Good Home Design

Archive for December, 2009

Relocating into a new house can be influenced by different factors. One of the common reasons is better career opportunities. Or maybe you have an offer to live a more comfortable life in a high end community. This can be a memorable experience knowing all these reasons and the idea of staying in an entirely new place—neighbors, home and new life. However, this can be more exciting if you have thoroughly planned on the things that you should prepare before the big day.

To help you organize things and secure that the event will be a worthwhile undertaking for you, read through the rest of this article.

Bear in mind that your goal is to relocate in an orderly manner. Thus, you will need to hire a trusted moving company to make everything possible. Make sure that you choose a trusted office. Get to know their charges if they are reasonable enough and obtain excellent services from them. Always keep in mind that you entrusted them to transport your personal stuffs including your most valuable possession and thus you should be cautious in giving your trust to them.

Before making your final decision on what community to live, perform a research on the possible places that you like. Get the distance from your place to the office, to your kid’s school and other common business offices. Accessibility to these places will help make your life comfortable later on.

Of course, one of your objectives for transferring is to have a good life. This also includes having a practical way of life. Hence, determine the cost of living of a certain community and evaluate if you can live up to it. It would be too unreasonable if you live in high class community and yet you are not financially capable to do that. It will only ruin your life.

It is advisable to set your mind before you move out. Living in a completely new place can sometimes be frustrating. You have to adjust to your new environment. If you have small children, you have to guide them as they go through their adjustment period. Normally, they are the most affected ones when you move out from your old place. It is also best to schedule your relocation during their vacation breaks.

Being prepared on all of these things beforehand will help make your relocation a stress-free and memorable event. It is acceptable to have fun when you move out but it will be a lot unforgettable if you are prepared to handle possible issues as you go along the process. So what are you waiting for, start planning your game plan now before you relocate.

Moving into a new house is both an exciting and a stressful activity. Nevertheless, you should not allow the amount of work ahead to overshadow your excitement. Relocating is one of the most prevalent realities these days since more and more people are considering moving into a different place. The most common factors that lead to relocation could be due to work and acquiring a new property leads a family to move into a different locality. Therefore, it is vital to be aware of what you should do to prepare you and your family for moving.

Before moving, you should choose between moving yourself and hiring a moving company to assist you. If you decide on the former, be prepared to make a checklist to make sure that your moving is convenient and comforting not just for you but for the whole family as well. Following is a checklist for moving yourself into a new home.

1. Make sure that you plan ahead of time. Make your reservation with a truck rental company at least two to three months before your moving schedule. Make a written confirmation of your reservation, the expenses involved and complete details on your relocation.

2. Go through your home two months before moving and find out what you have to bring to your new home and what you decide to give or throw away. A garage or moving sale is also very helpful since this will add to your funds for your relocation expenses.

3. If you have kids and they are moving into a different school near your new home, arrange for the school transfer as early as two months before your scheduled move.

4. List down items that need extra attention and packaging such as computers, televisions, fine chinaware among others. Make sure you have the appropriate boxes and moving supplies such as packing tapes, tissue papers, bubble wraps or newspapers for packing.

5. Start packing a month before your move. You can begin packing items that you do not use regularly. Make sure to label and number them accordingly for an easier unpacking later. When packing, take note on items with significant value such as your stereo systems or your flat screen television.

6. In your local postal office, fill out a change of address with your new address. Ensure that you inform banks, cable and phone providers, credit card and insurance companies and your dentists and doctors of your new address.

7. Confirm your truck rental reservation two weeks before the scheduled move. If you wish, you may cancel or have your newspaper and magazine subscriptions transferred to your new home.

8. One week before you move, most of your things should already be packed and ready. Do not forget to pack a traveling bag with important items that you family will need on your moving day such as toothbrushes, change of clothing, toiletries, paper plates and cups and medications. Include several bottled water in your necessity bag and a few ready mix coffee or tea.

Consider a thorough check up on everything to make sure that you have not forgotten some important details. On your moving day, it is important to prepare yourself and your family not only physically, but also morally and emotionally since relocating into a new home is bound to be a significant transition especially for young children.

The very first thing you need to do when you want to make your own garden is by selecting a spot. Without a choice, it means simply doing the best one can with conditions. With space limited it resolves itself into no garden, or a box garden. Surely a box garden is better than nothing at all.

But we will now suppose that it is possible to really choose just the right site for the garden. What shall be chosen? The greatest determining factor is the sun. No one would have a north corner, unless it were absolutely forced upon him; because, while north corners do for ferns, certain wild flowers, and begonias, they are of little use as spots for a general garden.

If possible, choose the ideal spot a southern exposure. Here the sun lies warm all day long. When the garden is thus located the rows of vegetables and flowers should run north and south. Thus placed, the plants receive the sun’s rays all the morning on the eastern side, and all the afternoon on the western side. One ought not to have any lopsided plants with such an arrangement.

Suppose the garden faces southeast. In this case the western sun is out of the problem. In order to get the best distribution of sunlight run the rows northwest and southeast.

The idea is to get the most sunlight as evenly distributed as possible for the longest period of time. From the lopsided growth of window plants it is easy enough to see the effect on plants of poorly distributed light. So if you use a little diagram remembering that you wish the sun to shine part of the day on one side of the plants and part on the other, you can juggle out any situation. The southern exposure gives the ideal case because the sun gives half time nearly to each side. A northern exposure may mean an almost entire cut-off from sunlight; while northeastern and southwestern places always get uneven distribution of sun’s rays, no matter how carefully this is planned.

The garden, if possible, should be planned out on paper. The plan is a great help when the real planting time comes. It saves time and unnecessary buying of seed.

New garden spots are likely to be found in two conditions: they are covered either with turf or with rubbish. In large garden areas the ground is ploughed and the sod turned under; but in small gardens remove the sod. How to take off the sod in the best manner is the next question. Stake and line off the garden spot. The line gives an accurate and straight course to follow. Cut the edges with the spade all along the line. If the area is a small one, say four feet by eighteen or twenty, this is an easy matter. Such a narrow strip may be marked off like a checkerboard, the sod cut through with the spade, and easily removed. This could be done in two long strips cut lengthwise of the strip. When the turf is cut through, roll it right up like a roll of carpet.

But suppose the garden plot is large. Then divide this up into strips a foot wide and take off the sod as before. What shall be done with the sod? Do not throw it away for it is full of richness, although not quite in available form. So pack the sod grass side down one square on another. Leave it to rot and to weather. When rotted it makes a fine fertilizer. Such a pile of rotting vegetable matter is called a compost pile. All through the summer add any old green vegetable matter to this. In the fall put the autumn leaves on. A fine lot of goodness is being fixed for another season.

Even when the garden is large enough to plough, I would pick out the largest pieces of sod rather than have them turned under. Go over the ploughed space, pick out the pieces of sod, shake them well and pack them up in a compost heap.

Mere spading of the ground is not sufficient. The soil is still left in lumps. Always as one spades one should break up the big lumps. But even so the ground is in no shape for planting. Ground must be very fine indeed to plant in, because seeds can get very close indeed to fine particles of soil. But the large lumps leave large spaces which no tiny root hair can penetrate. A seed is left stranded in a perfect waste when planted in chunks of soil. A baby surrounded with great pieces of beefsteak would starve. A seed among large lumps of soil is in a similar situation. The spade never can do this work of pulverizing soil. But the rake can. That’s the value of the rake. It is a great lump breaker, but will not do for large lumps. If the soil still has large lumps in it take the hoe.

Many people handle the hoe awkwardly. The chief work of this implement is to rid the soil of weeds and stir up the top surface. It is used in summer to form that mulch of dust so valuable in retaining moisture in the soil. I often see people as if they were going to chop into atoms everything around. Hoeing should never be such vigorous exercise as that. Spading is vigorous, hard work, but not hoeing and raking.

After lumps are broken use the rake to make the bed fine and smooth. Now the great piece of work is done.

I am sure our garden, without any interference of the pests that could attack plants then gardening would be an easy matter. But all the time we must watch out for these little foes little in size, but tremendous in the havoc they make.

As human illness may often be prevented by healthful conditions, so pests may be kept away by strict garden cleanliness. Heaps of waste are lodging places for the breeding of insects. I do not think a compost pile will do the harm, but unkempt, uncared-for spots seem to invite trouble.

There are certain helps to keeping pests down. The constant stirring up of the soil by earthworms is an aid in keeping the soil open to air and water. Many of our common birds feed upon insects. The sparrows, robins, chickadees, meadow larks and orioles are all examples of birds who help in this way. Some insects feed on other and harmful insects. Some kinds of ladybugs do this good deed. The ichneumon-fly helps too. And toads are wonders in the number of insects they can consume at one meal. The toad deserves very kind treatment from all of us.

Each gardener should try to make her or his garden into a place attractive to birds and toads. A good birdhouse, grain sprinkled about in early spring, a water-place, are invitations for birds to stay a while in your garden. If you wish toads, fix things up for them too. During a hot summer day a toad likes to rest in the shade. By night he is ready to go forth to eat but not to kill, since toads prefer live food. How can one “fix up” for toads? Well, one thing to do is to prepare a retreat, quiet, dark and damp. A few stones of some size underneath the shade of a shrub with perhaps a carpeting of damp leaves, would appear very fine to a toad.

There are two general classes of insects known by the way they do their work. One kind gnaws at the plant really taking pieces of it into its system. This kind of insect has a mouth fitted to do this work. Grasshoppers and caterpillars are of this sort. The other kind sucks the juices from a plant. This, in some ways, is the worst sort. Plant lice belong here, as do mosquitoes, which prey on us. All the scale insects fasten themselves on plants, and suck out the life of the plants.

Now can we fight these chaps? The gnawing fellows may be caught with poison sprayed upon plants, which they take into their bodies with the plant. The Bordeaux mixture which is a poison sprayed upon plants for this purpose.

In the other case the only thing is to attack the insect direct. So certain insecticides, as they are called, are sprayed on the plant to fall upon the insect. They do a deadly work of attacking, in one way or another, the body of the insect.

Sometimes we are much troubled with underground insects at work. You have seen a garden covered with ant hills. Here is a remedy, but one of which you must be careful.

This question is constantly being asked, ‘How can I tell what insect is doing the destructive work?’ Well, you can tell partly by the work done, and partly by seeing the insect itself. This latter thing is not always so easy to accomplish. I had cutworms one season and never saw one. I saw only the work done. If stalks of tender plants are cut clean off be pretty sure the cutworm is abroad. What does he look like? Well, that is a hard question because his family is a large one. Should you see sometime a grayish striped caterpillar, you may know it is a cutworm. But because of its habit of resting in the ground during the day and working by night, it is difficult to catch sight of one. The cutworm is around early in the season ready to cut the flower stalks of the hyacinths. When the peas come on a bit later, he is ready for them. A very good way to block him off is to put paper collars, or tin ones, about the plants. These collars should be about an inch away from the plant.

Of course, plant lice are more common. Those we see are often green in colour. But they may be red, yellow or brown. Lice are easy enough to find since they are always clinging to their host. As sucking insects they have to cling close to a plant for food, and one is pretty sure to find them. But the biting insects do their work, and then go hide. That makes them much more difficult to deal with.

Rose slugs do great damage to the rose bushes. They eat out the body of the leaves, so that just the veining is left. They are soft-bodied, green above and yellow below.

A beetle, the striped beetle, attacks young melons and squash leaves. It eats the leaf by riddling out holes in it. This beetle, as its name implies, is striped. The back is black with yellow stripes running lengthwise.

Then there are the slugs, which are garden pests. The slug will devour almost any garden plant, whether it be a flower or a vegetable. They lay lots of eggs in old rubbish heaps. Do you see the good of cleaning up rubbish? The slugs do more harm in the garden than almost any other single insect pest. You can discover them in the following way. There is a trick for bringing them to the surface of the ground in the day time. You see they rest during the day below ground. So just water the soil in which the slugs are supposed to be. How are you to know where they are? They are quite likely to hide near the plants they are feeding on. So water the ground with some nice clean lime water. This will disturb them, and up they’ll poke to see what the matter is.

Beside these most common of pests, pests which attack many kinds of plants, there are special pests for special plants. Discouraging, is it not? Beans have pests of their own; so have potatoes and cabbages. In fact, the vegetable garden has many inhabitants. In the flower garden lice are very bothersome, the cutworm and the slug have a good time there, too, and ants often get very numerous as the season advances. But for real discouraging insect troubles the vegetable garden takes the prize. If we were going into fruit to any extent, perhaps the vegetable garden would have to resign in favour of the fruit garden.

A common pest in the vegetable garden is the tomato worm. This is a large yellowish or greenish striped worm. Its work is to eat into the young fruit.

A great, light green caterpillar is found on celery. This caterpillar may be told by the black bands, one on each ring or segment of its body.

The squash bug may be told by its brown body, which is long and slender, and by the disagreeable odour from it when killed. The potato bug is another fellow to look out for. It is a beetle with yellow and black stripes down its crusty back. The little green cabbage worm is a perfect nuisance. It is a small caterpillar and smaller than the tomato worm. These are perhaps the most common of garden pests by name.