The Victorian Women Who Never Cut Their Hair, --- 1865-1900...

Vintage Postcards That Capture Women's Beauty From 100 Years Ago...

This was SO interesting!!!

Wild West: Brothels, --- Documentary...

Sherlock Holmes, --- The Great Detective, --- Documentary...

Colorado Experiences, --- Indulgences of the West...

The Victorian Lawn & Garden, --- From "Lifescript"...

As leisure time became more prevalent, Victorian gardens became a favorite past time of the middle and upper class. Gardening moved beyond the necessity of a kitchen garden and into a new arena of natural pleasures. Victorian homes may have been overdone with fussy bric-a-brac and large cascading ferns, but the gardens told a different story. The Victorian era came to be known as one of the great ages of gardening. Learn eight steps to recreating a Victorian garden in your backyard.

A Victorian Garden: The LawnCreating a lush carpet of grass takes hard work, constant attention to fertilizing, weed control, and mowing during the growing season. The Victorians were the first to treat the art of growing grass as a serious pursuit, so expanses of green in front of the home appeared ordered and neat. The back of the home revealed a lawn dotted with beds, gardens, but the lawn itself continued to reign supreme. A formal garden accented with the lush green of a lawn was a must.

The lawn was an extension of the home. Parties were held on the lawn, tea was served on the lawn, and people entertained guests in the open air on a well-maintained lawn.

To create a Victorian garden begin with the lawn. Plant grass in open areas and keep it well tended.

A Victorian Garden: The FlowerbedsVictorian garden design was more about formal flowerbeds than an overall flower garden or the cottage garden look. Keeping plantings neat, symmetrical and precise remained a must for the Victorian garden. Flowerbeds planted with flowering plants of the same height became a popular garden element called carpet bedding. The outline of a design or motif was filled with the same color, variety and height of plants.

Edgar Allen Poe...

Edgar Allan Poe
1849 "Annie" daguerreotype of Poe
Born	Edgar Poe January 19, 1809 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	October 7, 1849 (aged 40) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Virginia United States Military Academy
Spouse	Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe(m. 1836; d. 1847)
Signature

Edgar Allan Poe (/poʊ/; born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.^[1] He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.^[2]

Poe was born in Boston, the second child of two actors. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but Poe was with them well into young adulthood. Tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of secondary education for the young man. Poe attended the University of Virginiafor one semester but left due to lack of money. Poe quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name. It was at this time that his publishing career began, albeit humbly, with the anonymous collection Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian". With the death of Frances Allan in 1829, Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement. However, Poe later failed as an officer cadet at West Point, declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, and he ultimately parted ways with John Allan.

Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Richmond in 1836, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845, Poe published his poem "The Raven" to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. For years, he had been planning to produce his own journal The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. Poe died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, at age 40; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.^[3]

Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields such as cosmologyand cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre.