Flowers Of Happiness

By Jude Simons

 You don’t have to give up all the foods you’re used to eating to become more healthy and to start eating raw, organic and live foods. You know the best place to start changing your life and your diet? It’s at the grocery store, of course. Even if you’re at a good weight and pretty healthy, take a tip from dieters. Go shopping with a list and don’t go to the grocery store hungry. Make sure this shopping trip you can resist those Oreos and potato chips.

Clean out your refrigerator and your cabinets. Throw out the half-empty bags of snack foods. Put any microwaveable foods in a dark bag and stash them somewhere in the back of the freezer. Out of sight, out of mind.

Do stock up on dried fruits and nuts for snacking. Transform your kitchen from a processed food haven to a healthy kitchen. Invest in a good juicer. Clean out those crisper drawers to get them ready for an influx of new organic and raw foods.

Load up on fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains. If you can’t give up meat and fish, consider getting super fresh tuna that you can just sear and serve with sesame seeds and a small amount of soy sauce. (I’m getting hungry just thinking about this!)

Make eating this way fun. Invest in those big, white square dishes that are good for serving sushi. It’s easier to arrange small portions of different foods that way. And getting new white dishes will be symbolic of this new, purer way of eating. Get some good chopsticks so you can take your time eating. This is really fun!

Go to a bookstore and get a cookbook or a food book so you can learn about eating raw foods. Buy a big vase and a bunch of sunflowers to symbolize letting the sun into your diet.

Visit the Mango Fruit website to learn about growing mango and mango allergy.

A Look At The Benefits Of Juices
By Jude Simons

 Eating raw foods is a way to give your body some of the nutrition it desperately needs. Many of us are at least slightly overweight, and even the morbidly obese are starving for essential proteins and amino acids. All the processed, cooked foods we eat give us only a small percentage of what we need. Consequently, we eat and eat and yet we’re still not nourished. Psychologists try to tell us we’re eating to make up for an emptiness in our souls. Wrong! Our bodies our empty and trying to tell us so.

Eating raw foods is good for us on so many levels. It’s satisfying to eat them. They take more time to chew and swallow, so we don’t eat as fast. And we’re getting so much more in the way of nutrition by consuming fruits, vegetables, nuts and sprouts.

It can take time to prepare raw foods, however. Which is why a juicer is an important addition to your kitchen once your start to be serious about raw foods. A good juicer can process an entire apple - seeds, stems, peel, pulp and all - and turn all that into a healthy, nutritious juice.

Buying apple juice is NOT the same thing!!! Don’t even look at apple juices or even ciders in the grocery store. Put that $2 or $3 aside and save up for a juicer. Buy bags of apples, orange, bananas, carrots and make your own juices to get everything from the fruit that you’d get by eating it raw. Now you’re getting juice that’s as fresh as the fruit or vegetable you made it from. No preservatives, no processing that strips most of the energy from the fruit. And think of all the delicious combinations you can make with the many tropical fruits that are available now in most grocery stores. You can customize your fruits and add non-typical ingredients like pumpkin to an orange juice. Now that’s a powerhouse of a juice!

Learn about how to cut a mango and mango seed at the Mango Fruit site.

Send Flowers To Someone You Love

7 Tips For A Healthy Garden
By .JohnSmith.

 Proper maintenance is essential to a healthy and beautiful garden. Neglected gardens offer suffer from over crowding, countless weeds, poor soil quality and weak plants. Here are seven tips on keeping a well maintained garden.

Deadheading Flowers: This is the practice of snipping off the dead and spent flowers on perennials and annuals. Removing dead flower heads will encourage repeat blooming, particularly with annuals. It also keeps the garden looking fresh all season long. Many perennials such as peony and iris, and all annuals benefit from having spent blooms removed.

Pinching Back: Certain plants, especially foliage plants like Coleus, respond with a spurt of new growth when their tops are pinched back. Pinching back promotes healthy growth and encourages more numerous blooms. Some plants become too leggy or top heavy unless they are pinched back.

Proper Fertilizing: Over fertilization can burn your plants. Fertilizing correctly encourages healthy growth in your flowers and other garden plants. If you water your yard frequently, fertilizing more regularly may be necessary because nutrients can leach out of the soil. An occasional application of liquid fertilizer is sometimes more beneficial than granules as it is more easily absorbed by the leaves. Container plants will be considerably healthier with a half-strength solution of liquid fertilizer applied regularly.

Diligent Weeding: This is one of the best ways to preserve the beauty of your garden. Remember, weeds compete with your plants for both nutrients and moisture. They also tend to crowd out other flowers and may limit air flow in the garden resulting in rot.

Proper Watering: Give your garden a thorough soaking a few times a week rather a quick dousing. This will ensure there is no run-off to cause erosion. Deep watering also encourages the growth of deeper roots which will help your garden plants withstand long dry spells.

Avoid Pesticides: Chemicals are dangerous to humans and often kill the natural predators of the pest in your garden, so avoid them if possible. There are many organic alternatives that effectively control pests.

Remembering these simple tips will keep your garden healthy and vibrant throughout the entire season and from year to year.

Tim Birch is the publisher of GardenScope.com, a garden resource site for the gardening enthusiast.

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