Today, everything is about convenience. We want the products we need at prices we can afford and we don’t want to travel out of our way to get them. However, there is something to be said for honoring the local gardening shop and bypassing the large chains.

Sure, Home Depot and Lowes have ease and convenience. There are chain locations everywhere, and they will typically have everything you could ever want to garden and landscape. However, your local garden shop supports small businesses and allows local community economies to thrive. Local garden shops have competitive prices, and if you don’t find what you’re looking for, they will usually be happy to order what you need. What’s more, many local garden shops have years of knowledge and expertise so if you need advice or an expert opinion you can trust your local garden shop workers to give helpful advice. Many local garden shops are also familiar with the climate of your area, so their advice will be tailored to the weather you experience. This season, bypass the large garden chain and visit your local garden shop.

Gardening is a wonderful activity to do as a family, and is a great way to bring everyone together to experience not only the great outdoors, but also how to grow healthy and mindful food for our families to eat.

Get your children in the garden as soon as they are old enough to help. Have your children help weed the garden, or rake out all the grass before the seeds are placed in the ground. Children also love creating decorative labels to properly monitor what seeds are planted where. While many young children will not be able to operate weed eaters, tillers, and other dangerous equipment, they can still help plant seeds and watch them grow. Harvest time is a perfect time to involve children in the garden, because it allows them to see the fruits of their labor and to pick delicious and healthy vegetables, and to see how they grow. The earlier you teach children about gardening and healthy eating, the sooner they will come to realize that eating healthy can be fun.

How many of you have received a hand-written letter in the past year? Christmas cards do not count. I thought as much. Not very many of us send or receive hand written letters any more. I can remember when I used to write long convoluted letters on my old word processing program maybe twenty years ago before e-mail was around. That is not even a penned letter that I am talking about now. I am bemoaning the loss of the actual hand-written letter.

I am not a Luddite and wish to suggest that we reject technology nor am I suggesting that we begin spending the time to writing letters that express our thoughts and feelings. Blogs seem to be satisfying that need just fine. What I am suggesting is the immense emotional value that a hand-written thank you note can create in your customers. Talk about creating a bond with the human beings that choose to do business with you. I think that will blow your competition out of the water and help to seal the connection you have with your customer. Happy trails with the pen!

When looking for the right home for you and your family, there are always certain things that come to mind that may or may not be the trigger points for an area. While diversity might be more important to one family, the education and school system might be what drives another to a particular area or neighborhood. One of the worse things that can happen is to buy a home in an area because of the price or the house itself and you not be happy because it doesn’t meet with a core issue that you overlooked.

One of the things that might help you is to work with a local realtor who knows the areas you are interested in buying a home. A qualified realtor should be able to tell you about each neighborhood, the schools that are available, public and private, the shopping, crime statistics and anything else that you may want to know. Purchasing a house just might be one of the biggest investments you will make in your lifetime so make sure it’s the one you want!

One would think on Labor Day that no one should be working. It seems very wrong to me that anyone would be expected to work on a holiday that is meant to celebrate the “American worker”. What I have come to realize is that what every holiday seems to really be about is consumerism. No matter the history or original meaning of the day it is now about sales and getting you to buy into them. If we would not participate in holiday sales schemes then maybe all those people who are made to work those days would be able to go home and celebrate a day off with their families.

That also goes for the restaurants and grocery stores around the country. As wonderful as that may sound, it will never happen because we are a very selfish people by nature. If we want to eat out or go shopping then we believe we should be able to even though it causes someone else to work on that day. Why should we care as long as we are off? Let’s rename the holiday, Celebration of the Laborers we Value. After all, the people in retail and service industries are some of the lowest paid on the totem poles and they really need to work.

Personally, I use Facebook for one thing and one thing only, keep up with family and friends. However, I have been contacted by people who I don’t want to talk to anymore from past lives that I have no interest in anymore and have no idea if I should or should not “friend” them? I thought I was the only person who felt this way until I had a conversation with one of my sons who has the same issue from people from past schools. With this information I took a very unscientific survey and here is what I found from the ten people I asked.

2 – did not respond at all to the question
6 – had issues of being contacted from people who either they did not want to talk to or from people who just wanted access to their “friend” list to contact someone else with no intention of talking to them.
1 – who had no issues
1 – hate Facebook and ignores their account

So from this information, it seems the majority of people would like to have better control of who can “friend” them or at least a “no offense” way of saying “no, I don’t want to be friends with you.”