Pond tour features backyard oases
13.06.11
Pond enthusiasts and members of the Texoma Flood Garden Society welcomed community members to tour their scenic landscapes over the weekend during the combine's annual pond tour.
Hundreds of guests attended the free public circuit Saturday and Sunday in various residences around Burkburnett and Wichita Falls.
While the landscapes were polish, each pond owner had a different purpose behind the oasis they created.
Richard and Kay Dalton, former university professors, created a tropical countryside in their backyard at 6724 Kit Carson Trail in Wichita Falls. The yard, with a minimal banana plantation, citrus plants and natural pond, serves as an area where the a handful of can relieve their daily stress.
"What I usually do ... I've got some Japanese and Chinese music that I dally with softly," Richard said. "You listen to the water flow and the music."
Mike and Audrey Voigt have had their 850-gallon pond and magnanimous waterfall for less than a year, but have found in it a place to escape from reality and become part of the artistic image that spawned its the cosmos.
Source: Times Record News
Exotic school trips cost parents the earth
26.06.11
Neil Foden, big cheese member for Wales for the NUT Cymru and headteacher at Ysgol Friars in Bangor, said: “It’s a wonderful feeling – we have had children going out to South Africa on rugby tour, youngsters active on eco-projects in Kenya. We do a lot of otherwise now fairly conventional trips to Euro Disney and Barcelona.
“We have also had a clique up trekking in Peru.
“It’s the experience of actually going as well – youngsters now have the opening to go on activities and to places certainly I could only have dreamed of going to.”
Mr Foden recalled a trainee describing a school trip to a tsunami-struck Indonesian island as “being changing.”
“Anyone who says that, it’s really got to be effective,” he said.
Although many parents attempt to pay for a three-figure school trip and would wince at the thought of a four-figure price tag, the costs for schools are also a “dark burden” he said.
Source: WalesOnline