Life & Style | If we only had them… Garden Conservancy lets you peek at some private gardens

What are your plans for the weekend? Consider garden hopping. To some special private gardens.

An organization called The Garden Conservancy makes it easy to find and visit them.

Each year, the Garden Conservancy puts out a booklet called the Open Days Directory, with descriptions of about 300 private gardens that are opened to the public on specified dates.

In each directory, you can look gardens up by state or location. If you’re looking for gardens to visit on, say, July 22, you could find all of them, near and far, that can be visited that day. This year, that day’s offerings include two gardens in New Jersey, eight in New York, two in Pennsylvania and six in Washington state.

The Garden Conservancy began with the vision of Frank Cabot and the garden of Ruth Bancroft.

Money from memberships, directory sales and garden visits help support the Garden Conservancy’s efforts.

Taylor Swift pens scathing post about Scooter Braun

Taylor Swift is not staying silent over the sale of her masters to Scooter Braun.

In a scathing Tumblr post, the pop superstar writes she is sad and grossed out that her music catalog now belongs to Braun, whom she accuses of subjecting her to years of incessant and manipulative bullying, referencing clashes with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

“This is my worst case scenario,” Swift writes.

Braun’s Ithaca Holdings announced Sunday that it is acquiring Big Machine Label Group, which released all of Swift’s studio albums and owns her masters. Swift says she learned of the sale yesterday [Macau time].

Waikiki: Family says goodbye to wife of ‘Dog the Bounty Hunter’

Reality-TV star Beth Chapman

About 500 people watched from the shore and the waters off a beach as family and friends held a memorial service to say goodbye to reality-TV star Beth Chapman, who rose to fame as the wife of “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” the Honolulu Star Advertiser reports.

The service was held last weekend at Fort DeRussy Beach Park in Waikiki, the newspaper says.

Chapman, 51, died Wednesday at Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu after an almost 2-year battle with cancer.

The Star-Advertiser says that after a short prayer circle on a grassy stretch at Fort DeRussy Beach Park, a flotilla of outrigger canoes, stand-up paddle boarders, surfers and several large boats, including a catamaran, headed out in tribute. They were later joined by her husband Duane “Dog” Chapman and other family members.

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