Landscaping

New initiatives launched in Canada to highlight the importance of healthy eating are being backed by leading consumer goods companies, including Coca-Cola. The initiatives will alter the landscape of advertising directed at children, and demonstrate that global players are taking the issue of rising childhood obesity seriously.

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Northern Gardening Tips: Want spring blossoms but no crabapples ...

White and pink crabapple tree blossoms in spring are a welcome relief to winter's gray days. But with fewer people making crabapple jelly, many people want crabapple trees solely for their blooms and find the prolific crabapple fruit to be a real nuisance. In the long run, the easiest way to enjoy the flowers but avoid the fruit is to plant one of the flowering crab cultivars that produce no fruit. On existing trees, you can prevent fruit from forming with the use of plant hormones. Plant hormones, natural or synthetic, are not pesticides, so they don't kill anything except the maturing ovaries of the crab apple tree, but you have to be on the ball to apply the right amount of plant hormone at the right time. One synthetic plant hormone, called naphthalene acetic acid or NAA causes young fruit to abort while doing no harm to the tree or surrounding plants or insects.

Storm has weather watchers on edge of seat

Rain, snow, sleet and temperatures around 40 degrees will make for an unpleasant, but probably not alarming, weekend of weather, meteorologists predicted yesterday.

A storm that dumped 6 inches of snow in Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas was expected to head northeast yesterday and today.

"There's potential for snow in the Pittsburgh area," said Bob Smerbeck, an Accuweather meteorologist. "It's going to be a close call. We're going to be on the back edge and it's going to be right on the edge of rain and snow."

City Public Works Director Guy Costa said he pulled crews from street cleaning and pothole patching yesterday to put plows and spreaders on trucks "to play it safe" in case of heavy snow this weekend. Mr. Costa said the forecasts he's heard call for anywhere from half an inch to a foot of snow.

Weathering INDUSTRY CHANGE

Riverview Retirement Community, which has been operating here for nearly 50 years, says it has been taking needed steps to adapt to changing consumer demands and heightened competition from players hoping to capitalize on the graying U.S. population. Among those steps has been the launch of the North Side complexs $12.5 million Village West project, a 45-unit independent-living development that got under way last year, as well as planning for an expansion of its skilled-nursing center, says Wm. Patrick ONeill, Riverviews president and CEO. Another focus has been to market Riverview as an affordable place for seniors to spend their sunset years, ONeill says. Our residents are people who are looking for value, he says. We want to make sure our costs are reasonable. Riverview Retirement is associated with Lutheran Churches of the Inland Northwest, and operates under three separate nonprofit organizations, named Riverview Terrace, Riverview Village, and Riverview Lutheran Care Center.

New facility helps those with terminal illness

Nestled in the rolling hills down a country road with a picturesque mountain view just east of Okotoks, lies a new facility that will comfort those who are nearing the end of their life from a terminal illness. This new facility is called the Foothills Country Hospice. The approximate 12,000 square foot building located on eight acres donated by Dr. Jim Hansen and family in memory of his late wife, Catherine, who passed away from terminal cancer is slated to be open for those requiring hospice services in the Foothills area by the fall of this year. The Foothills Country Hospice is a state-of-the-art facility that will be one of the first rural, purpose-built, free standing hospice homes for adults in Canada, said Jean Quigley, board member and chairman of the Foothills Country Hospice Society fundraising committee, during a press conference at the hospice on Friday.