Search Results for: blog five ways to care for your lawn

How to Create a Beautiful Lawn

Taking control of your lawn now in the spring will help keep it in the best shape for the entire summer. Here are the steps you can take to get your lawn back in shape. Start by cleaning things up. Take your rake and rake out the lawn. This will serve a couple of purposes. First, it will remove dead grass and other debris. Second, it will open up the lawn to allow the soil to absorb both water and nutrients. Your lawn has probably become compacted over the last year, especially if people have been walking on it. Compact … Continue reading →

Lawn Weeds: Why You Should Love Your Moss and Clover

Shhh! Your garden is talking to you! When you look out onto an expanse of lawn, it’s telling you things. When you bend down close to the ground, you can hear what it’s saying. Take a look through your lawn once it comes out of dormancy in the spring time. What you’ll see if a fair bit of flattened green grass. Quite likely there will be a fair number of weeds in the mix too: weeds like moss and clover. Of course, weeds are in the eye of the beholder. Some people cultivate soft moss lawns or encourage a clover … Continue reading →

How NOT To Heat Your Home

Our local Dairy Queen was closed today. Not because it ran out of soft-serve. Rather, the electronic sign outside the establishment scrolled: “CLOSED due to EXTREME COLD!” Not something you see everyday. Then again, our below zero temperatures (way below—windchills here have been around 45 below zero) are not something you experience every day either. Less than two weeks ago my daughter and I were in Hawaii baking in 84 degree tropical weather. This morning we woke up in Wisconsin where the temperature was –10. (A difference of nearly 95 degrees… but who’s counting). The Dairy Queen, the YWCA, the … Continue reading →

Even More Simple and Affordable Ways To Spruce Up Your Garden

In a previous blog I mentioned the Christmas card I received in the mail from one of my best friends, which features a photo of her three older children and her baby—her utterly gorgeous garden. Sure, she lives in Hawaii where she the climate allows her to toil in her soil year round, still it’s not just anyone who can write to Martha Stewart about a gardening dilemma and actually get a personal response from the domestic diva based on the pictures she sent and the information provided in her letter. Yes, my friend has quite the green thumb. It’s … Continue reading →

More Simple and Affordable Ways To Spruce Up Your Garden

We’ve established that despite the bitterly cold temperatures wreaking havoc on most of the nation, there are still some lucky gardeners (the world over) who are busy cultivating their prized petunias. Most gardeners here in the United States are anxiously waiting a good spring thaw—-but let’s get through Christmas first. Until then, consider tucking away these simple and affordable tips for your garden. Make Your Own Compost This is my neighbor’s second job (I say that with a smile). She is a die-hard when it comes to turning household organic waste (vegetable peelings, grass cuttings, fallen leaves) into compost and … Continue reading →

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I just received a beautiful Christmas card in the mail from one of my best friends. It features a photo of her three children sitting in her front yard surrounded by plump hydrangeas, colorful azaleas, and big purple orchids. (Did I mention she lives in Hawaii?) After staring at the picture for a while I looked out my own bedroom window at the brown grass peaking out from what remains of our recent snowfall. When you are surrounded by snow, frigid temperatures, and dormant vegetation you often forget there are areas of the world where homeowners are treated to year … Continue reading →

Sparkler Safety

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The 4th of July, what fond memories we have of fireworks, sparklers, lots of good food and running around outside long after dark. It was always so much fun and I don’t remember any injuries. Things have changed and with all the fireworks that you can buy in any store now, the incidence of injuries rises. I learned today that sparklers burn at 2,000 degrees and are the number one reason for firework related emergency room visits. As a child, I didn’t know that, as an adult, I’ve experienced it first hand. When Hailey was little a group of us … Continue reading →

How to Harden Off Tomato Plant Seedlings

Starting vegetables indoors is a rewarding experience. The vegetables get a solid and early start to their lives, and gardeners are able to reap the produce much faster than if they planted the tomato seeds directly into the ground. Tomatoes love heat and light, so in a shadier or cooler garden it is important to get a head start on growth by starting seedlings indoors when the ground is still too cold to plant tomato seeds. However, care needs to be taken to keep these tomato plants seedlings safe as they transition into the outdoors. Plants naturally reach for the … Continue reading →

Changes at Home

There are some big changes coming up in my life. And I fear these changes are going to have a huge impact on my stress. In a bad way. My husband has just graduated from his CDL School (Yea!), but that means major changes in our home life. He took a job with a company based out of Iowa (we live in Pennsylvania) and he will have to go out there for two weeks. Once he’s done with that, he’ll be in a truck training for another five weeks, during which he may or may not have the opportunity to … Continue reading →

Rain or Shine, My Pets Are There

This hasn’t been a very easy year for me. In fact, of all my years on this Earth to date, this past one has been the most trying by far. And the most blues-filled. One After the Other It started last summer when we tried to move back to Jacksonville. Thankfully plans changed, but instead of life sailing along unencumbered as I’d hoped, I got sick in November –the same week Wayne moved home and we left to go to Denver for Thanksgiving. Then Wayne got sick, and I had a relapse and fell ill again. Come January and February … Continue reading →