Your Questions About Gardening

GardenersCardiff answers:

George Winston is the Grand-daddy of ‘New Age’ music. He pretty much invented and made the style and it is defined as a recognizable genre by listening to just about any of his pieces. His record label was Windham Hill, which ventured into alot of the easier to listen to pop and semi-pop genres of the time.

The genre tends to have simple harmony, little modulation, is not overly ‘busy’ as far as a lot of notes. Most of its pieces are of pop-music length, three to four minutes, five already being a long cut. It is a simple sort of music where often there is not so much a melody as a little scrap of something melodic. It aims to be easily ‘pretty.’

Some of us call it the ‘tinkle, tinkle’ school of piano music.

There is tons of George Winston playing his own music on YouTube (piano solo).

The Grand-Mama of New-Age has got to be Enya, instrumentals like “Orinoco Flow.”
From there, like all pop music, there came a number of others, and like the mentality of pop, instant sub-genres were named.

John Tesh is / was categorized as ‘new-age’ So is pop Mormon Piano Guy piano player John Schmidt, though his form of pop music is often busier with a false sort of excitement using a ‘lots of notes.’ He either plays pretty loud all the time, or indulges, Yanni-like in the most cliche use of crescendo.

There is that dubious heading on YouTube “sad piano song” – they’re not songs, of course, but piano pieces – where about half are new-ageish, the other half I guess ‘pop contemporary instrumental.’ A lot, you can tell, are bare bones very limited bits of a few chord first attempts at ‘composition’ by teenagers with a digital piano they can record or or record and play back via midi. Many of the ‘sad piano songs’ are Really Sad, but for not the reason the composers think….

Yanni (unbelievably cheap and low-end music) is categorized both as ‘new-age’ and sometimes ‘world music’ depending on what he’s doing. (lowest common demonimator schlock – wildly popular, makes a good living)

The group ‘Secret Garden’ is under a new pop category, the wrongly named “Neoclassical” That group is more quasi-Celtic pseudo-classical than ‘neoclassical’ Neoclassical is a classical genre started about 1920, where modernist composers used modern harmony in fairly clear old baroque and classical forms – the pop genre perhaps used the word because once in a while they have a chord progression that sounds more like a simple chord progression from the baroque. There is nothing very ‘classical’ oriented about any of the pop neoclassical stuff, including secret garden.

“Easy Listening” is more like Mantovani Strings, (before any young person’s time) or ‘lite’ classical like the music of Leroy Anderson. Unlike ‘chill music’ of a later era, you would never find a pulsed drum backbeat behind any of the Easy listening Music – almost none of it had any strong rhythmic drive.

‘Easy Listening’ could / should include some of the minor composers like Frederick Delius, etc. And I suppose a lot of different sorts of film music. Nothing too upsetting, nothing commanding a lot of attention or thought. Usually has a low-key dynamic, too, no huge crescendos, etc. ‘Easy listening can readily be used as unobtrusive background music. Easy listening is supposed to be pleasant, never gets loud, and is also understood as completely of the moment, nothing meant to be ‘memorable’ about it.

The term is often used in the negative, meaning there’s just not much substance to that sort of music.

GardenersCardiff answers:

If talking politely to the owner doesn’t work, then there are some things that you can spray around the place that may help. I work at a vets once a week, and they have some charming sounding things including one called P iss Off, no joke!

One thing I can tell you that doesn’t work is putting plastic bottles of water on the garden, people here used to do that many years ago because there was an urban myth that this stopped dogs pooping there (because dogs wont poop near water), but our dog used to play with them, he thought they made a great toy!

Also, if you don’t like the idea of chemicals, there are some natural scents that dogs don’t like – not sure what they are, I can’t remember, but I know many cats dislike the smell of citrus fruits like lemon, and vinegar, I’d be willing to bet that dogs dont like them either.

GardenersCardiff answers:

You will need to par boil them to remove the skins. It is very easy, cut an shallow X across the top of the tomato, dip it in boiling water for 3-4 seconds, remove & put in a bowl with water & ice, do this to all of the tomatoes you will be using. When you are done you should be able to remove the peel very easily by grabbing the point of the skin (where you made the X) between a thin knife blade and your finger & pulling down gently. This should remove the skin in several pieces, you may have to do a little extra trimming. I then cut the tomatoes into quarters and remove the seeds. Dice the meat of the tomatoes and add to a pot with 1-2 quarts of chicken stock. If you are trying to make a pure tomato soup add just enough stock to cover the amount of tomatoes you are using. If you are looking to make a veggie soup then you want more stock than tomatoes. You will need to cook the tomatoes for at least an hour, add salt & pepper to taste, if you want more flavors add garlic, onion powder, oregano. When the tomatoes are mushy use a stick blender to puree them. At this point you can add milk or cream to make it cream soup or just leave it plain.
If you are doing veggie soup, add the veggies you want to the stock with the tomatoes, season to taste & cook til all are tender.
If you don’t mind the skins leave them on. I remove them & the seeds because I like a smooth tomato soup.