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Personal Brand Becomes a Gardening Website |Relentless Advance

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Welcome to Relentless Advance. This website was originally, Relentless Advance Photography, a photography gallery website. It then transitioned into a personal blog in 2015 where I researched social work topics in the news and posted my relevant knowledge and opinions. This led to a real-world job offer that has encompassed the last six years of my life. I went from a made-up job title to Clinical Director and Program Director.

I recently was gifted with a catalyst moment that pushed my ‘back of the bus’ ideas and plans into the forefront of my brain. One of my group of coworkers who have stuck together for six years left. I had previously left for seven months and returned after dabbling in a therapist role. I fear my return to the traditional working world was more for safety and consistency than letting opportunities come and grow.

It was so easy to go back to what I knew and to have a consistent paycheck. It was also easy to overwork myself once again into having no personal life outside of work and taking on the stress of an entire agency. I have also been freelance writing for one year now as well. The catalysts and signs keep coming forward pointing me in different directions.

Gardening and landscape design have been interests of mine since Middle School. When I finished high school, I wanted to become a landscape designer, but I also did not want my passions to be lost to supporting myself financially. I do not regret becoming a clinical social worker though, I love working with kids and systems of care.

In Middle School while I was slowly transitioning from extroversion to introversion. My parents invested in my passion and soon the whole family was invested in landscaping the yard each year, much to my brothers’ dismay. The funny thing is that my younger brother grew up to work as a landscaper for the St. Louis Arch through the government.

Relentless Advance as a personal blog has had a mixture of gardening posts throughout the years, mostly involving the purchase of my own home and the ability to create a landscape that empties all the design ideas out of my head. During my brief period of being an independent contractor and therapist, I had artist Beau Thomas create a mural on the side of my garage to keep me focused on Relentless Advance.

Relentless Advance is now solely for gardening and landscaping while I migrate my personal blog and social work topics over to another website. If I can spend a few hours a week writing website content for other people around the world, I can dedicate a few hours to creating content for my own websites. I happen to specialize in gardening articles, so the transition should be easy and enjoyable.

Welcome to the return of my younger years’ passion, except now I have dirt and a credit card!

2020 Plant Purchases

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2020 Garden Plant List

Reviewing my 2020 Garden

Well now that it is October, it is the end of the growing season in the Green Bay area. In 2019 it was freezing cold on Halloween, so I am hard at work winterizing my garden and cleaning things up for the long, long winter months I endure each year. I wanted to take some time to review the plants that I bought and acquired for the 2020 growing season, many of them foundational plants.

The first plants I put in the ground were two massive boxwoods I found on Facebook Marketplace. The woman had five plants under her front picture window and only two plants fit in a minivan. The woman gave me the tag that she had from when she first bought them, they were Green Velvet Boxwood. When I bought two more plants from Stein’s Garden and Home, I bought the same type. I also ended up buying four Japanese maples and three of them are in my backyard. From The Tree Center, I purchased a Bloodgood, Inaba Shidare, and Kiyohime. From Fast Growing Trees, I purchased a Viridis. The Viridis is in the front yard and I bought it after my Inaba Shidare started turning green instead of its amazing red color. In doing some research, it was suggested that red colored Japanese maples turn green in the shade.  From Proven Winners’ website, I ordered four “Show Off” Forsythia and four “Lemony Lace” Elderberry. Later, in the late summer, when I found Ivy Trails Gift and Garden in Green Bay, I purchased a black “Laced Up” Elderberry. From Ivy Trails, I also bought some other perennials like Allium Millennium and “Arizona Apricot” Blanket Flower. The only other big foundational plant was an “Ann” Magnolia from Fast Growing Trees as well. When I dug the hole for the magnolia, I discovered tree roots in the area. I may have to dig up the magnolia and dig out some of the larger tree roots so that the magnolia has a better chance of becoming stable in the soil.

In a future post, I will list some of my 2021 plans and plants. The 2021 season will focus on expanding the front yard and side yard areas. Maybe I can also figure out how I want the backyard lawn area to look while keeping some of the curves and grass areas.

proven winners-garden center-plants

August Landscape

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My coworker and work husband asked me to help him surprise his wife with planting a lilac bush and doing some bordering brick and wood around it. This was a fun little project and his father also helped us. I was quite comical to see the two of us with our DIYer tools and ideas and his father with the real knowledge and equipment.  An example is that we used these fabric bags to haul dirt, bags you would use for weeding or collecting leaves. Neither one of us own wheelbarrows. I brought my new hammer drill and a shovel. We cut some 4×4 posts and created a corner garden area for the one lilac bush.  It was my coworkers idea to not even take the grass out, just pile dirt on top.  I mean it worked in the end and we survived a very hot and humid day.

The local garden store that my coworker bought the lilac bush from was Ivy Trails Garden Center in Green Bay. When I walked into that place and saw the stock as well as the pots that said ‘Proven Winners‘ I knew I had found my new favorite garden center. I spent a good amount of money there and it was worth it. One thing I found was a black elderberry. I had bought four lemony lace elderberries directly from Proven Winners in March. So to be able to offset the yellow with a black/dark purple was a great find. I know a lot about Proven Winners due to falling in love with ‘Garden Answer‘ on YouTube. I am all about using YouTube to do research before I start a project. It has been so nice spending the COVID time watching and rejuvenating a passion for gardening and landscaping. I am so glad that Green Bay has a Proven Winners supplier and I do not need to rely on big box stores like Home Depot for plants.

One thing that is a bit crazy with the summer is that as I am adding more and more plants into my landscape, my parents are getting rid of more and more garden spaces. As I slowly became an introvert around Middle School age, I started getting involved in gardening and my parents transformed their landscape to work with my interests. So fast forward to years and years later, we are turning their yard into more grass.  My parents have given me some of their Asiatic lilies as well as some of their hostas.

Flood light spot light light trespass

Neighbor’s Flood Light Issue

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Greetings RA readers. Since its the summer and I am putting in a lot of time, effort, and money for my landscape, I have been plagued with one big issue. My neighbor behind me has a flood light that shines like a spotlight into my backyard. Even worse, it shines into my house into my spare bedroom and in direct line with where I lay my head in my nearby bedroom. I have blackout curtains in the spare bedroom but they don’t cancel out all of the light. The biggest issue is going outside at night with my dog Rebel and being blinded by the light so much so that I can’t locate Rebel in my own yard. I also feel like I can’t enjoy my hard work within the landscape at night, including use of the tabletop propane fire kit I bought.

I attempted to ask the city of Green Bay if they could do anything related to light trespass and they did not resolve the issue. With COVID, they were hesitant but I received several email responses and also sent pictures of the light to them. One day I received an email that the complaint was closed. I guess the utility of the light is to light up the parking area behind the neighbor’s house.

Now you may be wondering why I haven’t gone to the neighbors and asked them about the light. Before COVID hit, the home was for sale as a two unit duplex. With COVID and not selling, they took the home off the market and rented it out. So the people that live there are renters and not the actual owners who put the light up. 

The intensity of the light disrupts my ability to enjoy my yard at night. One thing I have been doing is planting some Forsythia in the back by the fence as well as a Bloodgood Japanese maple. I am hoping that eventually these elements will work to block the light. A creative solution that I thought about was using the light to highlight the back of my house. So I plan on adding a mural and putting up a vertical wall plant system. Then I could just face the house and admire that portion of the yard at night.

Let me know your thoughts. Should I try to talk to someone or should I continue with my creative alternatives?

 

Harvesting Community Involvement

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If I am an expert at anything, I feel very confident in saying I know a lot about plants and gardening. Riverview Gardens in Appleton was built on the land of a private country club. They are a community organic farm and garden without physical boundaries. Their newest venture has been an enclosed hydroponic garden that was once the country club’s outdoor pool.
Riverview Gardens runs various job training programs in conjunction with the produce they create. They have a wonderful program for veterans.

Veterans and farming sound incompatible however there has been a growing movement combining the two into sustainable food, jobs, and community development. In fact, Dylan Ratigan, a former MSNBC host left television and began a partnership with former military guests from his show that had created a veteran resource hydroponic garden near Camp Pendleton San Diego, California.

Veterans have a sense of work ethic and service that other potential employees lack, so getting them involved in urban farming is a good fit. This kind of programming can also lend itself to other skills and disciplines, such as environmental psychology, landscape design, and architecture. In architecture and design, veterans can help create welcoming environments. They can use their previous experiences of being aware of their personal surroundings, hyper vigilance, and establishing safe perimeters to provide insight into creating safe, open, and inviting environments.

Riverview Gardens is a very wonderful resource agency in the community and the community benefits not only from their programming but also their healthy organic produce. They also recently procured a four story space in downtown Appleton which will help their job training programs out immensely. It could also serve as a better location for community awareness and outreach leading to their hidden away farm location near the Oneida Street bridge.

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