1. Dig out a space in your yard. Obviously, if you are going to start a garden you need space to plant your vegetables, plants, etc. Do you have any room in your front or backyard? No matter how big your lot, chances are that you can find some space for starting a garden.

2. Be ready to work hard from the beginning. Of course, don’t confuse this work with something that is not fun. If you are truly interested in gardening you will find the work to be exciting because you know you are going to reap the rewards in the long run.

3. Decide on what you want to plant. What types of vegetables are you going to grow? Some of the most common include tomatoes, green peppers, hot peppers, and zucchini. Of course, there are many other options to choose from. Your local home and garden center will show you the way.

4. Keep at things even if you are not seeing much progress. Remember, you have the entire summer for your vegetables to grow. Makes sure you keep your garden in good condition, and that you water your vegetables to meet their specifications.

5. Pick your goods and eat! Once your vegetables are ripe and ready for the picking the real fun starts. This is when you get to clean your produce, prepare it however you please, and sit down for a tasty snack or meal. Does it get any better than that?

As you can see, even if you don’t know anything about gardening you can get started in no time at all. Follow the five steps above, and you will be well on your way to having your dream vegetable garden!

photo credit: TheTruthAbout…

There is one day every year that millions of Americans dread: April 15, tax day. What will you be doing on this day? Some people rush around to file their final return, but others sit back and relax knowing that everything is already taken care of. Where do you fit in?

If you are smart, you will spend tax day relaxing. But the only way you can do this is if you have already finalized and submitted your final tax return to the IRS. With so many months to complete this task there is no reason that you should wait until the last possible minute. But believe it or not, this is something that many people do every year. For some, it is sort of a holiday.

Waking up on April 15 knowing that you have to get your tax return filed can cause a lot of pressure. After all, you don’t have time on your side. If you run into even the smallest of problems you could get pushed back, and in turn run into a situation where the IRS is going to slap you with a penalty. Who wants to pay the IRS more money than they have to?

Is a tax extension right for me? Maybe, maybe not. Some people are in the habit of filing an extension ever year. And while this is something to consider, you need to know that this is a process, just like filing your final return. In other words, in order to be granted an extension you have to file a form; in this case Form 4868. If you are going to take the time to go through all of this why not take the time to file your return before April 15?
On tax day this year you should set a goal to relax instead of worrying about how you are going to get your return off to the IRS in time. Do you think you can reach this goal this time around? You may be used to rushing around on tax day, but once you break this cycle you will realize just how much stress you can take off your plate.

The city that cradled the American Revolution celebrates our nation’s birthday in style with a Boston Pops concert and fireworks show along the Charles River.
Comedian Craig Ferguson hosts the show , which begins at 8 pm, and country music sensations Rascal Flatts will also appear. At 10:30, the fireworks begin. More than 20,000 pounds of explosives will be used for the display. For the first time, this year the show will include shells with a 10-inch diameter shells that climb to 1,500 feet or one and a half times the height of the Hancock Tower.

Chicago

The city with the big shoulders hosts two nights of fireworks starting July 3 at the Taste of Chicago Festival. The event at the Petrillo Music Shell starts with an 8 pm concert by the Grant Park Orchestra. At 9:30, the fireworks begin with a soundtrack supplied by a local radio station.

Houston

Houston’s birthday bash features the nation’s largest land-based fireworks show, plus live concerts from Sara Evans, Miranda Lambert, Jo Dee Messina and The Shirelles.

And that’s just the beginning. Chevy’s Freedom Over Texas will have a mini-auto show, championship men’s and women’s volleyball games, face-painting, rides and jugglers. The Budweiser Beer Garden will take care of your thirst and Chevy’s Liberty Park will display military artifacts and vehicles.
The events kick off at 4 pm July 4; the fireworks start at 9:30.

Mt. Rushmore

South Dakota’s National Monument will host a fireworks display on July 3.

The festivities, including music and entertainment, begin at 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 3 and culminate with the highly anticipated fireworks display at 9:15 p.m. Presidential re-enactors, Retro Bill (the D.A.R.E. Safety Buddy) and several musical groups will perform on three different stages and in the two theaters in the Lincoln Borglum Museum throughout the day.

New Orleans

New Orleans calls its July 4th extravaganza Go 4th on the River. The Dueling Barges Fireworks show begins at 9. Patriotic music sets the tone as the two barges along the Mississippi try to outdo each other in a display that’s ranked fifth on the American Pyrotechnics Association’s “must see” list.

New York

The nation’s biggest fireworks show takes place in New York, where Macy’s Department store has sponsored the show for more than 30 years. Six barges stationed between 23rd and 42nd Streets in the East River set off 30,000 aerial shells and special effects. There are electric set pieces on the barges, and the New York Fire Department gets in on the act with fire boats shooting red, clear, and blue water 300 feet over the river. The show, which takes a year to plan and coordinate, uses 55 times more fireworks than the average show in the US.

Philadelphia

Philadelphia celebrates Independence Day for eight days, starting June 28 and ending July 6. The fireworks take place July 4 at 26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

Russell Tompkins, Jr. and the New Stylistics open the 8 pm show on the 4th. The Philadelphia natives are followed by R&B artist John Legend. Then the fireworks begin. Set to the theme The Melting Pot, USA, this year’s show show includes music from nations around the world and reflects the colors in each country’s national flag.

Saint Louis

Because of the recent floods, Fair St. Louis will move to the Soldier’s Memorial area of downtown St. Louis, changing the name of this year’s facility to “Live OFF the Levee.” But the annual party will be as spectacular as ever.

Fair St. Louis is a 10-day celebration that kicks off Friday, July 4 and runs Friday and Saturday nights through August 2. The free event features nightly fireworks.

Festivities begin with the Veiled Prophet Parade, a 130-year tradition that’s similar to the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans. The parade starts at 10 am. At 11, the fair begins. At 1 pm Drake Bell from Nickelodeon’s “Drake and Josh” show will perform, followed by a 6 pm concert by Shannon Nicole. Joss Stone will perform at 8 pm. Fireworks begin at 9:15.

The Sauce Café will be available Saturdays from July 5 through August 2. Each night a different chef from one of the city’s top restaurants will prepare a three-course prix-fixe menu. There will be two seatings a night–from 6-7:45 pm and from 8-10 pm. Dinners are $30 per person, not including beverage, tax and gratuity.

San Diego

San Diego’s largest fireworks display, the seventh annual Big Bay celebration, begins at 9 pm. on Friday, July 4. The show can be seen from almost anywhere around the northern portion of San Diego Bay, as well as from Embarcadero Marina Parks north and south and Coronado Tidelands Park in Coronado.

Barges off Harbor and Shelter islands and the Embarcadero and Seaport Village/Coronado Landing explode with rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air for 20 minutes. More than 500,000 people are expected to come to the waterfront to watch the show.

Washington, DC

Everyone should experience July 4 at our nation’s capital at least once in their lifetime.
The day starts with the National Independence Day Parade, which is sponsored by the National Parks Service. The parade showcases bands from every state as well as fife and drum corps, floats, military units, giant balloons and drill teams.

The Smithsonian Folklife Festival along the Mall features American food and crafts from all 50 states.
But the big spectacle of the day is the PBS-sponsored show, “A Capitol Fourth,” a concert and fireworks display on the West Lawn of the Capitol. Grammy winners Huey Lewis and the News, American Idol winner Taylor Hicks, rock ‘n’ roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis, Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell, classical musician Hayley Westenra and soprano Harolyn Blackwell will perform under the direction of conductor Erich Kunzel. The Choral Arts Society of Washington, under the direction of Norman Scribner, returns to the show. The Joint Armed Forces Color Guard of the Military District of Washington will also be featured on this as well as the United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps.
The concert ends with a bang in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” featuring the U.S. Army Herald Trumpets and live cannon fire.

For the first time in major American comic book publishing, a bilingual issue will hit the stands. The Fantastic Four, also know as Los Cuatro Fantasticos, are heading to Puerto Rico, where they will face off against the evil villain, El Chupacabras.

The Marvel Comic will follow the heroes to the Island of Death — Isla de la Muerte — and is being published in both English and Spanish. The company, which has started chipping away at the historically white world of comics, created the genre’s first Latina superhero, Anya Corazon, in 2004.

This historical issue will not only be bilingual, but bicultural with the addition the El Chupacabras. The chupacabra, literally meaning “goat sucker,” is stuff of legend in parts of Latin America. Originating in the 1990′, the chupacabra is like the bogeyman, though some believe him to be real. The beast is about the size of a bear and attacks at night, killing and drinking the blood of livestock. Though the legend originated in Puerto Rico and Mexico, eyewitness sightings have been claimed all the way from Maine down to Chile.

Pick up the latest issue to see how the Fantastic Four can deal with the likes of him.

(Photo via flickr cc)

Many kids have written a Santa letter or two in the course of their lifetime – in fact, depending on when and where you grew up, you may have even written them in school. But when we grow up a bit and learn that Santa isn’t as real as we’d first believed, the question always pops up: where do all those letters to Santa go?

The answer isn’t so simple: there are several locations where a child’s letter can end up. Many U.S. letters travel to a small town in Indiana named Santa Claus. The town was named as such over 150 years ago and every Christmas, the town of just 2,000 receives thousands and thousands of Dear Santa Claus letters. Still more letters head to a special mailbox in Nuuk, Greenland, which is designated only for Santa letters. In England and France, each one gets opened and a reply is sent, usually postmarked from the North Pole.

Of course, as the Internet makes our big world seem smaller, there are plenty of ways to help a child contact Santa. Email Santa lets children email Santa, even on Christmas Eve, and receive a prompt reply.

For slightly more ambitious parents, several pay sites exist where you can customize your letter – fonts, names, stationary, and even the possibility of a letter from Rudolph. If this is what you’re looking for, try

• Mydnyte.com. starting at $4.95.
• Letters from Santa Claus, Indiana  for $12.99.
• Greetings from Santa
• Santa Letter for Kids, starting at $10.50.

(Photo via flickr cc)

Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address. Lincoln wasn’t the main attraction at the ceremony. Place of pride went to Edward Everett, the leading orator of the day. Lincoln was invited at the last minute by David Wills, a local lawyer who helped purchase the land for the cemetery. Everett, who was invited first, asked the organizers to postpone the date so that he would have time to write–and memorize–his speech. It took two hours to deliver.

Then Lincoln delivered the closing remarks, a mere 286 words. Although we now think of the speech as a rhetorical masterpiece, not everyone was blown away by the speech.

According to a New York Times article, his delivery was interrupted five times by applause and greeted with “long continued applause” at its conclusion. Outside of Gettysburg, the speech received mixed reviews from newspapers of the day, which were even more highly partisan than they are today. Northern papers both praised and attacked it, while Southern papers predictably denounced it.

Eyewitnesses, too, gave conflicting reports, but mostly about the amount of applause and whether or not Lincoln read from a manuscript. E.W. Andrews, the aide of a Union general, sat near the speakers’ platform. He recalled that Lincoln “came out before the vast assembly, and stepped slowly to the front of the platform, with his hands clasped before him, his natural sadness of expression deepened, his head bowed forward, and his eyes cast to the ground.” Andrews said “the great assembly listened almost awe-struck as to a voice from the divine oracle.”

Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin, who sat on the speakers’ platform, enthused, “It was so Impressive! It was the common remark of everybody. Such a speech, as they said it was! Everett and all went up and congratulated the President, shaking him by the hand.”

Everett wrote Lincoln a brief note the next day, requesting a copy of the speech and covering it with praise: “Permit me also to express my great admiration of the thoughts expressed by you, with such eloquent simplicity & appropriateness, at the consecration of the cemetery. I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

How would a modern-day speaker approach the occasion? Perhaps as a PowerPoint presentation.

Many with receding hair lines feel embarrassed, nervous, or ashamed of exposing the tops of their heads. Today, though, on Be Bald and Be Free Day, all are encouraged to walk with their heads held high.

If you wear a wig, toupee, scarf, or other such thing, take if off today. If you know someone who uses one of the aforementioned coverups, encourage them to take it off.

Today is a day of celebration because baldness can be beautiful. President Ike Eisenhower was bald. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Steward) is bald. Action star Vin Diesel is bald. Even the good-turned-evil Lex Luthor is bald! Bald is fantastic, sexy, and something to strut, not cover up, so celebrate Be Bald and Be Free Day the only way you should: show the world your head.

(Photo via flickr cc)

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month has been an annual occurrence for over twenty years and one of its main goals is to teach about the importance of early detection. They encourage women to perform self-breast exams, schedule their annual mammogram, and get the facts on all the medications they’re taking.

Take some time to educate yourself this month and learn what you can about breast cancer. And if you’d like to help, one of the easiest ways is to purchase some gear from the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month Store. Filed with pink goodies like tshirts, pins, bracelets, jar openers, and so much more, part of each sale goes towards breast cancer education.

And if you’re a blog reader, which many of you obviously are, you may notice some changes around the blogosphere this month. Many sites — predicted to reach 3000 — will go Pink For October this year, changing their design to a pink version. If you have a blog or website, this is also an idea way to support this noble cause without spending anything but time.

There are so many ways to get involved and even help out, so make it an October goal to do a little something in support of breast cancer research and education.

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. – Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

Today marks the beginning of the ALA’s Banned Books Week, a time when we celebrate our Constituionally-granted right to read whatever material we want. In observance since 1982, the annual Banned Books Week serves to both remind of how lucky we are to enjoy freedom of literary choice and to spread knowledge about some of the world’s most progressive and controversial books.

In 2006, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s award-winning novel, And Tango Makes Three was the year’s most-challenged book. The story follows two adult male penguins that co-parent an egg as a same-sex couple. Obviously due to its controversial subject matter regarding homosexuality, the book was officially challenged a combined 546 times by parents, administrators, and various groups.

And Tango Make Three was joined this past year by Cecily Von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girls (homosexuality, drug use, sexual content, offensive language), Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Alice (sexual content and offensive language), Carolyn Mackler’s The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (sexual content, offensive language, anti-family), Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (sexual content, offensive language), Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories (occult/Satanism, violence, and insensitivity), Chris Crutcher’s Athletic Shorts (homosexuality and offensive language), Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower (homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language), Toni Morrison’s Beloved (sexual content, offensive language), and Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War (offensive language, violence, and sexual content).

Celebrating Banned Books Week is as simple as picking up the banned novel of your choice and indulging in a few hours of enjoyable reading. For those that would like to be more actively involved, consider organizing a seminar, suggesting a banned book for your book club, or purchasing posters, tshirts, buttons, and other gear at the ALA Banned Books Store.

The 3-day event promises to be both exciting and educational, featuring the following highlights:

•  

• Across the Pacific: David Doubilet’s keynote presentation will discuss the incredibly diverse undersea countries of the Pacific Ocean, from the Galapagos Islands to the reefs of Indonesia.
• Forums and Seminars: Topics will include “Saving Our Seas With Underwater Imagery,” “Preserving Our Sea of Diversity,” and “Divers Are Said to Be the Best Ambassador for Our Sea.”
• Ocean Film Festival: Fifteen award-winning films from the World Festival of Underwater Pictures (Antibes) will play here, coving diverse topics from the crustacean world to the four underwater seasons.
• The Heart of the Sea: Emory Kristof, the discoverer of the great Titanic wreck, will deliver a keynote presentation discussing the mysteries of the incredibly diverse shallow water seas surrounding the Banda, Celebes, and Sulu Seas.
• WOW Shoot Out Competition: Running from September 16-21, this competition sends contestants diving under the sea in search of the most spectacular underwater shot. Don’t miss the winning entries!