Posts Tagged ‘outdoors’

Which Should You Have: Picnic Or Barbecue?

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Are you considering throwing a party in the near future, but are not sure whether to have a picnic in the park or a barbecue party at home? People do enjoy both kinds of party, although some may have a first choice. One of the big differences between a picnic and a barbecue is often the food.

After all, you are usually allowed to have a barbecue and cook food in your own backyard, but there may be restrictions on cooking food on an open fire in a park or picnic site for fire safety purposes, so most people take pre-cooked meats and sandwiches.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both kinds of party, but we will start by looking at the food aspect, as most parties centre around food. An advantage of having a picnic is that you will be able to muck in with your fellow picnickers more, because you will have already cooked the chicken wings and legs and completed the sandwiches the night before.

You will have bags of sausage rolls and small cakes and all you will have to do is lay them out for people to help themselves. If you run out of sandwiches, people can make their own with the sliced bread that you will have brought just in case.

The disadvantages of a picnic are that you also have to tie your time up the day before making all the food and you will need transport to get there with your hampers, bottles, flasks, plates, beakers, tissues, flannels towels and whatever else you normally take with you. People may not even like your selection of sandwiches and if you let them make their own with what you provide, there could be a terrible mess. Your sandwiches could also curl up overnight of go off in the heat of the day or in the back of the car. This is a particular danger with pork, chicken and eggs.

You may have to erect a tent or rig up a shelter for those who can not stand strong sunlight. You may also have trouble with ants and wasps and the toilet facilities are often abysmal. Also if it starts to rain, you have little option but to pack up and leave for home or a pub

Barbecue food on the other hand is cooked there and then and cannot go off. The only danger is under cooking, but it is not too hard to get it right. There is not much chance of preparing vast quantities more than you need either as the chef will see when his food is not being taken away.

This is one of the disadvantages of barbecuing though, someone has to stand there all day and cook, although this can be done in turns and there is usually a bunch of men willing to show off their prowess as a barbecue chef.

With a barbecue you have the advantage of cover if it rains and the toilets are better than in the park and if it gets chilly later on in the evening, you could use a patio heater to extend the party.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with the outdoor heat lamp. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

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Landscaping Your Garden

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

If you have more than a small town garden, then landscaping your garden will probably be one of your considerations. If you have just bought the land, or you think that it is time for a garden make-over, there are methods of going about it. The easiest technique of going about planning a garden, is to first take a good look at the landscape of your garden. This can be difficult if the garden is established and in full flower.

Therefore, it can be better to delay until autumn or winter, so that you can see the true lie of the land. You could make a plan of the garden on graph paper and take a lot of photos too. Identify the photos on the back of them and relate them to the grid on your graph paper. There may be bumps and hollows, potholes, rocky areas and even a marsh or a pond to deal with.

These are probably natural features and if you want to alter them, you will have to tackle the fundamental cause. The feature is only the symptom. Like freckles or spots! If you look at the state of affairs in this way, it makes planning simpler.

For example, a rocky patch probably means that the Earth is throwing stones up gradually and if you want to clean it up, you will be picking up stones for the rest of your life. Similarly, if your wet area is the result of natural drainage from higher ground, you will have to drain it and put in permanent drainage, because it is not going to stop raining for you.

So, you can either work with nature or you will be working against it for the remainder of your life. Either that or paying someone else to do it for you. Another issue is that the wildlife that uses your locale does so because of how it is. If you change the landscape, your current range of wildlife might move on or just die. A lot depends on how much land we are chatting about, but in general, I would say that the larger the area, the more you should leave it alone.

On the other hand, you can add features more easily than remove them. For instance, if you have an area with poor soil, you could enrich it with fertilizer or put a pond there. Shade and existing fences or sheds should also be marked on your graph paper, although being man-made, these are simpler to do away with or alter.

Next you should decide what type of garden you want, within the constraints of the existing landscape, how much work you are prepared to put into it and how much money you want to pay out on it. Enhancing the natural elements of the land is the easiest way of landscaping your garden.

If you have a marshy area, why not put a low wall around it and turn it into a pond? If you have a rocky patch, why not collect up the stones and create a rockery? If you have a few trees, try growing wisteria, honeysuckle or vines through them.

If you are in the shade, buy flowers that prefer the shade and vice-versa. It is a effort to go against nature and unless you have a good cause to do it, it is not really worthwhile. Then build a patio or deck and sit outside and enjoy all the landscaping that you have saved yourself in your garden.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with outdoor heat lamp. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

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Astronomy – Important Pre-Christian Dates

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

There is no doubt that astronomy is the oldest science and there is also no hesitation that astronomy was being studied by everyone, not only the wise men, thousands and thousands of years ago.

We do not know precisely why they did it, but we can surmise that early man noticed a correlation between the weather and the stars, which were themselves not fully understood, of course.

Early man, probably even as far back as Neanderthal man, noticed the relationship between the weather and herd movements and crop growth, or at least fruit and nuts on local trees, if they did not have planted crops.

This means that people could see a connection between the stars and food availability. This relationship was probably ritualized into some sort of religion like early Wicca. Therefore, the stars became a very important part of the lives of every single person and it is likely that astrology and astronomy were widely intermixed by the average person.

However, there were also people who did not only use the stars as some vast celestial clock and who tried to make sense of the whole shebang. I am going to narrate below, eight of the most important dates or years in the history of astronomy before Christ walked on the Earth. In no way forget that they had nothing but an abacus to do there calculations and no telescopes, which came about two thousand years later.

585 BC: Thales of Miletus (c. 625- c. 547), a Greek, predicted a solar eclipse in Asia Minor purely on the basis of his observations and calculations. It was not a lucky guess!

c. 400 BC: the astronomer Oenopedes (5th. century). also a Greek, announces that the Earth is tilted on its axis with respect to the Sun.

352 BC: the Chinese report what they called a ‘guest star’, a supernova, which was the earliest reported sighting.

340 BC: The astronomer, Kidinnu (b. Babylon c. 379 BC) discovers the precession of the Equinoxes, ie the apparent change in the position of the stars caused by the Earth’s wobbling on its axis.

c. 300 BC: a ‘committee’ of Chinese astronomers compile star maps of the visible universe.

c. 240 BC: Chinese astronomers observe and make notes about Halley’s Comet. Also Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276 – c.194 BC), a Greek, correctly calculate the Earth’s dimensions.

165 BC: Chinese astronomers notice sunspots for the first time.

c. 130 BC: the astronomer Hipparchus of Nicea (b. 147 BC), a Greek, correctly calculates the distance to the Earth’s Moon and also rediscovers the precession of the Equinoxes.

You will see from the dates above that clearly not everyone let nature and the stars govern their lives, as the common farmer or hunter did. Some men actually put pen to paper, but before pen and paper even existed, and tried to work out ‘why these manifestations took place?’.

These individuals must have been remarkable men to have worked these measurements out by calculation, observation by the naked eye and rationalization alone.

Interested in astronomy, then why not visit our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com

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The French Open

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

It is highly unlikely that you will not have heard of the French Open tennis championship, because it is a competition which is a regular topic of conversation. In French the name of the competition is ‘Les Internationaux de France de Roland Garros’ or ‘Tournoi de Roland Garros’. This tournament, which lasts for about two weeks is held in Paris at the Roland Garros Stadium, from which it got its name.

The French Open is one of the most publicised and broadcast sports events in the whole world of sport and lots of VIP’s go to it. The attendees of the game are fanatics who await with baited breath every stroke, especially when there is a close struggle between the two sides, doing their best to win. TV viewers actually get a feeling of being there live too.

The French Open tennis championship is the second on the annual round of the Grand Slam tournaments and its history goes back to the year of 1891 when it was elevated to an international competition. In those days, it was called the ‘International Championship of Tennis of France’ or ‘Championat de France International de Tennis’ in French.

Initially, only players that were registered or licensed in France were allowed to participate in this competition, but things took a different turn in 1925, when the French open tennis tournament finally was accessible to foreign players. In 1912, the ground the participants used was made of red brick dust. Actually the crushed brick was formed into red clay that covered the ground, which until then would have been a green lawn.

The public popularity of the French Open tennis tournament held at the Roland Garros stadium, dates back to a competition between the Philadelphia Four (Rene Lacoste, Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet and Jacques Brugnon) who won the Davis Cup in 1927. It was the trigger of the desire in the French to defend their cup in future competitions. This new tournament was designed to bring back home the cup and was held at a stadium named after the World War I pilot Roland Garros. Since then the name has stuck.

The term ‘open’ was has been used from 1968, when the tournament allowed both amateurs and professionals alike who wanted to test their skills at tennis. Since then the French Open tennis tournament has also brought in some novel prizes.

Apart from the regular winners’ prizes, they also give prizes called ‘Prix Orange’ for the most correct and press-friendly player, ‘Prix Citron’ for the player with the strongest personality and ‘Prix Burgeon’ for the one the best new-comer of the tennis year.

If you are a beginner tennis player or want to know more about tennis fundamentals, just go to our site entitled Tennis Tips for Beginners

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The Remodeled Garage Heater

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

If you have converted your garage into a workshop or home office, you are sure to need heating in one form or another. This is because most garages are not built to the same standards of insulation as the main residential building. However, that need not present a difficulty. You may even have the opposite problem during the summer, as garages often do not have windows, or at least large ones, either.

Ventilation could be another matter that you will have to cope with, but we will come to that later. If you have a plentiful supply of dead wood, you could set up a pot-bellied stove, but you will have to vent the flue outside. This is very easily done, since most garage walls are only one brick or block thick. However, if they do not burn correctly, there can be a smell, which you may find unpleasant.

Or you could use a paraffin/kerosene heater. They are cheap to buy and are easily portable. These heaters do not necessarily have to have a flue. They are easy to turn on as many of them employ an electric starter. Some also have a thermostat to control the temperature. They can be a hazard if there are children around as they can be tipped over. However, for most people, the problem would be the smell given off.

You could use an electric hot air heater. They are quite cheap to buy, are easily portable and do not require a flue, but they can create a very dry atmosphere and are costly to run.

One of the most popular choices these days is a gas heater. There are many different kinds of gas heater, but most run on butane or propane. Most of the models are fairly reasonably priced. The main benefit of a gas heater is that they give consistent heat, are fairly cheap to run and are portable. Or at least many of them are.

You could have one built in, but it is hardly worth it, unless you are using gas that needs to be vented. Propane gas heaters also come with or without thermostatic controls. A propane heater could also double as a patio or deck heater on chilly evenings.

These gas heaters come in two forms: vented and unvented. The unvented models are the portable ones. They use the air from the room and the vented models have a flue that vents straight out of the garage. The slight disadvantage of the unvented model is that you have to keep the room airy at all times.

Therefore, if you choose a portable, unvented propane heater, you must leave a window partly open in order to allow the exchange of air and these heaters can be used as patio or deck heaters during the spring and autumn/fall. However, the vented gas heaters are fixed and have a flue attached, so they cannot be taken outside. Furthermore, if you decide on a vented model, you would be better off getting a professional in to install it for you by the book.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with the propane outdoor heater. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

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Indoor Herbal Gardens

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Every professional chef and every household cook recognizes the importance of fresh herbs to their gastronomic creations. No diner would dispute this either. However, whether you buy your herbs fresh or dried, there are issues. When you buy fresh, you normally have to buy more than you need and they are relatively expensive, whereas, if you buy them dried, they could be old and dried herbs lose their strength over time.

Why then is it that most home cooks use fresh or dried herbs from the supermarket? Ease, most likely. We lead busy lives and it is easier to get a few boxes of dried herbs at the supermarket along with your groceries than it is to cultivate your own.

Not that it is difficult to grow your own herbs and even spices, but you have to purchase the seeds, plant them and remember to water them. You can minimize the problem of trying to remember to water them very easily, by growing your herbs in a window box or in trays on your patio or deck, so that you notice them every time you take a break on your patio. You will also remember to bring them in if frost looks likely.

If you have children, growing herbs and spices in window boxes or trays can be a good induction to gardening for them. Herbs take very little looking after really, just needing watering every day. They are pretty tough and fertilizer is not necessary as most herbs have a fairly short life. Maybe only a month or two in some cases. Others last a lot longer.

First decide how many varieties you want to grow. How much room do you have for instance? The best way to start is look in your cupboard and see which herbs you use most frequently. Are any of them seeds? You could have a go at sowing these. Look them up in a book or on the Internet.

Sometimes it is better to soak the seeds first before planting them, others do not need this treatment. Second, which herbs have you read about that you would like to use but never seem to have in the house? Try planting those too.

If all that does not sound like fun, then you can buy small herb plants in the garden nurseries. Most of them stock the most common herbs in Spring. Whichever way you go, read up on how to cultivate the herbs you have selected. I promise you, it will not be a long read, as they really do take care of themselves except for the watering. if you buy seeds rather than seedlings, all the details you need will be on the seed packet and such packets are very cheap to buy.

The advantages of having your own herb garden are diverse, but you will be teaching gardening to your kids or grandkids, you will have fresh herbs for cooking and you will have beautiful aromas floating around your patio or deck.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with outdoor heat lamp. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

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The Rapid Weight Loss Con

Friday, February 19th, 2010

It is a good idea to set yourself targets, if you want to reach a goal. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about this. For example, if you are a size 14 and you spend a fair bit of money on some gorgeous size 8 dresses as motivation, you will probably feel quite cheesed off if you are not wearing them a month later.

It is not a good idea to make yourself feel awful, so the right way to have done this would have been to set smaller, more easily attainable, less expensive goals. A consequence of disappointing yourself like that could be depression or / and desperation and desperation to meet your targets can lead to foolish decisions.

Foolish decisions like following a fad diet, because it promises you rapid weight loss. There is no such thing as sustainable rapid weight loss without a change of lifestyle. Yes, you can go for surgery and have lumps cut off yourself or you can pump yourself full of diuretics and squeeze the water out of yourself, but the weight will come back, unless you modify the way you live.

Any diet that promises rapid weight loss without recommending a healthier, more active lifestyle is doubtful. Many of these types of diet are fad diets. The organizers of these diets are only interested in selling you magic potion drinks or powders as meal substitutes. I have even seen one company selling magnetic earrings which were ‘guaranteed’ to make you lose weight, if you dieted and did more exercise!

Of course you will lose weight if you diet and exercise, but carrying the earrings around with you is not helping. It just adds to the depression when you read in the newspaper that the guru you have been following is outed as a charlatan.

Here are a few tell-tale signs to help you spot a phony diet:

Any diet that tells you to miss meals should start red lights flashing. If you stop eating, you are reducing the number of calories you are eating, so you can expect to lose weight. That is not rocket science. You do not need to pay for advice like that.

However, this approach does not necessarily work either. If you miss a meal, your blood/sugar levels will drop and that has different consequences for different people, but none of them are advantageous. It will also increase the likelihood that you will overeat at the next meal. It would be better to eat a salad, an apple or a banana instead.

Any weight loss program that says you can lose weight without exercising or without dieting is definitely iffy too, because exercise is necessary for good blood circulation and metabolism, which are vital to your losing weight and living healthily.

However, exercise alone will not guarantee good health, you have to diet too. In this context ‘dieting’ just means eating healthily.

You do not have to wear anything special to lose weight either. Electric vibrating belts, magnetic earrings, sweat-inducing cummerbunds and the like, do not work. Full stop. They do not work and in a similar vein, powder and liquid substitutes are not worth it either. Get a liquidizer and make your own or just eat properly.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with losing weight quicklys. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

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Hybrid Cars vs. Conventional Cars

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Today, the question on everybody’s mind is, what is the significant difference between a hybrid car and a conventional vehicle? They suppose that there has to be some good reason why people are asking themselves whether hybrid cars are worth the cost and checking their wallets and bank accounts to see if they have enough money to get a hybrid car.

There has to be some reason why other people wouldn’t consider shelling out the money for a hybrid car because they feel their conventional car gets them to where they need to go just fine. Here are some of the reasons why a person may choose a conventional car over a hybrid car and vice versa.

Hybrid cars are much more expensive than conventional cars: because hybrid cars have a much more complex internal design, they do still have a fairly weighty price tag on them. However, conventional cars, which have become more efficient as the years have gone on, are quite affordable these days. Many people are selling their old conventional cars to buy newer, more efficient models.

In fact, they are so inefficient, in comparison with new models, that some people even give their old cars away. However, since most of the general populace has never owned a hybrid, there aren’t many people selling used hybrid cars yet. Therefore, a person wanting to obtain a hybrid would probably have to purchase a new one from a car showroom.

Both a hybrid car and a conventional car make use of a similar type of battery: a hybrid car and a conventional car both make use of lead-acid batteries that have enough renewable stored energy to turn over a small electric motor. These batteries are what are called “gear reduced”. That means that they can turn over this electric motor at approximately 300 rpms, which generates enough torque to turn over the engine. It is this process that starts the main petrol or diesel engine.

But even though a hybrid car uses a lead-acid battery, the battery it uses to drive the car’s electric engine is constructed differently. This kind of battery is known as a ‘deep cycle battery’ and it can be compared to the batteries that are used to power electric fork-lift trucks, milk floats or golf carts.

That’s the main difference between a hybrid car and a conventional car. One person could choose a hybrid car because it makes them feel more secure. For example, if a person buys a hybrid car, they can feel safe because their car will be less likely to run out of petrol. Another person might choose a conventional car because the cost of gas doesn’t really bother them that much at all.

However, a conventional car provides security as well, but of a different sort. With a conventional car, a person can be sure that they can always go to a junkyard, if they need to replace old parts on their car. On the other hand, those with a hybrid car will more than likely have to pay some pretty pricey repair receipts if something goes wrong.

However, the final decision is all yours. There are risks involved with both types of cars. But those who like to try out new technology might just consider splurging out on a hybrid car.

If you are interested in the insides of New Hybrid Vehicles, just visit our website on http://new-hybrid-vehicles.com

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Venomous Florida Snakes

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

The Florida snakes, along with the turtles, lizards, alligators and other reptiles are all part of a complex wildlife structure that plays an incredible role in the maintenance of Florida’s ecosystem. There are many species of Florida snakes. There are forty-four species living in an unbelievably varied habitat, ranging from salt marshes and fresh water marshes to dry uplands and coastal mangrove swamps to residential regions.

Only six Florida snakes are venomous, and they happily live with their non-poisonous cousins, even venturing into towns and cities too. The best way to stay out of trouble with snakes is to care enough to learn about their morphology and therefore become able to distinguish between these Florida snakes. Avoidance is the best approach a human being can adopt in relation to snakes.

The Coral snake and pit vipers are the most dangerous Florida snakes. They can be identified by a wide range of characteristics. Pit vipers include the Rattlesnake, the Cottonmouth and the Copperhead. They all have vertical eye pupils, a v-shaped head and facial pits: one between the eyes and nostrils and the others on each side of the head.

The venom of this type of Florida snakes is haemotoxic, which means that their poison works on the red blood cells, destroying the walls of the blood vessels and causing uncontrolled bleeding. Coral snakes however, use a neurotoxic venom, the toxins of which act on the body’s nerves causing paralysis.

Most of the snake bites reported every year in the United States are attacks by Florida snakes or by rattlesnakes to be precise. Because their venom spreads very rapidly throughout the body, the victim will die within thirty minutes without the immediate administration of anti-venom.

A major exception in this class of Florida snakes is the copperhead, because its venom very rarely, if ever, requires an antidote. Their poison is the least powerful and therefore they are regarded as the least dangerous of all the venomous Florida snakes.

It is precisely because of the danger that they present that poisonous snakes get the most attention, although the most common of Florida snakes is the Black Racer, which is a non-poisonous species that depends on its sharp fangs to capture its prey.

Although the usual tendency of home owners is to remove snakes from their properties, specialists point out that, without them, rodents would breed out of control giving us even more cause for alarm.

Therefore, unless there are any special causes for being worried, like snakes breeding in great numbers in your garden or shed, there is no real reason why you should interfere with the lives of these usually shy, helpful animals.

Interested in the Florida snakes? To learn more about snakes visit Caring for Snakes our new web site.

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Landscape Lighting

Monday, February 15th, 2010

While having a fantastic looking garden is important you will need to consider ways of allowing the beauty of your garden to shine through in various types of weather conditions. Some people also like to have the option of having their garden illuminated at night. For these many people, looking at various landscape lighting options will permit you the opportunity of having your garden looking just the way you want it, no matter what the natural lighting conditions are.

In order to provide the right landscape lighting conditions, you will have the choice of a wide variety of lighting fittings. These fixtures can be in the form of lamps, lanterns, spotlights, halogen lights and even solar-powered lights. The cost of these lighting fixtures differs for every type of light.

When you are thinking of using landscape lighting you will have to decide where to place the lights to achieve the best lighting effects. You may also want to consider which lights will provide your garden with an all over lighting. You can look in gardening magazines to get an idea of the many different ways that these landscape lighting fixtures can be used.

While it may possible to find ideas for placing landscape lighting in your garden from landscape and gardening magazines, there is another way as well. For this other method, you should look at your garden in the daytime and in the night time. In the morning you will need to look what spots in your garden could be enhanced by the use of landscape lighting. Then, when night falls, you look out at your garden again and see what areas would benefit from the use of lights.

Then, the morning after this nocturnal exercise, you should go out into the garden and mark out roughly where you feel there is a need for lighting. Once you have inspected this area properly, try imagining what sort of lights would be of use. You can then go to the garden store to look for these lights, once you have decided on the sort of landscape lighting.

Then, after you have bought your perfect lights and you have looked at the instructions on setting them up you will have to start fixing the landscape lighting in a manner that will make the most out of your garden. You ought to try subtle and strong lighting to decide on the best for your garden. Coloured lighting is a good option too. You could use a dimmer to trial stronger and subtle lighting.

Once you have finished your trials and have installed your final version, you will see what a difference having the right landscape lighting can make to your garden. From now on, when night falls, you will be able to appreciate the beauty of your garden in a different light.

If you thinking about using lighting for your home or garden, please click the previous link or for more landscaping ideas, please go to Stylish Home Decor

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