Flower Gardening Made Easy

CHOOSE COLOR(S) WISELY BEFORE GOING TO THE GARDEN CENTER! - Think about the colors you want in your garden. Many 1st time gardeners (including me once) just go to the garden center and start choosing whatever stuff they like and don't consider how the colors work together. It's better if you stick to TWO COLORS of flowers in your garden or just ONE. Choose colors that look good together (my favorites PURPLE and YELLOW.)

FOR INSTANT GRATIFICATION - You can buy all the plants listed below already started in pots at any garden center so you don’t have to worry about how/when to plant the bulbs and seeds.

FOR THE BUDGET-MINDED - If you are on a limited gardening budget, planting from seed and bulbs will save you a lot of money, but you will not get to see the fruits of your labor until next year. Try planting bulbs and seeds and mix in a few grown plants for some blooms now knowing you’ll see even more when the others take root next year.

SPRING COLOR - If you want spring TULIPS and DAFFODILS, but didn't plant your bulbs last fall, you can buy blooming plants at the garden center to plant right now in your garden. They will continue to come up year after year. Plant these in a sunny or partly sunny spot.

SUMMER COLOR - For sunny spots, try summer blooming DAYLILIES (left) and IRISES (right) or Aug/Sept blooming MUMS, which all come up every year. The nice thing about these particular sunny plants is that their leaves look nice before and after they bloom so you can keep your flower beds nicely filled in if you cut off the dead blooms after they wilt (give your kids some safety scissors and have them help you out with this for family fun).


SHADY SPOTS - If you have a shady spot, plant HOSTAS (shown left) as they always grow well in most any soil and come up every year. They are a big leafy green plant (not like a bush) with long stemmed purple flowers that bloom briefly in mid-summer.


FOR SEASON-LONG COLOR - If you want a few plants to sit on the front steps for color to bloom all season long, choose GERANIUMS (right), which come in white, pink, purple, or red. They won't come back each year, but they will re-bloom all season especially if you give them a little bloom food now and then.

For help on choosing what to plant, visit: Flower Gardening Made Easy

Imagine Life without a Computer?

Today a random and seemingly trivial thought ran through my mind: what would daily life be without a computer and, more significantly, without the Internet? No email, instant weather or news updates, infinite Search engines, or do-it-yourself flight reservations. Wow, I hadn’t realized just how connected I really am to my computer until I really thought of what it would mean to do without it.

For some reason, the thought occurred to me while scanning headlines from my favorite news site CNN.com with an article titled, “Ninety years of birdwatchers’ notes going online.” The North American Bird Phenology Program is publishing online bird watchers’ notes (like the one shown here, right) dated from as far back as 1880. Over 6 million hand-written note cards worth of avian insights on over 900 species (some of which have since become extinct) are being converted into a computer catalog for browsing and searching. Oh, the marvel of instant access to these miraculous words of wonder!

The significant impact of these and countless other things we now take for granted like being able to email friends and family all across the globe with just a few keyboard strokes and mouse clicks is awe-inspiring. So, could I do the same things without a computer? Yes, but undoubtedly with more effort. I do already write monthly letters to my grandmother in southern Iowa, as she herself has never used a computer. The local news stations provide updated news and weather, as do many cable stations devoted to keeping us updated on current events. Libraries used to be, and for many still are, the information-keepers, yet that avenue requires (like many things) travel and more work to do the same task.

Even the computer itself has become ever more flexible as laptops provide easy transport from room-to-room or portable offices for travel. We can watch DVDs, listen to music, make and print greeting cards, edit home-movies and digital photographs, and do our own income taxes. I think of how much trouble my grandmother had learning to use a remote control for her television and chuckle knowing she will never have use for a cell phone or GPS device (she doesn’t even know how to drive anyway). So, yea I could get along well enough without a computer I suppose, but I sure would miss it!