I made it to the Portland Flower Show about 10:15 this morning, about 15 minutes after the scheduled opening, and it already was bustling.

People were buying as well. I had expected that people would enjoy seeing the gardens and flowers, but the vendors -- some selling plants, flowers, and gardening equipment, but others selling such non-gardening items as food, art and jewelry -- were getting a lot of attention. And I did see people carrying bags of items, so some are actually buying. We might turn the economy around yet.

I did attend a lecture by Paul Tukey, publisher of People Places & Plants magazines and founder of SafeLawns, a non-profit group stressing organic lawn care.

Paul's talk mostly was about organic lawn care, but he did have some news about the magazine.

"Contrary to what you might have heard, we are still alive," Tukey said.

The magazine, like many publications, is suffering substantial losses in advertising revenue and will be producing only three issues a year. I'm a subscriber and have not received an issue since fall, but I intend to drop by the magazine's booth to find out when the next issue is coming out. I'll report back.

Paul, who discovered the evils of chemical lawn fertilizer and pesticides when he got sick while running a lawn-care company in the 1990s, is making a career of organic lawns. He wrote the "Organic Lawn Care Manual" and replanted part of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., organically.

But he is especially pleased that a large part of Canada has banned chemical lawn fertilizer and pesticides, and he is working to bring that trend to the United States.

He also talked about efforts of Allen James and the Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment - the pro Weed and Feed fertilizer people - to keep the chemicals on the market.

Very briefly, because I don't have time and space here, the key to growing a good, organic lawn is to till it up so that it has air and is not compacted, add lots compost and compost tea, plant grass and clover -- which was popular in lawns until they invented chemical weed killers that also kills clover -- because clover fixes nitrogen and is good for the lawn. And use organic soil nutrients and not plant nutrients. Soil nutrients feed the animals that live in your soil, are similar to animal feed and edible, if not tasty, by humans.

Go to the Safelawns Web site for enough information to keep you busy for days.

Remember, I'm going to be at the Press Herald booth from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. today, so drop by or I could feel lonely and neglected.

I probably won't blog again until sometime after that.

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