost ace offensive coordinator Kalen DeBoer. Four weeks after his new contract was announced, Allen's Hoosiers blew a 229 lead in the final five minutes to Tennesseewhich, in turn, helped Jeremy Pruitt get paid. People helping people, the college football way.

MORE DASH: The Undefeateds | Big Ten Preview| Coach of Year?

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Forde-Yard Dash: Think Twice Before Handing Out That Contract Extension - Sports Illustrated

Dock and yard management system streamlines the complexity of dock and yard operations, it includes warehouse management systems (WMS) and transportation management systems (TMS). This management system helps to reduce the typical and expensive logistics problems which anticipating in the growth of the dock and yard management system market. Advancements in technology, increasing digitalization, and growing focus on improving the efficiency of the supply chain are accelerating the growth of the dock and yard management system market.

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Leading Players in the Dock and Yard Management System Market: 4Front Engineered Solutions, C3 Solutions, Descartes Systems Group, Epicor Software Corporation, HighJump Software, Manhattan Associates, Oracle Corporation, ProAct International Ltd, Royal 4 Systems, Zebra Technologies Corp.

The Dock and Yard Management System market analysis is intended to provide all participants and vendors with pertinent specifics about growth aspects, roadblocks, threats, and lucrative business opportunities that the market is anticipated to reveal in the coming years. This intelligence study also encompasses the revenue share, market size, market potential, and rate of consumption to draw insights pertaining to the rivalry to gain control of a large portion of the market share.

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The Dock and Yard Management System Industry is extremely competitive and consolidated because of the existence of several established companies that are adopting different marketing strategies to increase their market share. The vendors engaged in the sector are outlined based on their geographic reach, financial performance, strategic moves, and product portfolio. The vendors are gradually widening their strategic moves, along with customer interaction.

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Dock and Yard Management System Market Trends, Size, Share, Status, Analysis and Forecast to 2027 With Leading Players 4Front Engineered Solutions, C3...

Fitter and Faster Swim Camps is the proud sponsor of SwimSwams College Recruiting Channel and all commitment news. For many, swimming in college is a lifelong dream that is pursued with dedication and determination. Fitter and Faster is proud to honor these athletes and those who supported them on their journey.

Evan Petty, who has been one of the hottest names in the early returns to racing after the coronavirus pandemic, has verbally committed to the defending NCAA Champion Cal Golden Bears.

A senior at Ensworth High School, Petty is expected to join the Golden Bears in the fall of 2021, and was one of the top remaining recruits in the class to commit.

As a sophomore, Petty was 4th in the 200 IM and 5th in the 100 back at the Tennessee High School State Championship meet, but didnt swim at the state meet as a junior in February.

In 2019, he won 3 Southeastern Swimming LSC titles, topping the 50 yard back, 100 yard back, and 200 yard backstrokes. He was also a Winter Juniors East finalist in the 100 yard backstroke last December, swimming 48.79.

Petty celebrated his commitment, announced last Tuesday, with two more best times over the weekend at a Nashville Aquatic Club intrasquad. There he posted best times in the 50 yard free and 200 yard back.

Best Times in Yards:

* Best times swum since meets resumed this summer after coronavirus quarantines.

Cal had one of the best backstroke programs in the country last season, though they didnt get to see that come to fruition at the NCAA Championship meet, which was eventually canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Golden Bears had two swimmers rank in the top 8 nationally in the 200 back with Daniel Carr (1:37.87 4th) andHugo Gonzalez (1:39.66 8th) both achieving that. They were the only school in the country with two swimmers in the top 8.

Carr is the cherry on top of a loaded class for the Cal men, who are likely winding down their 2021 recruiting and turning their focus to the fall of 2022. Also in the class of 2021 for the Golden Bears are the 6th-ranked recruit Jack Alexy, 14th-ranked recruit Trent Frandson, Swedish star Robin Hanson, Sean Swift, Jacob Soderlund, Kai Crews, and Gabriel Jett.

That class is loaded with backstrokers, including Crews (48.1/1:46.9) and Jett (48.4/1:44.6). That follows a 2020 class that included one of the best high school backstrokers of the last decade Destin Lasco (45.9/1:40.7).

If you have a commitment to report, please send an email with a photo (landscape, or horizontal, looks best) and a quote to [emailprotected].

About the Fitter and Faster Swim Tour

Fitter & Faster Swim Camps feature the most innovative teaching platforms for competitive swimmers of all levels. Camps are produced year-round throughout the USA and Canada. All camps are led by elite swimmers and coaches. Visitfitterandfaster.comto find or request a swim camp near you.

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Evan Petty, One of Top Remaining Recruits in Class of 2021, Commits to Cal - SwimSwam

Sourced from the Advocate

If you're planning to add trees and shrubs to your yard, now is the time to do it.

Planting in the fall gives them time to get established, and, when spring arrives, they will flourish.

This season, look beyond crepe myrtles and Bradford pear trees and pick native trees, shrubs and plants.

When you think "native," thinkplants that occur naturally in the region, state, ecosystem or habitat without direct or indirect human intervention.

Native trees like magnolias, oaks, swamp titis, yaupons, native fringe trees, Virginia willows, fetterbushes, pond cypress, swamp tupelos, native persimmons and paw paws can make your yard look great and provide crucial resources for wildlife.

Native trees have become a crucial part of the mission of Baton Rouge Green.

The 30-year-old organizations priority used to be planting trees for beautification of the city's landscape, said Christopher Cooper, a program specialist for Baton Rouge Green.

Weve made a transition from just city beautification to seeing trees as what they really are: green infrastructure and essential infrastructure," he said. "Because of this, weve been planting as many native trees as we can."

To help turn our planted landscapes into effective biological corridors, Cooper said we need to add native plants to our neighborhoods, corporate landscapes and lands bordering infrastructure even in dense cities.

Baton Rouge Green currently manages over 4,300 trees on the roadways and in community landscapes in East Baton Rouge Parish. The organization maintains the trees with pruning, fertilization, weed control, insect control and incident management through an agreement with Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development and East Baton Rouge Parish Department of Public Works.

Each year, a study showed, these 4,300 trees prevent the runoff of over 11.4 million gallons of stormwater, save the community over 466,000 kilowatt-hours of energy and store over 1.4 million pounds of carbon, among countless other ecological benefits.

Read the full article

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Native Trees, Like Oaks and Yaupons, are Good for Our Environment and Our Health - Living Architecture Monitor magazine

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Award-winning Dubai-based landscape architect Will Bennett launches WILDEN Design, a new sustainable landscaping boutique to encourage people to foster and stimulate natural habitats that can thrive in the UAE, by offering clients inspiring, contemporary gardens created using landscaping practices that have a lower environmental impact.

There is a huge movement globally to live sustainably and to regenerate landscapes for our shared benefit, and this has really inspired the ethos behind WILDEN Design, says founder Will Bennett. My mission extends beyond designing beautiful gardens I want to inspire people to connect to the nature that is on their doorstep in the most meaningful way that I can, by understanding the environment around us and by nurturing it. If we all start to take care of the little piece of the planet that we call home, this behaviour will snowball into helping to conserve and improve the wider world around us.

WILDEN Designs landscaping practices focus on using locally-sourced and manufactured materials, and plant and grass species that are indigenous to the GCC or from similar arid climates. Such practices help to minimise resources used in construction and maintenance, whilst generating strong, flourishing ecosystems in residential gardens across the Emirates.

Catering to a growing demand for online consultation, WILDEN Design provides clients with a seamless digital design experience through its website http://www.wildendesign.com, which employs innovative technologies to map out a clients plot. Customers receive a bespoke landscape design according to their brief and budget or they can choose from a range of pre-designed thematic gardens that are customised to suit the required plot.

Every garden, yard, patio and even balcony in the UAE has the potential to generate a thriving natural habitat for people to enjoy and cherish, says Will. It doesnt matter what the scale is whether its ten people or ten thousand if someone hears my message and is inspired to create a beautiful garden that encourages biodiversity, reduces waste and has a positive climate change impact, then thats my goal achieved.

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Dubai-based landscape architect Will Bennett launches WILDEN... - Construction Business News

Put aside worries about Google Street Views surveillance capability, and its HD cameras will open up myriad strange and wonderfully immersive views into landscapes both out-of-the-way and under-the-radar. Theres a privacy and an intimacy in clicking through those public, panoptic street scenes, as disembodied visitors form their impressions of a place based on a strangers documentation.

The immersive format works especially well at sites like Philadelphias Graffiti Pier, a disused coal bridge on the Delaware River that in recent years has gained notoriety as a mecca for aerosol art. Thanks to Street View user Mark Henninger, who documented the alle, as well as more than 14,000 Instagram tags, I can stroll under the piers concrete arches to admire the colorful cartoon characters and writhing arabesques in high-res.

A place like Graffiti Pier is both an open-air gallery and a living monument to changing economics. The site was once part of the giant Port Richmond rail yard, a busy inland exchange where ships were loaded up with Pennsylvania anthracite for distribution along the Eastern Seaboard and on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Freight company and current owner Conrail bought the industrial area in the mid-1970s, at the nadir of the states coal output, and all but abandoned the southern portion of the waterfront in 1991a decision that de facto opened the pier to street artists. Now, thanks to a nonprofit that stewards the citys waterfront, and a coalition between the New York-based landscape firm Studio Zewde and the Philly taggers who have made it into a destination, Graffiti Pier is slated for yet another transformation.

The proposal from Studio Zewde walks a tightrope: Make the area accessible to a wider public and protect it from climate change, but dont erase the piers offbeat spirit in the process. The design moves that were proposing are really an act of preservation, explained Studio Zewde principal Sara Zewde. But in order to keep the space feeling the same way, you have to change it.

Renderings of the six-acre site depict interventions so minimal as to be indistinguishable from the photos on Google and social media. In one image, a stylish woman in a pinstripe dress and a young boy sit on top of a rail bridge covered in wildflowers (see up top), while in others the yawning coal bridge trellis stretches out toward the river in both directions.

Despite its newfound online exposure, the pier isnt easy to findsomething that Studio Zewdes plan seeks to address. Currently, visitors arriving at the pier from nearby neighborhoods Port Richmond and Olde Richmond must traverse the barren undercroft of Interstate 95 or the rail yards overgrown industrial flatlands. A big goal is to make a more legible entrance to the future park and to improve the paths alongside and beneath the coal bridge for ease of use. Access means little, however, if the pier is underwater, a real likelihood with fiercer storms and higher tides in the coming years. To mitigate potential ruin, Studio Zewde is considering seeding intertidal wetlands both to control flooding and to add a visual barrier between the pier and a massive townhouse development underway in Port Richmond.

Investments like these in Graffiti Pier, said Zewde, were the only way it could survive, essence intact, amid a changing environment and development pressures. A lot of the new development is sleek, clean, and sterile, and people said they didnt want an aesthetic that relates to a lot of the new development. And so our approach to designing something gritty, and that feels found, is a challenge to that aesthetic.

Consensus around the approach, Zewde added, mobilized artists and community groups to get involved in the planning process. The project teamwhich, apart from Studio Zewde, includes the nonprofit Delaware River Waterfront Corporation (DRWC) and the public space advocacy firm Amber Art and Designexpressly avoided the conventional box-checking approach to community outreach, in which public meetings are a rubber stamp to move projects along the pipeline. DRWC in particular hopes the relationships it has forged with Philadelphians through its decade of greening the waterfront have built goodwill and buy-in for the pier transformation.

Every project we do is for the city, not just for people who live nearby, said Karen Thompson, DRWCs director of planning. This project really has these three audiencesnear neighbors, people interested in art, and people who make art.

Shortly after winning its contract in September 2019, the team convened an advisory council with an even split among seats for community development corporations and higher-profile artists, who helped provide connections to underground street artists, who are harder to reach. Occasionally these smaller groups met in bars, because some of the street artistsowing to the illicit nature of their work and negative public perceptions of graffitiprefer a level of anonymity that would be hard to maintain at a larger public event.

Zewde and Thompson both shared some insight into the on-the-ground process: At one of the first public meetings, Thompson said, the team asked artists what they thought was the best thing that could happen at the pier (How do we keep this a place that feels found?) and the worst thing that could happen (accelerating gentrification). The G-word came up often, but she noticed it was invoked around the fear of losing a place that feels secret and undiscovered amid new development in the neighborhood.

For Zewde, being on the other side of these exercises is what got her interested in urban planning and landscape architecture in the first place. She grew up in Louisiana and, as a college sophomore, started going to community planning meetings after Hurricane Katrina hit. I was frustrated by the gap between what I knew the place to be and what the designers were saying, she recalled. That was what made me feel like I should learn what they learned and see why theres this huge gap [in understanding].

It all ties into a holistic approach toward shaping space. My research and practice are really held together by a central inquiry, an expanded mode of what landscape architecture can be, Zewde explained. It is designing places and building places that make people feel like they belong in this world.

See more here:
Thanks to a design coalition with community ties, Philadelphia's Graffiti Pier will live on as a public park - The Architect's Newspaper

Allison Watkins, Special to the San Angelo Standard-Times Published 6:00 a.m. CT Oct. 15, 2020 | Updated 12:56 p.m. CT Oct. 17, 2020

Texas A&M's AgriLife Extension Service offers several publications to help you establish and maintain a healthy lawns.(Photo: Texas A&M AgriLife)

Fall weather has come and gone several times; summer hasnt quite wanted to be done for the year. Its hard to know what to do in the yard with such changeable conditions! Now that we are getting closer to November, days are getting shorter and temperatures are not jumping up quite so high.

The first landscape task for fall is to modify watering. Homeowners with automatic irrigation systems should adjust the timers if they have not been changed for fall yet. While there have been plenty of hot days recently, landscapes are needing less water than during the extreme summer climate. The website WaterMyYard.org is a great tool to help know how long to run the irrigation system each week based on local weather.

There have been questions about a weedy grass popping up in yards KR bluestem is an invasive, aggressive perennial grass that pops up in late summer and has gone to seed this time of year. It thrives most in yards that are stressed, and not as much in healthy, vigorously growing yards. So the main recommendation for control is to mow frequently, fertilize properly and irrigate regularly through the growing season to allow the turfgrass to thrive and resist weed invasion. Pre-emergent will not provide good control since KR bluestem is a perennial plant. Keep an eye out and catch it early dig up clumps of the grass by hand before it gets out of control.

Later in the season when leaves start to fall, remember dont bag it and keep fallen leaves out of landfills. Leaves are a great source of organic matter and should be taken advantage of place in a compost pile, use as mulch in beds, or even simply mow over leaves in the grass to shred them up.

Now that its cooling down, its a great time to add some fresh bright color to the landscape with cool season annual color. Plant pansies, snapdragons, stock, dianthus, and ornamental kale for late fall and winter interest. When planting annual color, the biggest bang for the buck comes when planting in small groupings instead of spreading a few flowers out through a large bed. Plant several flowers close together in a few areas or pockets of a flower bed, or plant several close together in a container for the most color pop and impact.

Allison Watkins is the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Agent for horticulture in Tom Green County. Contact her at aewatkins@ag.tamu.edu.

Allison Watkins(Photo: San Angelo Standard-Times)

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Tips for taking care of your lawn in the fall in West Texas - Standard-Times

Marisa Y. Thompson, Southwest Yard and Garden Published 3:17 a.m. MT Oct. 18, 2020

This purple fountain grass is thriving after a single growing season, but it may not be cold hardy enough to stay alive through the winter.(Photo: Les Bender)

Question: We have a lovely purple fountain grass (planted in the spring), and I keep hearing that it will die in the winter and we would have to plant a new one each year. Others say to dig it up, pot it, cut it back, put it in the house near a window, and replant it in spring. Another view is it will be fine in winter; just cut it back in spring and it will flourish! So we are confused. I also considered purchasing a small pop-up greenhouse and putting it around the plant to fight off frost and also allow it to get sun. Any help you could give would be most appreciated.

Les Bender, northeast Rio Rancho (6,000 feet elevation)

Answer: I understand this conundrum. Conflicting horticultural advice is often an indication that theres no single correct answer. Youre right that purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum') is perhaps marginally hardy in your area, and is listed by several sources as being cold hardy to USDA Hardiness Zones 8 and 9, which means this species can make it through winters with temperatures reaching as low as 10 degrees Fahrenheitand still grow back in the spring.

The next step is to determine the USDA Hardiness Zones in your yard. According to https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/, youre likely to be in USDA Hardiness Zone 7, with average annual extreme minimum temperatures (from 19762005) of 0 to 10 degrees. But its not quite that simple because 1) average temperatures have gone up, even in the past decade, and continue to do so; and 2) you may have microclimates, like up against a low west-facing wallthat get plenty of sun and stay considerably warmer than other, more exposed areas.

Marisa Y. Thompson(Photo: Courtesy)

For details on how to find and use this info in your landscape planning, check out my May 2020 column on picking the right shrub for your zone by searching my blog for the terms match maker (https://nmsudesertblooms.blogspot.com).

The rock mulch shown in your photos can also be expected to impact the microclimate by increasing daytime soil temperatures and keeping nighttime temps higher with residual heat. This may be a serious concern for our Southwest landscapes because of related urban heat island effects, continued global warming, and heat and drought stress on landscape plants. But, in terms of keeping microclimates warmer, the gravel around your ornamental grass may help it survive the winter.

I dont trust myself to keep a plant like this alive indoors over the winter. To me, the plant may be more likely to die with the combined stress of being dug up and potted, sporadic neglect while being protected inside, and being transplanted again in the spring than if I left it in place. So I cannot recommend this method. Plus, we may have an unseasonably warm winter ahead of us. Keep an eye on the weather. If a cold snap is coming, you can easily add short-term protection by covering your grass with a sheet or blanket overnight.

An important tip is to keep that beautiful foliage intact through the entire winter. This is true for other ornamental grasses as well. On top of it being pretty through the winter, the above-ground plant material provides a warming micro-microclimate (lets call it a nanoclimate) for the root zone and plant crown. In the early spring, itll be time to cut the leaf blades down close to the ground; you can simplify cleanup by tying them in a ponytail beforehand.

I joke that a title for this column could be Pain in the Grass, but its not the grasss fault. These are the problems associated with planting species that are marginally cold hardy. We have several other species of beautiful ornamental grasses (both native and adapted) that are plenty cold hardy in New Mexico landscapes. My personal favorites are sand lovegrass (Eragrostis trichodes), blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis), and muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris). For more info, including links to recommended landscaping books and a video on selecting ornamental grasses for your yard, check out the blog version of this weeks column at https://nmsudesertblooms.blogspot.com/.

Send gardening questions to Southwest Yard and Garden - Attn: Dr. Marisa Thompson at desertblooms@nmsu.edu, or at the NM Desert Blooms Facebook page (@NMDesertBlooms) Please copy your County Extension Agent (http://aces.nmsu.edu/county/) and indicate your county of residence when you submit your question! For more gardening information, visit the NMSU Extension Horticulture page at Desert Blooms (http://desertblooms.nmsu.edu/) and the NMSU Horticulture Publications page at http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/.

Marisa Y. Thompson, PhD, is the Extension Horticulture Specialist in the Department of Extension Plant Sciences at the New Mexico State University Los Lunas Agricultural Science Center

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Pain in the grass: Protecting cold-sensitive plants - Las Cruces Sun-News