RITES OF

Florida’s propensity for flowering beauty is evident in its very name. Christened La Florida (The Flowery) by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513, the state lives up to its name every spring as it comes alive with flowering plants of all shapes and colors. Nowhere today is Florida’s flowering beauty more evident than at the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival.

BY JIM GIBSON

Saturate your senses with practically every hue found in nature’s palette at the 23rd Annual Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival held from March 2 through May 30. Due to its amazing popularity, the festival has expanded from the usual 75 days to 90 days and is truly an event of nature that you and your family will cherish for a lifetime.

The 300-acre theme park, including both Future World and World Showcase, will be dressed for spring with a dazzling display of topiaries, flowers and exotic plants from all over the world. More than 100 beautifully created topiaries will dot the grounds as hundreds of thousands of bedding plants and hundreds of floating mini-gardens turn Epcot into a rainbow of color and beauty. Flower towers will abound adding to the park’s already worldfamous natural beauty.

The festival will also include a series of Garden Rocks music concerts, interactive play zones for children, Ask an Expert horticulturists conducting seminars and offering tips for better home gardening, a Floral Sun Garden, the English Tea Garden, Tinker Bell’s Butterfly House, Mike and Sulley’s Monstrous Garden, a new play area featuring topiaries of Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald and Pluto, great farmfresh food offerings found in the outdoor kitchens and more.

Guests will be greeted at the park’s entrance by new topiaries of Huey,

Instant Attraction

LOVE BUTTERFLIES? Here are some plants and shrubs that will help them flourish and feed in your garden:

❁ MILKWEED (Asclepias syriaca L.)

❁ PENTAS (Pentas lanceolata)

❁ BLACK-EYED SUSANS (Rudbeckia hirta)

❁ SHRIMP PLANT (Justicia brandegeana)

❁ CONEFLOWER (Echinacea purpurea)

❁ FIREBUSH (Hamelia patens)

❁ GLOSSY ABELIA (Abelia x grandiflora)

❁ SWEET ALMOND BUSH (Aloysia virgata)

WANT TO ATTRACT HUMMINGBIRDS? Plant:

❁ YELLOW JASMINE (Gelsemium sempervirens)

❁ CONFEDERATE JASMINE (Trachelospermum jasminoides)

❁ CHASTE TREE (Vitex agnus-castus)

❁ BOTTLEBRUSH (Callistemon spp.)

❁ FIREBUSH (Hamelia patens)

❁ AZALEA (Rhododendron Pentanthera)

❁ FIRECRACKER PLANT (Russelia equisetiformis)

Dewey and Louie as they join their Uncle Donald and Aunt Daisy. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the creation of the National Parks Service, there will be a Ranger Mickey topiary in the Future World exhibit. Behind Spaceship Earth, visitors will find the breathtaking Floral Sun Garden filled with a dazzling display of yellow flowers and plants, and mini-gardens await discovery around every corner.

This international festival takes the immaculately manicured grounds of Epcot to a whole new level of beauty. Disney master gardeners who created the dazzling displays will be available to answer any questions and give free advice for creating your own Floridafriendly garden at home. Be prepared to get your hands dirty as you dig into the hands-on seminars presented by these and other worldrenowned horticulturists.

The Garden Rocks pop concerts will be held at the outdoor America Gardens Theatre with a tribute to American pop music of the last four decades. Festival-goers will be delighted with this year’s new food, beverages and sweet treats that can be found at the beautiful outdoor kitchens. When the sun sets, a nighttime light display will illuminate topiaries and play areas for the children, creating a memorable afterdark experience for everyone, regardless of age. This is truly family-friendly entertainment at its best.

The festival, including all programs and exhibits, is included with regular Epcot admission. Visit epcotinspring.com for more information.

Feed Your Flowers

General care for bulbous flowering plants in sub-tropical Florida soil:

✕ Make sure the soil remains moist

✕ Fertilize twice yearly

✕ Mulch to control weeds

✕ Remove dead blooms prior to seed production

✕ Most thrive in sunny areas

✕ Provide good soil drainage

✕ Add in organic matter prior to planting

✕ Properly control insects and plant disease

WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE ABOUT HAVING A GREAT TIME FOR WORTHY CAUSES?

Mark your calendars for April 4 through 10 and the return of the Silver Springs International Film Festival.

Starting Wednesday, April 6, four full days of screenings begin, with the City of Ocala excited to be the festival’s premier sponsor. Tickets start at just $10 with discounts for

No More Stigma For Mental Illness

According to Mental Health America, 18.53 percent of adults in America reported suffering from a mental illness. Among young people ages 12 to 17, 9.86 percent report suffering from at least one major depressive episode in the past year and 7 percent experienced seniors and students. You’ll find a complete schedule, descriptions of events and pricing information at the SSIFF website.

One of the big attractions is having filmmakers present to interact and answer questions. Read on to learn more about two of the big names participating in this year’s festival, as well as the causes that are near and dear to their hearts. depression severe enough to interfere with school, home and relationships. Even more troubling is the fact that six out of 10 of these youth do not get the treatment they need.

Pulling the mask off mental “dis-ease,” as he refers to it, has become a driving force for actor Joe Pantoliano.

No doubt you’ve seen Pantoliano (often referred to by his nickname “Joey Pants”), in multiple roles. Among his best known is that of Ralph Cifaretto in The Sopranos. He also appeared in La Bamba, The Matrix, Memento, The Goonies, Bad Boys I & II, Risky Business, Midnight Run, Bound, The Fugitive and U.S. Marshals

Although acting is his primary career, the Italian-American is also a writer, having penned two memoirs, New York Times best-seller Who’s Sorry Now: The True Story of a Stand-Up Guy and Asylum: Hollywood Tales From My Great Depression: Brain Dis-Ease, Recovery and Being My Mother’s Son. He’s written openly of his addictions to alcohol, food, sex and prescription drugs before he was diagnosed with clinical depression.

Pantoliano decided not to hide or deny his personal struggles but to shine the light of day on his “dis-ease” in hopes of helping others who face similar challenges. To that end, he founded “no kidding, me too!,” a non-profit organization designed to help those in the entertainment industry educate the public about mental illness. Because “No Kidding, Me Too!” was a common response he’s heard when talking about the effects of mental illness, he thought it was an appropriate name for the organization. He’s also directed the award-winning documentary by the same name, which addresses with both humor and candor what he and his family have struggled with. (No Kidding? Me Too! will be screened at the SSIFF.)

Although Pantoliano was officially diagnosed with clinical depression in 2007, he admits it’s been ongoing for most of his life.

“I’ve always experienced some kind of emotional ‘dis-ease’ throughout my adult life. I’ve been in some kind of therapy since I was 19 years old,” says Pantoliano. “I remember when I was in high school, I thought I found the answer when I started jogging. Whenever that ‘funky’ feeling would overtake me, I’d put on my sneakers and go for a run. Then in 1999, I fell off a roof, injuring my back, and my doctor told me my running days were over.

“So there I was. I couldn’t run, my career was going great and finally all my dreams had come true, so I couldn’t understand why I felt so [down]. The overwhelming thought that possessed me was, ‘What is wrong with me?’ There was no physical reason.”

By that time, Pantoliano had evolved from a social drinker to having a drinking problem. When that dark feeling came over him, he drank to make it go away. When alcohol stopped working, he turned to prescription painkillers. When he was burned in an accident, the doctor prescribed Vicodin, and Pantoliano found the drug seemed to help—for a while, at least. Then even the drugs weren’t enough to push back the blackness.

Pantoliano realized he’s never had a true understanding of how to cope with his “dis-ease,” so he attempted to do so by “self-medicating,” something that is all too common. Now clean for eight years, he’s determined to use his own experiences to help others.

“Americans are worried. They have a lot to be depressed about,” he says. “I think the reason No Kidding? Me Too! has taken hold is because people feel less alone when they realize someone else feels this way. Until I started making this movie about depression, (Canvas, which will be screened at the SSIFF), no one had told me how mental ‘dis-ease’ affects family members,” says Pantoliano, who is married to former model Nancy Sheppard, with whom he has three daughters. He also has a son, Marco, from a previous marriage.

The mission of Pantoliano’s organization is “empowering those with mental ‘disease’ to admit their illness, seek treatment, become even greater contributing members of society and obliterate the stigma [and] shame and to provide equal rights for the all-American brain.”

“Mental ‘dis-ease’ is the only illness you can get yelled at for having. People think you’re too weak to get rid of it,” says Pantoliano. “Stigma is the politically correct word, but I think it’s more about shame, bigotry and discrimination. I want to normalize the conversation, get more coverage and change the culture so it’s cool and trendy for people to talk about mental ‘dis-ease.’ Everyone has someone in their family or knows someone who is struggling with mental ‘dis-ease.’”