The white willow is the commonest tree-size willow in Europe, attaining heights of 20 to 25 metres with trunks one metre across and living from 80 to 120 years. Old trees have thick, vertically furrowed, yellow-brown bark. The yellowish flowers, arranged in catkins, appear in April, while those borne on the female trees ripen into capsules with small, down-covered seeds in early June.

The goat willow is a shrub or small tree 3 to 10 metres high with a broad, broom-shaped crown. It reaches an age of 40 to 60 years or more. The bark is smooth and grey, with rhomboid lenticels. The twigs are stout, the buds ovoid, and the branches with their large catkins, that appear before the leaves, are popular heralds of spring, being among the first wild flowers to be sold at flower stalls. During the flowering period in March the goat willow is a very attractive ornamental, male individuals resembling a large yellow bouquet at this time.

How do you cultivate a garden? What does that even mean? It’s pretty simple actually. It means you are improving the soil for planting. You wouldn’t expect to throw some seeds down in your front yard and expect anything to grow without giving the soil a hand.

When you cultivate the soil, you prepare it for the plants you are going to grow. To begin, lets assume you are just starting a garden and only have your grassy yard. Ideally, you will use a motorized tiller. A tiller takes all the hard work out of cultivating your garden. You just turn it on and push it across your garden. It will break up all the grass and ground for you.

A tiller is the best to use, but they aren’t cheap. If you know someone who already owns a tiller, you can borrow theirs if you’re lucky. If you are serious gardener and plan on doing a lot of gardening for years to come, you might want to buy your own.

It’s always good to have some experience in landscaping or gardening before you try to take on a large project in your yard. Although using mulch and other yard improvement tools isn’t difficult, you should plan ahead and learn as much as you can before taking it on.

You may have enough funds to hire a professional landscaper to get the job done for you, even if it is a larger yard that will need plenty of mulch and topsoil. Believe it or not, some smaller and affordable local landscaping companies can do just as good a job as larger companies.

Landscaping is a very common need in local neighborhoods, and you should be able to find plenty of large and small landscaping companies that will be able to work on your yard for you. Rather than placing your mulch and topsoil yourself, why not let someone else do it for you if you have the means to make it happen?

Of course, there is nothing wrong with experimenting with your own landscaping project if you don’t have the money to hire a professional company to do it for you. Luckily, working with mulch and gardening doesn’t allow for many bad mistakes that can’t be easily fixable if you decide to change how things look in your yard.

We seem to be losing an essential skill in our society. Cooking. Real homemade cooking. The sort of cooking that Grandma used to cook for you. It’s important to teach cooking skills to kids, especially now when it seems so rare that kids are taught to cook. And the best place to start is homemade candy.

If you start teaching your kids to cook something they don’t like they probably won’t develop a love of cooking. But if you start the kids out cooking homemade cakes or homemade candy you can just about guarantee that the kids will love it, and want to do more.

Last night I did some great cooking with my kids who are 8 and 11, and I can’t still see their faces as they licked out the bowl. Kids love cooking something that is easy to cook and yummy to eat. Homemade candy is both easy to cook and yummy to eat.

And once they learn to cook some they’ll graduate from candy to bigger things, and they’ll have a skill for life.

The common beech is widespread in western, central and southern Europe, but absent in the northern and eastern parts with severe winters. In the mountains, it occurs even at elevations above 1000 metres. It is a shade-tolerant and vigorous tree that frequently grows in pure stands, but also occurs in mixed stands together with the spruce and fir, and, at lower altitudes, with the oak, hornbeam, and other broad-leaved trees. It attains a height of 30 to 40 metres and develops a long, smooth, silver-grey trunk with a high broad crown. The pointed buds are elongate, measuring 15 to 20 mm in length, and stand away from the twig.

It attains heights of 20 to 25 metres and develops a slim bole topped with a crown of slender, pendent branches. It has a fairly short life span, attaining an age of 100 to 200 years. The twigs are covered with waxy warts. The bark is white and smooth, becoming blackish and fissured at the base. The flowers appear in April, and the fruits mature in June, being gradually dispersed great distances by the wind until the onset of winter. This, plus the fact that the tree grows well even on poor soils, makes it an important colonist of forest clearings, pastures and fallow land. The silver birch is a light-demanding species and stands up well to both frost and the sun’s heat. The white trunk and fresh green of its spring foliage make it an ornamental element in the landscape.

Leaf Propagation You can raise many different plants by using leaf propagation, by cutting off portions of the leaves as cuttings. This method is used with plants that do not produce a shoot freely. Some plants that can be propagated in this manner are the Begonia rex, Gloxinia, and the spider plant and African violet. There have been many methods of leaf cutting that have been adopted, but in any case a matured leaf has to be used. The leaf is prepared by cutting a notch just below the junction of the main vein. The leaf is laid with the bottom facing down on the top of a pan filled with sandy soil. Then the pan is covered with a piece of glass and put in a warm room or greenhouse, this is done in the spring or early summer time.

The new plants will then develop just above the notches; when they are big enough, they are detached and treated like a seedling plant.

Besides mowing the grass and some light landscaping, when is the last time you spent some time making the outside of your home look better and more functional. If you’re like most homeowners, most of your beautification efforts are aimed at improving the inside. Here we’ll concentrate on making the outside better by simply improving your patio.

Chances are you don’t use this area as much as you could or should, but adding a patio cover will allow you to spend more time enjoying this area. And if you want it to look great and add value to your home, then you need to look carefully at wood patio covers. We all know wood looks great, but it will add functional benefits as well.

But first let’s talk about why you need a patio cover. The shade it gives will let you sit outside even when the hot summer sun is beating down. And the cover will protect you from other elements as well. Now you can sit outside and enjoy a warm summer rain while not getting wet. You can enjoy a cool shower while staying dry in the evening. And of course we already mentioned it will add value to your property.

If you have a plain wall or concrete floor, indoor or out, that is in need of a makeover, faux brickwork can be the ideal solution. Using readily available reusable stencils, you can transform a surface into an eye-catching feature. It’s a quick and easy faux painting technique that is ideal for beginners.

Brick Finishes

Brick finishes can complement many styles of decor. They can look trendy and modern, adding warmth and color to a room. Old brickwork has a soft and time-worn quality that is attractive indoors and out. In the garden or on the patio, plain walling or an ugly concrete slab floor can be transformed into an appealing feature of your living space.

Faux painting using brick stencils is an economical and practical answer to various problems. If you have brickwork that needs restoration, it may be the ideal solution. Damaged brickwork is difficult to repair and stripping brickwork of paint often reveals an unsightly surface beneath. Extending actual brickwork - if you can find matching bricks - is messy and expensive. Paint can give you the appearance you want without the hassle of construction work.

The Douglas fir is a native of North America growing from California up to British Columbia. It was introduced in Europe in 1828 and is widely cultivated today in the woods and parks of western and central, Europe because of its rapid growth and high quality wood.

It is now found in broad-leaved woods from England to Greece, eastwards to the western Himalayas and South to North Africa. It is estimated that there are about 30,000 of these trees in Germany. In France it is most abundant in the Vosges and the foothills of the Alps and in Great Britain it can be found from southern England to Scotland and in Ireland.

The wood is of high quality, with a great expanse of reddish-brown heartwood. It is very durable and is much used in the building of boats, wall-panelling, light furniture, wooden staircases, etc.

The small-leaved lime is widespread throughout most of Europe, extending northwards to Sweden, and eastwards to the Urals. In western and central Europe it occurs in oak forests in lowland and hill country. It also grows as a scattered tree in riverine forests, and is plentiful in scree woods.

The greenish white flowers appear at the end of May after the leaves unfurl. The samaras have red wings before maturation, but, when ripe, they turn entirely brown.

When the yellowish-green flowers appear in July, their heady fragrance spreads far and wide. They are visited by bees, and the tree is thus of importance for honey production. The rounded leaves have rusty hairs in the axils of the veins on the underside. The globose fruit has a smooth, thin shell. Small- leaved lime stands up well to hard pruning, and is highly prized for planting in avenues. The soft, whitish wood is used for making pencils and for woodcarvings. The bast fibres are used in gardening for tying, and for making plaited article.