10 Mistakes New Gardeners Make
Caring for plants can be overwhelming. It’s easy for new gardeners to get confused, but we’re here to help you get a green thumbs up when it comes to your garden this year. Avoid some of the most common mistakes that new gardeners make - click here to read more.
Notes to self, for replanting the boxes on our back porch.
(via mytiger-myheart)
How to Drive to Improve Traffic for Others
Driving can be a stressful activity. You can get caught in traffic jams, lose a good parking spot, get cut off, or be on the receiving side of a little road rage. While there isn’t anything you can do about everyone else on the road, a few changes to your driving habits can make the experience a bit smoother for everyone involved. (via lifehacker).
We’re going to take a look at a few tips you might not know about or you simply may not have thought of, but it’s important to remember that obeying basic safety laws is the number one way to make driving more enjoyable and efficient for everyone else. This means using your blinkers when turning, not opening your door into oncoming traffic, and everything else you learned in Driver’s Ed.
For example:
Use Cruise Control: Driving at an erratic speed can cause accidents and traffic jams, but research has shown that using cruise control on the highway can reduce both. If even just a small percentage of drivers use cruise control, it maintains the speed and flow of the traffic for everyone. Just remember to turn it off when passing so you don’t create a congestion behind you.
Create Merge Zones and Move Over in a Timely Manner: One for the major causes of traffic jams is a lane coming to an end. One simple solution if you’re the one driving in the lane being merged into is to move over a lane if you can to help the merging traffic have a place to go. Another option to slowly accumulate a large space in front of you for the traffic to move into. If you leave the space ahead of time, the cars merging in will have a place to slide into and the traffic won’t slow down. It’s thought that if only a few cars in a traffic jam line do this, it will increase the overall flow of traffic.
Know Which Lane to Be In: In nearly every major city the odd street addresses are one on side and the even on the other. Knowing which is which means you will always know which lane to be in when looking for an address without consulting a GPS. It also means you get in the correct lane early and stay there so people aren’t slowing down around you while you’re changing lanes.
I wish this was required reading for all drivers.
Forget sous vide and how to chiffonade: sometimes you just want to learn about making juicy chicken, cooking the perfect egg, or peeling garlic quickly and effectively. 2011 at The Kitchn has been a year of covering a great many kitchen basics for the novice and more experienced cook alike. Today we are bringing you 15 of our favorite tips, hints, and discussions from 2011.
40,000 people will be coming here to Chicago to run the marathon this weekend. Lots of well-hydrated people means long Port-A-John lines, so if you’re running, here’s some strategy:
Your first instinct will be to choose the shortest line, but this can be wrong. Choose the line with the best female to male ratio, even if it’s not the shortest line. Most men, if they’re going Number One, will see long lines and choose to go on a tree, fire hydrant, or friend. This means most men standing in line are going Number Two, which in turn means a line with more men will be moving much, much slower than a line with more women.
Also, here’s a list of actual Port-A-John company names. For my money, you can’t beat “Doodie Calls.”
-Ian
What. Wow.
Useful information.
A friend who will be bicycling 100 miles this June in the Kennebunk Tour de Cure (to support the American Diabetes Association), recently asked for some tips on online fundraising, and as I’ve been known to do the occasional fundraiser—typically involving facial hair…
I thought this might be a good time to jot down some of what has worked for me. So here’s an early version of “Jacques’s tips for cause-based fundraising.” Feel free to share your own tips, and I’ll add them to the list, as I’d love to turn this into a resource for all charity-minded walkers, runners, bikers, bakers, and mustache-growers, among others:
1. Start early: if you know you’re going to be raising money, aim to send out your first emails about a month ahead if time.
2. Pace yourself: along with #1, I’ve found that people typically don’t react well to being contacted more than once a week by group email. In a four-week campaign, I’ll usually go with one message in the first week, one in the third, and two in the fourth.
3. Tell me why it matters: this is a very important piece, especially in your first contact, but also in later emails. This has three parts: why does the cause matter, why are you doing what you’re doing (biking, headshaving, etc), and how, if at all, are the two connected.
4. Making progress: when you do send out subsequent messages, be sure to acknowledge how far things have come and how generous your friends and family have been. This can be by naming names, or generally giving appreciation.
5. Give options: especially in this economy, not everyone will be able to donate money. Give them some other ways to contribute so that even non-financial donors can feel like they’re a part of the cause. These could include:6. Enlist your friends: If you post an event notice or a fundraising message on your tumblr/facebook page, you’ll reach some of your contacts, but if just 10 friends agree to spread your message, your reach extends exponentially. Don’t believe me? Check out the water-bottle fundraiser that my brother—a high school science teacher—and his students are running to generate cleaner water and healthier students in Portsmouth, RI. And consider buying a bottle, because you could always use more water, and it’s a great cause.
- registering to participate themselves,
- reading more about the cause,
- volunteering,
- forwarding your email,
- attending an event
7. Don’t ignore the Luddites! Living so much of my life on-line, it’s easy to forget that some people aren’t on Facebook/GMail/Twitter/Tumblr/YouFace every day. In my mustache fundraising, they’re some of m biggest donors, but they require moving out of web 2.0 mode.8. Say thank you: this is probably the most important part, but it can be the hardest to keep up with, especially as things spiral toward the finish. Public praise is great, but a quiet note of thanks is appreciated and makes people want to participate again in the future. Maybe send a photo of you at the end of the fundraising event.
9. Build year-to-year momentum: Many fundraisers are annuals, so if you have a natural inclination to a particular cause, you might be planning to do it again next year. Don’t wait until next year to start recruiting (at least in a “soft sell” mode) next year’s new participants. Plant the seeds now, and this year’s donor could become next year’s new top fundraiser.
I hope these tips are useful to you. I’ve saved this as a permanent resource page (http://jacquesofalltrades.tumblr.com/fundraising), so feel free to forward to friends!
If you like what you see or have something to add, shoot me a note, or consider donating to Mike’s Tour de Cure ride, or participating/recruiting a new participant for Mustaches for Kids DC 2011, coming in November!
— The London Times, 1939 (via David Malki)
(Source: gloriousmadness, via gilmoure)
Great little cooking tip!
Great tip from Cole Ruth, published by Saveur:
Here’s a trick: zest a lemon and let the zest dry on a piece of wax paper for a day, then fold the wax paper and press. Presto! The zest becomes a powder. You can sprinkle some onto a beet salad to give it a zingy flavor or throw a pinch on a slice of Key lime pie for more tartness (you can make dried zest from limes, too, for that matter).
Savage Chickens on what you can really learn from Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler”
And now I can’t get this song outta my head!!!!
A daily reminder
(via pawanis)
(Source: moretoexplore, via edatrix)
Some simple tips to reduce food waste:
Food waste crosses racial, class and gender lines. It’s a systemic problem rooted in our culture of abundance and busy lifestyle. But it’s also one we can change. And, happily, that change starts with simple actions:
• Buy smarter. Plan the week’s dinners and make a detailed shopping list. Stick to the list; don’t buy more food than you can possibly eat before it goes bad. When planning meals, consider your reality. If you often don’t have time to cook dinner after work, don’t shop as if you do. And scheduling a leftover night is always wise.
• Rethink portion size. We have a warped idea of what’s a sensible amount to eat, in part because of what counts as a “serving” at restaurants these days. As a result, we often take or receive too much, prompting us to either overeat or scrape the food we don’t eat into the trash.
• Love your leftovers. If you’ve invested the money, time and energy in cooking, why not save the remaining portion? And remember, saving food only to throw it out a week later defeats the purpose. If you’re not a leftover lover, try halving recipes to prevent excess or repurposing your accumulated extras into another dish.
• Compost! Those of us without dogs (or pigs or goats) will always have some food waste. But we don’t have to send it all to the landfill. Composting, whether by backyard, worm or Bokashi bin or the indoor NatureMill, creates a usable soil amendment rather than methane. That way, you return your food’s nutrients to the soil instead of just throwing them away.
Some great tips in here, and further reminder that we need to be more aggressive with our freezer!
My thoughts on education, communication, social media, social justice, effective policy and governance... scattered into large amounts of photography, cooking, music and sports.
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