Monday, March 17, 2008

Spring Is Almost Here In East Tennessee

With the warmer days arriving, it is most definitely time to get out in the fresh air. After being shut for the winter, I am looking forward to spending some time out in the yard doing some gardening. If you do not have a garden, flower or vegetable, this is the perfect time to start making plans. Not only is gardening good exercise, but it is also a great stress reliever. So start surfing the net for ideals on what you would like to do in your yard. Add a new flower bed, a water feature, turn a grass area into gorgeous area of color. Visit your local garden center for new ideals. Remember your landscape is just like a painter palette. You get to add the colors and textures.

Have fun gardening!!

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Have You Had Your Vitamins Today?

There has been a lot of talk in the news lately about vitamins. There seems to be those for taking them and those against taking them. I personally feel that we are not able to get all the needed nutrients from our daily food intake. If all the food we eat came directly from our own neighborhoods and not trucked across the country or sometimes from another country, we would be eating the most nutritional food possible. As it stands now, by the time our food reaches our tables, it has been picked before all the vitamins have had a chance to form. Once picked, our fruits and vegetables have sat in a packing warehouse, then loaded on a truck going to the distributors, next reloaded on yet another truck going to the local food store, and finally placed on the shelf to sell to us. Once it reaches our homes, it has spent days, even as much as a week in transit. This is not fresh from the garden. By this time, the nutrients have lost most of their value.
In a perfect world, we would all have a backyard garden to pick at some fresh fruits and vegetables from. But as we all know, this is no longer the American Way of Life. We all have some excuse for not having a small garden plot in our yard. For some, it is as simple as not having a yard to grow one in. For others, it just is not their thing to garden. Whatever the reason is, we simply are not getting the vitamins and nutrients our bodies need. Could this be some of the reason why our bodies are not able to fight off the colds, flu, and allergies that are common in our homes, schools, and workplaces? Are some of our more major illness and disease related to vitamin deficient? Cancer, heart problems, high cholesterol, and obesity are related to how we eat.