11/22/13

While winter is around the corner, warmer spring weather is just a few months away. If you’ve been thinking of starting a backyard garden, now is the time to get the soil prepared. Rake mounds of dead leaves over the area of lawn you plan to garden. Thick layers of fall leaves left in place over the cold winter months will kill the grass that’s under the leaves and degrade into beneficial mulch. In the spring, flip the soil with the decomposed leaves, and it’ll add organic matter and nutrients to the soil.

11/21/13

Generally, it’s not a good idea to feed waterfowl human food. Common scraps, like old bread and crackers, are bad for the birds because they have little nutritional value and can get moldy and pollute the waterways. But if your community does allow you to feed animals like ducks, think natural seeds, grains and plants. Throwing small amounts of cracked corn, uncooked oats, birdseed, sliced grapes, frozen peas or corn and chopped lettuce can be nutritional options for them. Be spare and feed them only on rare occasions so they don’t become reliant on humans for food.

11/20/13

Here’s a simple way to give to the charity of your choice with just the spare change in your pocket: Donate through a Coinstar machine. The spare change-counting kiosks found at supermarkets across America can be used to donate 100 percent of whatever spare change you deposit to the charity of your choice. Nonprofit organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, UNICEF, the Humane Society of the United States, Earth’s Birthday Project and Audubon are just a handful of the conservation, animal welfare and humanitarian organizations that you can choose to support.