The Garden Shedde

Composting kitchen waste is an easy way to lead a more sustainable lifestyle.  Meat and animal products still need to be disposed of the rubbish bin.  Eggshells, rinds, peelings, coffee and tea grounds can all be put in the compost bin outdoors.  That reduces household waste by a great volume.  I once heard that potato peels from fast food French fries are the main ingredient in most landfills.  Those potato peelings are 100% compostable.

Compost happens quickly.  Recognizable kitchen waste becomes garden soil in a short period of time.  I find it helpful to cut all the pieces small so that insects and soil microbes can make fast work of the degradation process. Turning the compost frequently speeds the process along as well.  The reward is two-fold.  The first reward is the decrease in the amount of garbage that a household generates.  The second is what gardeners call “black gold.”  The compost is a wonderful garden soil amendment that is of no more cost than groceries. Any American family can make their own compost.

My whole student career the word is that every year, the administration of the school sets aside a certain amount of days in case it snows. Now I have also heard that when there is too many snow days that the school has to add how ever many days they went over to the end of the school year. This sounds like such a bummer to everyone. “They have to are add days at the end of the year? We have to wait longer for summer break? How horrible!”

I know it sounds bad, but when you think about it it’s pretty cool. First of all, it means you get plenty of snow that year. That means plenty of snowball fights, sledding, snow men, etc. You also get lots days off and that’s always nice. But the biggest thing I want to point out is if they add days to the end of the year then they would have to add them either before or after final exams. If they add them before then it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Before the exams the teachers shouldn’t be teaching anything new. They will just be reviewing for the exams.

Now if the administration decides to add the school days after exams then that is even more ridiculous. That means that teachers definitely won’t have anything more to teach and even if they did the students wouldn’t pay attention or take notes because they don’t have any upcoming tests or quizzes. So really we should keep on hoping for snow even if we are all out of school days.

When talking about sheds, most people only think about the kind of shed, the size and the materials it’s made out of. However, there are many ways you can use a garden shed if you just think about it for a while. Once you decide what you really would like to do with your shed, then you can really go out and get what will work best for you and your family.

Then you get to create the perfect landscape and look surrounding the shed so it doesn’t look drab out in the back yard. Planting the right shrubs, flowers or trees around the outdoor shed can lend beauty to something w think is nor so beautiful. Bringing your touch and eye to something so simple can really make a difference as you add to your yard and garden. Just don’t short change what you can do and open up your mind to the infinite possibilities for your yard. You will be glad you did as you enjoy your creations

At the easternmost edge of my parents’ lawn is a magnificent sugar maple tree. This particular tree is set apart by its hulking size. It stands fifty feet tall, has a canopy seventy-five feet from branch tip to branch tip and the trunk is four feet in diameter. The bark is rough and craggy with deep crevices just perfect for fingers and toes to find a good grip, and so it is that the maple tree invites her climbers.

From age six to eighteen, most of my time was spent either in or under the maple tree. I remember the shape of my favorite branches, the texture and smell of the bark. Many happy hours were spent on my swing, until winter came that is. In the winter my swing was swallowed up by the snow. In spring, as the snow receded my swing became the perfect vantage point from which to spot eager crocuses. In summer the breeze while swinging was refreshing and in autumn the swing was the perfect way to launch myself into red, gold and brown crunchy maple leaves that smelled of sun, grass, dirt and new decay.

The inevitable loss of the maple tree will change more than the landscape; it will change the dynamics of “home.”

A few months ago my wife took a trip with a friend and her two year old on a bus so he could have the experience of riding a city bus. They thought it would take about two and a half hours to go up on the bus to a store and eat lunch and come back to our area. The trip actually took closer to six hours and that doesn’t include the time to and from the bus stop to our home.

If this is what families have to do every time they go shopping just think about how much time they spend getting the necessities taken care of each week. Do they have to get on a bus to get groceries; get to work every day; shop for clothes for them and their children? There are a plethora of things I do every week and never think about how I am going to get to and from wherever my errand takes me. Just the errands I do for the kids activities is mind-blowing to say the least so I understand if under privileged kids have to say no to activities outside of school. I’m not sure what can be done but in our spread out suburban society we need to be more thankful for the cars we have to drive and more sympathetic to those who don’t have them.

My husband and I love books. We have a collection of books that would make most people jealous. However, as we were looking through our books a few months ago to give away the surplus, and discovered that we seldom go back and reread a book once we have read it the first time. Though there are exceptions to this, they are rare. After tallying up the amount of books that we were ready to give to the next reader and applying a modest eight dollar per book price, it was astounding at how much we have spent for books over the past five years!

I told my husband then that we needed to change our habit before just buying a book and check and see if it was available at the library first. He agreed and confessed he didn’t even have a library card. The next week he went down and corrected that as well as spent several hours strolling up and down the isles of the main library in our town. Though he didn’t initially check out a book he has since found out that you can look and hold books online for future pickup and I think he has fallen in love with the library as this has become a weekly trek. I am counting the money we save one book at a time!

I was recently thinking about gifts my mother has given me. I have a great mother and she has fortunately given me several wonderful gifts, but one gift that I sometimes overlook just because it is almost so obvious, has really had a profound effect on me is the gift of travel. If someone were to ask me where I got the traveling bug from, it would be a no brainer – my mom. We were exposed to new cultures and new environments early on in life. As a child, I may have not been the most receptive and excited about all the trips, but in retrospect I see how they have influenced my life and taught me so much about the world and those around me.

First hand exposure to new places and people are the best way to learn about them. I believe everyone should have that chance. In a world where so many people can be so close-minded and ignorant, the opportunity to interact with different cultures and people enlightens us. Traveling is a tool we can all use to open up our minds. One day I will have the chance to spread my love of traveling to my children. I can hardly wait!

In my lifetime I have known several people who have suffered from multiple sclerosis or commonly know as MS. Both of the people I know who have this disease are male; one in his fifties and diagnosed in his early forties and the other a 7 year old I taught how to swim many years ago. What I never knew was that men are less likely to get this disease than women and the most diagnosed group are women between the ages of 20 and 34.

Wikipedia defines MS as “is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune response attacks a person’s central nervous system (brain and spinal cord).Disease onset usually occurs in young adults, and it is more common in females. It has a prevalence that ranges between 2 and 150 per 100,000.”

MS is not curable at this time but can be managed and people with the disease have the same life span as those without. While this is very good news, it’s the quality of life that can be improved on with the right medications, physical therapy and professional and family support systems and living well with this disease is the goal.

I’ve gotta say one of the best highlights of my day is when I get to open my mailbox and see that there is actually something other than a bill or junk mail waiting for me. Whatever the reason is for people not sending ‘snail mail’ anymore, the postcard blows any excuse out of the water. For one, the stamps are cheaper and secondly, you don’t have to write more than ‘hi, enjoy the picture.’ I am one of those people, though, that can somehow write an essay on that 4 by 6 card. It is a gift.

In an age where technology has limited human interaction, it’s just nice to know that someone took a moment during their vacation to send me a snap of what they were enjoying. Maybe it’s because I’m a traveler at heart and these postcards inspire me to book that next flight and maybe because it’s nice to see actual ink hit paper and the tiny flaws that make us human. Advice to the next traveler who might what to spread some mailbox love, before you fly, print all the address labels of those you plan on mailing – this peel and stick will save you tons of time.

My wife and I love coffee as do many people we know and love. However, coffee doesn’t always love them. In fact we have several friends who have such a reaction to coffee, i.e. caffeine that a cup in the morning will keep them up late into the night. I have the exact opposite reaction to coffee, I drink it in the morning and could go right back to sleep as well as drink it late at night; sleep like a baby.

You might think I am just used to a lot of caffeine from colas or tea everyday but outside of coffee, all I drink is water. Now my wife can drink coffee in the morning okay but she cannot drink it in the evening or she will be up all night. Yet her knowing this does not stop her from time to time when she is in the mood for a cup of java. Even the decaffeinated coffees have enough caffeine in them that she will be awake. I find that crazy but people will do some crazy things all for the love of coffee!