Like many of you I will enjoy today with family, good food and celebrating all the bounty with which I have been blessed. I am also celebrating the end of the garden season. As crazy as it was, it was a good season in my garden. Most of the leaves are raked up, beds are…
By the time you are reading this, we will have had our first killing frost. Unlike the last couple of years, it was a gentle frost with normal cool temperatures in the following days. The last couple of years have seen brutal temperature drops into the teens followed almost immediately with snow. The leaves froze…
AFTER mowing your grass religiously for weeks during the summer, there comes a time when you stop for winter. Grass cutting is an essential task during the spring and summer months, when the warmer temperatures cause lawns to grow thick and long. 1 Grass doesn’t need to be mowed during winter – overcutting could damage…
Once leaves have dropped in autumn, there is a great opportunity to examine the deciduous trees in your garden and determine if some pruning is needed. November through March is an ideal time to get that work done. Evergreen tree pruning should be deferred until early spring. The reasons for pruning include: ⢠Managing damage…
The need for seasonal garden cleanup can be a controversial subject. How much to do in autumn, and how much to leave for spring, is a question best answered by, âIt depends.â Questions to ask yourself include: ⢠What are you growing? ⢠What insect and animal pests do you want to manage? ⢠What…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Joseph Ahrens, a 39-year-old plumbing superintendent based in San Diego. The following has been edited for length and clarity. I was born and raised in Southern California. My mom started her career in healthcare client management when I was a baby, and she still works at…
First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide. Open this photo in gallery: Illustration by Catherine Chan Last summer, as temperatures around the world exceeded the limits of human endurance and wildfires wiped out Canada’s forests, the kitchen sink backed up. As disasters…
My motto is work smarter not harder because I’m lazy. One way to work smarter is to spray paint or dry brush a batch of small items together, especially if you are painting them all the same color. That is what I did with this batch of thrifty decor. I painted or dry brushed all…
