Quips & Quotes

"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean".
-- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope; and the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable".
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy
 

A Memorial to the American Military
Click here to review U.S. & Coalition casualties of the Iraq War
(or visit www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties)

Make An Online Donation to Help Innocent Families & Children in Iraq

UNICEF has made an appeal for $166 million to support urgent humanitarian aid for children and women most at risk from the Iraq war. The UNICEF appeal is part of a broader humanitarian appeal that has been launched by the United Nations. The total UN appeal is for $2.1 billion to provide life-saving humanitarian support over the next six months.

Did you know that half of Iraq's population are children of 17 years or younger?

UNICEF noted that even before the war, Iraq had one of the world's worst child mortality rates with one in eight children dying before the age of five. It noted that 1 million children under age five are chronically malnourished, and an additional 1.3 million children are at risk of malnutrition.

In order to deliver aid as quickly and efficiently as possible, UNICEF said it is coordinating relief work for children with numerous other agencies, including WHO, ICRC, Red Crescent, CARE, Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and several other groups, including many Iraqi volunteer agencies.

"Our relief effort in Iraq could well become the largest and most complex UNICEF has ever undertaken," Bellamy said.

To meet the challenge, UNICEF has been making extensive preparations for a rapid emergency response. More than $14 million in emergency supplies and equipment have already been pre-positioned, and supply hubs along the border with neighbouring countries have been established. Staff, communications and warehouses are now in place in newly-opened emergency offices in Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Kuwait.

As a non-profit humanitarian agency funded entirely by voluntary contributions, UNICEF said that it has a responsibility to provide as much support to Iraqi children and women as possible.

"This appeal is not about the reconstruction of Iraq," Bellamy said. "It is about saving lives now and over the next several weeks. "Iraq has been in a crisis for more than 15 years. People have nothing to fall back on. A major war has engulfed them. These are the facts. We have to act now to prevent needless deaths and suffering, and to provide some hope for Iraqi children. That's what this appeal is about."

Online Donation Directory - Give as little as $10
Unicef  - www.supportunicef.org
Worldvision - www.worldvision.org
Careusa.org - www.careusa.org/iraq/iraq-war.asp

Summer Snake Watch
Red touch yellow, kill a fellow
Red touch black, venom lack

It has been brought to our attention that some residents have seen a significant increase in the snake population in our neighborhood, including possibly poisonous snakes, especially in and around our lake area. Please be very cautious as you do your spring gardening and lawn maintenance and when near the torpedo grasses in the lake vicinity. Most of the 6 types of venomous Florida snakes tend to hang out in or near water (3 species of rattlesnake, cottonmouth, copperhead and the coral snake).

Remember - most snakes will run from people or stay very still until they think danger has passed (much like people!). If you get too close, however, you do run the risk of snake bite, especially if they are guarding a nest or feel like there is no escape.
Note: Please think twice before killing Black snakes/Black Racers as they help keep the poisonous snake population in check. For more information and identification guides check out some of these sites:
www.southalley.com/identify.html
www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/herpetology/FL-GUIDE/onlineguide.htm
www.floridaconservation.org/viewing/species/snakes.html

2002 Annual Meeting Minutes Available Online
The 2002 Annual Meeting was held on December, 17th 2002. Click here to read the 2002 Annual Meeting Minutes. You must be a Plantation Pines Homeowner and have a login - Click here to request a login. (Visit the ppho.org website or call 561-0325 for your login)

Lawn Care Tips
How to Best Feed Your Lawn
Most lawns need to be fed four to five times during the growing season. The first application should be either a straight fertilizer such as Turf Builder or a combination fertilizer with pre-emergent crabgrass preventer (such as Turf Builder with Halts Crabgrass Preventer). To learn the best time for applications where you live, look at Scotts Annual Programs guide. This interactive tool lets you put in your zip code and select your grass type and will then give you step by step product recommendations and application instructions tailored specifically to your needs! What a great tool!
Healthy, strong turf has a better root system to combat heat, cold, drought, and other stress. A quality granular, controlled-release fertilizer allows grass plants to grow evenly, without starvation periods or heavy growth spurts. Controlled, even growth also minimizes grass clippings. Each granule of Turf Builder contains all three essential nutrients - nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium - so the lawn will be fed evenly, without danger of over- or under-feeding.

This article was re-printed from the Scotts Lawn website. Check out their website at www.scottscompany.com for more valuable information. Visit your own community website www.ppho.org/lawngarden.html for more lawncare info and resources, as well!

New Signage
We are entertaining bids for new signage for our entrance walls. According to the online polls and conversations with residents, it would appear that many people feel that updating our signage would be a vast improvement, which would serve to beautify our grounds and polish our image as a community, thereby fostering and potentially improving property values. We have the funding available in our Improvements budget and hope to have this completed before the end of the year.

Your Virtual Community Online
We'd like to continue to remind you to frequently check out the PPHO.org website. Its your community center online. It is updated every other month, as well as whenever there is pertinent info. We now have over 30 residents on the PPHO email list. Please don't forget to add yours to the list, if you have not done so. Call 561-0325 if you would like for it to be added right away or send your email address, name and lot # to webmaster@ppho.org. Don't worry if you don't have email...you won't be left out of any formal or required communications, which will continue to be delivered via US Mail. However, we are able to easily and handily communicate with almost half our residents via email and this opens the door to much timelier, more frequent and less costly communications for our community.