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Expert Garden maintenance tips for Winter

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The positive impression a great garden leaves on people visiting a home is something seldom equaled. Great gardens say as much about a home as the house does.


However, the fast-changing environment of a garden means gardening and maintenance go hand in hand . This is especially the case as we enter winter. The high-growth levels of a garden mean that you keep a landscape garden, landscaped you have to work on the area during the summer, while also prepare it for the colder weather. Nevertheless, it’s not as hard as it seems as you see from our basic gardening and maintenance tips to ensure your garden looks great throughout the year.

Plants

Some smart planting can make sure your garden remains bright all year round. Though, plants have certain needs and requirements, with a little know how it can be possible to keep everything in check. The simplest advice for landscape garden maintenance is to know what’s growing and how you should look after it.

Lawns require looking after and mowing is not often enough. During warm weather, grass needs water, and also needs care if you have had a specifically cold winter. Make sure to care for grass during summer, so it heads into the colder period of the year at its strongest.

Trees

Trees also need gardening and maintenance and pruning, dead wooding and keeping their shape is important, but also tough and often a danger without the right tools. Tree surgeons maybe your answer in such a scenario and help you ensure your tree stays healthy.

Decking

Decking is also something that needs to be maintained. Look into painting, or varnishing the wood and cleaning it with detergent. Even if, it’s not a plant, this is all part of good gardening. Weed the area around and clean any grime, or stains with your garden tool hire. Of course you can rent

Furniture

In a similar manner to that of decking, garden furniture can also be treated roughly by the weather. Cover them with waterproof covering, if they can’t be placed inside in the winter. Clean and look after them when the spring comes to make sure you get the most from them.

Fencing

Fencing is also something often overlooked, however requires a good check after winter to guarantee it is perfect. Replace any broken fencing and look after it, as a good, solid fence can really add aesthetically to your landscape garden.

Following these gardening maintenance tips now will warrant a healthy attractive garden come about later in the year.

Cormac Reynolds writes for Best at Hire a UK company that provides garden equipment for rent.





Neutering and Spaying Prevents Unwanted Dogs

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For those of us which have spent any time at all in an animal shelter, it is heartbreaking to watch dogs, which are put down just because they cannot find a home. There are more than 21,000 pets put down each day in the US alone, which totals 6 to 8 million deaths per year. This is due to the fact, their owners decided they could not or would not keep them.

There is an old belief, that if you let your female dog have just one litter of pups, she will be a calmer and more gentle dog, this is not so. In order to have a calm and gentle female dog, it will take training by the owners and maturating of the dog.

Another belief that we have all heard is, if you spay or neuter your dog they will become overweight, this is not so. By the time your dog is spayed or neutered they are around 6 months of age, by this time they are not growing at such a fast pace and their metabolism is slowing down. If you keep your dog on a healthy daily diet, without an overabundance of doggy treats and they get sufficient daily exercise they will maintain a healthy body weight.

When your dog is sterilized some health issues will be eliminated and it will reduce the risk of other health issues. Sterilization will spare your family emotional and financial stress caused by an illness, as well as sparing your beloved pet the pain of disease.

Spaying eliminates the chance of ovarian and uterine cancer, in female dogs, along with reducing the chance of breast cancer, the surgery needs to take place before the females first estrous (Heat) cycle.

Neutered male dogs will not have the risk of testicular cancer or prostate disease, due to the removal of their testicles.

Dogs which have been spayed or neutered, will make better companions, they are less likely to bite and be aggressive toward humans and other dogs.  You will not have to worry about taking your pet out for their daily exercise when your female dog, does not come into heat.

Before choosing a dog, think about visiting a shelter and checking out their dogs, shelters usually have a varity of dogs to choose from and you might be saving the dog from being euthanized as well.

It is wise to let the whole family be involved in choosing a new dog; it is not uncommon for the dogs in a shelter to choose their new owners. The shelter will have all the information you will need to make sure, the dog you choose will be suitable for your entire family.

Apart from being a veterinarian, Susan Wright is a freelance writer. Find helpful advice on being a caring pet owner and good neighbor on this website.

How to Check if Your Pet Dog is Sick

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Taking care of a pet dog is quite tricky because it is not all about enjoying their company and playing with all the time and making sure they are fed with food at a regular basis. Your pet dog also needs special care and attention especially when they start to feel a little sick. Unfortunately, unlike humans, dogs cannot easily tell us that they are not feeling well so as pet owners, it is our responsibility to take not when our dogs are and are not feeling well.

There are many different ways to gauge if your pet dog is sick and as pet owners, it is your responsibility to know these things in order to help them out. Here are some indications that your dog might be getting sick.

Dogs Sniffs Are Totally Important

You probably notice that your dog’s nose is wet at all times, right? This is because your dog is relatively healthy. When your dog’s nose is wet, this does not mean that your dog has colds and has difficulty in sneezing the mucous out. In fact, it’s actually the other way around. If your dog’s nose suddenly becomes dry, then that can be an indication of sickness.

Eating Habits, Appetite and Dog Sickness

Your dog’s appetite speaks so much of how healthy it is. If your dog is a huge eater and then one day it no longer wants to eat as much, then that should normally be a cause of alarm for you. Just like humans, when dogs lose their appetite, it can be because they are not feeling very well at all.

Healthy Living and Exercising is a Must

Depending on the sickness that your dog has, it can lose interest in its usual daily activities. For instance, if your dog usually loves walking with you in the morning and you find that today’s walk has been a drag, then do not get angry with your dog immediately. Rather, look to see what’s wrong with it.

Allergies Are a Total Health Buster

If you have been taking care of your pet dog for quite some time now and notice these changes immediately too, then check for your dog’s possible allergies. Sometimes, dog allergies can be found on their skin and beneath their layers of fur or can also be found in their tummies, or their paws, and even their faces. When allergy strikes, your dog is also bound to be sick.

Now that you know these things about pet dog sickness, all you have to do is coordinate with your veterinarian to help you out when these problems strike your pet dog. You can also do immediate relief in the comfort of your own home just as long as you know for sure what you’re doing.

This article is exclusively written by Artchee Mendoza for this site. Artchee is a contributing writer for www.paws-unleashed.com who are excellent in dog grooming Charlotte NC.

Tools to Organize Your Recipes Online

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After exploring this topic I found out how incredibly helpful all the available websites are for making recipes useful. Given that technology plays such a major role in our lives, what better way to employ its attributes than organizing recipes? Many even offer meal planning and grocery shopping venues. On the other hand, for some of us nostalgics, there’s still nothing better than curling up on the couch with familiar cookbooks and locating well-loved yellowed, stained pages describing how to prepare the very best comfort food in the world. But maybe the next generation would appreciate it if I actually took time to put them in one of those amazing helpful organizational tools.

  • Grocery Shopping on the Fly

I picture a mom with one night for grocery shopping. That’s the evening without ballet, gymnastics, sports, horseback riding, or piano lessons. Since her time is so scarce, and valuable, organization is a must.  An additional look at her favorite websites and she not only has favorite recipes, and meal plans, but a grocery list whose items appear as they do categorically from one side of the store to the other. Now if only all that efficiency would just translate into someone shopping for her without charging for the service.

  • Online Recipe Shower

In recent history, brides have actually asked if there was a way for them to have a “Recipe Shower” online. Not a formal party, but a way to send tried and true “food friends” to the betrothed. This might be a good way for truly busy or out of town guests to “get together” before the wedding. I wonder how it would work; could someone let me know.

  • Helpful Websites

After researching several websites, it appears the best places to go for organizing those wayward recipes includes places where recipes are readily available to your computer, have menu suggestions, nutrition notes, and make grocery lists from needed items. Mentioned below are various helpful sites. The first ones, to my knowledge are free: Springpad; Evernote (free in most frequently used platforms) and its add-on, Say Mmm;  Dropbox; Food on the Table; Our Groceries (free Android app); Pepper Plate Recipe, Menu, and Cooking Planner; and Google Docs. As you know, Google Docs is not exclusively for recipe organization, but does provide useful tools. Other less cost effective websites include: Paprika; Meal Board Meal and Grocery Planner app; Plan to Eat (not free after first month); AllRecipes; Spark People (meal plans and nutrition) and last but not least is Pinterest. Therefore, besides organizing recipes, this myriad of websites, and many more I’m sure, can do everything except actually cook the meals. Sometimes you might even find a chef preparing a meal, or entrée, you find interesting…those are especially enjoyable and helpful for those cooks-in-training.

  • Vintage Cooks

With online networking and helpful recipe exchange sites equipped with comments on the palatability of various dishes, cooks can drool while they plan. As much as it pains this seasoned chef to admit it, more cookbooks may slowly be finding their way into the antique shops. But I do find it quite gratifying to be able to use both cookbooks and websites; makes for such a well-rounded cook.

Gareth Shaw is a professional chef and writer who loves to blog about everything from the best ways to keep your recipes to tips on serving quick, healthy meals.

My favorite birthday meal

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Yum. There’s nothing like a delicious birthday meal. It was my birthday on Thursday and while my husband and I didn’t do anything major to celebrate it we didn’t have a very nice steak dinner that night. A lovely barbecued mesquite steak, with steamed asparagus and sweet potato fries.

Then, last night, my mother-in-law, came in to town. We were all supposed to go away this weekend but in the end I decided to stay home. However, since my mother-in-law was staying over last night before she and my husband took a long drive to the Ottawa area she offered to buy me a birthday dinner. She suggested Chinese food.

I’m a little leery of Asian food because I’m allergic to Shrimp and Shellfish but there is a very nice Thai restaurant near us that we’ve had take out from a few times since I discovered my Shrimp allergy and they totally start fresh for my order. They clean their pots and make sure that there’s no seafood or shellfish based sauces in any of the foods items we order and of course no shrimp either. So I feel very safe eating food from their restaurant.

So we ordered quite a bit of food from the Red Chilli Thai Restaurant on the Danforth in Toronto. I think it was forth or fifth time we’ve order food from that restaurant and as usual the food was delicious. I particularly love their Mango Chicken dish. It’s delicious.

There were three of us eating on Friday night and we ordered several tasty dishes. Let’s see, we ordered the Vegetarian Appetizer Plate, steamed rice, Green Curry Beef, Cashew Nut Chicken, mango chicken, and Satay Chicken, and chicken Phad Thai with three spring rolls. Now, because our order was over $50 we got the Pad Thai and spring rolls free. We also got a 10% discount for picking it up and paying cash. Pretty cool.

Needless to say we didn’t come close to finishing the food that we ordered since there were so many dishes. My husband and mother in law left early this morning on their trip and I’m here with a fridge literally full of tasty leftovers! Yum. Yep. That’s what I had for dinner tonight. Thai food. I love it. I could eat this birthday dinner every day.

What’s your favorite birthday dinner?

Red Chilli Thai Restaurant on Urbanspoon

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