Sudoku puzzles are solved with logic and don’t require you to have any math skills (well, besides being able to count to 9). All of the sudoku puzzles are 9×9 grids. To solve them you have to fill in the empty cells. Each column, row, and region must contain the numbers 1 to 9 exactly once.
Ready, set…Go!
readersdigest.com©
Mind, body and soul. Take good care of yourself.
ginawilliams
Looking for a way to save your beautiful ferns over the winter and keep them around to grow again next summer? Then today’s article is just for you!
Ferns are one of the most popular plants of all for summer decorating. With their gorgeous, bright green canopy of cascading foliage, they are perfect for bringing life to patios, porches – or any area where shade is more prevalent than pure sunlight.
Ferns truly are the ultimate multi-purpose plant. Not only do they look great in hanging baskets, they are right at home in containers or when planted directly into shaded flowerbeds. Even better, they are extremely low maintenance, requiring little care beyond water to thrive.
One of the most difficult things for gardeners to watch is their once beautiful fern dying off in late fall. Not only is it sad to watch, it can be quite expensive having to repurchase new ferns every spring. But here is the good news – it’s actually quite easy to save your ferns.
One thing is for sure, if you allow your fern to get hit by a hard frost, it’s usually too late to bring it back. The first key to saving ferns begins with getting them out of harms way before the bitter cold sets in.
Ferns can handle a bit of chill, and even a light frost for that matter, but not a hard frost or freeze. As temperatures begin to drop in mid to late fall, plants need to be covered or brought indoors on nights when a heavy frost or freeze is expected.
With that in mind, it is a good idea to start preparing your fern for life indoors long before that first blast of cold arrives. And that preparation begins with shaping up your fern for indoor life.
The first step to success in overwintering your fern indoors is pruning. Ferns can can certainly grow quite large through the warm summer months. So large, in fact, that at full size, they can be nearly impossible to find space for indoors.
If your plant is of moderate size, it can be pruned back and kept whole. However, if your fern has grown to massive proportions, you may need to divide it before bringing it inside. If that is the case, we have included instructions for dividing at the end of the article.
For plants you will not be dividing, begin by cutting back any large strands of foliage to create a more manageable plant indoors. Don’t be afraid to take off several inches of growth or more if needed. If indoor space is really limited, you can even cut the plant back entirely, it will still come back in full next spring with proper winter care.
Once pruning is complete, it’s time to give your plant a good washing off. The best way to do this is with a spray from your garden hose. Not only will this remove any clippings, it will also hose off any pests that might try to hitch a free ride into your home.
Be sure to lift the foliage and spray the plant down entirely. Beyond any pests that might be present, this can also help wash off the eggs of pests that may be lying in wait. Once the plant has dried off, you are ready to bring it indoors!
If your fern is good to go without splitting, allow it to thoroughly dry out before bringing indoors. We actually hang ours from our clothesline in the afternoon sun to help dry them out completely.
Now it’s time to find the best location for overwintering indoors. For best results, you need to find a location that is cool, but protected from freezing conditions. For many, a basement works great, but a garage, or even a corner in a cool room in the house works well too.
Ferns do not require full sun or bright light to survive through the winter months. In fact, too much light through a window can actually burn the plant’s foliage. That is why it is important to keep them away from southern facing windows, as the rays can still provide too much light.
Ferns survive with ease with simple occasional ambient light from a garage window, or even a basement well window. Less light is always better than too much.
Ferns do not require much at all to survive the winter indoors. There is no need for fertilizing – really all that is needed is an occasional watering. Check the soil every 5 to 7 days, and water only when the soil has completely dried out.
It is important to remember at this point you are not trying to grow a beautiful plant indoors. Instead, you are simply overwintering and saving the fern until it can once again thrive in the warm summer months.
Knowing this, realize the plant will not look it’s best. The leaves will indeed turn more pale until spring arrives one again. Some will also fall off to the ground. The fern at this point is really in more of a hibernation state than anything – but it will survive.
As warm temperatures return, it’ time to get your fern back outside to regain it’s strength, vigor, and color. Once again, be sure to protect it from spring freeze and frosts too. The more it can be outside, the faster it will come out of its resting state and begin to grow new foliage.
If your ferns are exceptionally large or have outgrown their pots, early Autumn is the best time for dividing and replanting. If you would like to keep the same size fern for next year, a good rule of thumb is to split the fern to a third of its size from its current container.
When splitting and dividing plants, it is best to cut all of the foliage off down to within an inch or two of the base of the plant. Once split, repot into a container, filling in the sides with a regular potting soil mix.
You can also repot the other divisions at this time as well for even more plants. The ferns will regrow a bit overwinter from the cuttings, but will return in full once they are outdoors.
For complete instructions on dividing, check out our article on our sister site This Is My Garden : How To Divide Overgrown Ferns. Here is to keeping those ferns around for another season, and to saving on that gardening budget too! Happy Gardening – Jim and Mary.
Source: https://oldworldgardenfarms.com/2022/09/11/how-to-save-ferns/
Sorry, I almost forgot. Today is cyber Monday, or as most people call it…Monday. Isn’t every day cyber-something? Oh wait. Here’s what makes it “special”:
Cyber Monday falls as the first Monday after Thanksgiving and the first Monday after Black Friday. This day is a day that Americans go back to work and buy things on their computer or online thus the name Cyber Monday. Most of the major online retailers have their biggest discounts offered on this day. Where Black Friday is focused on Brick and Mortar businesses that are physically located in local communities throughout the United States, Cyber Monday is focused on online sales.
However, don’t get fooled by the low prices!
Prince William and Kate Middleton are traveling to Boston this week for the Earthshot Prize Awards Ceremony on Friday ― and Kensington Palace just announced that royals have added a few more engagements to their diary.
The two are visiting America for the first time since 2014 ― and the very first time as the Prince and Princess of Wales, titles they received following the death of Queen Elizabeth in September.
On Wednesday, the Prince and Princess of Wales will head to Boston’s City Hall, where they will meet with Michelle Wu, the mayor of Boston, and Ambassador Caroline Kennedy for a special kickoff to the awards ceremony.
The next day, William and Kate will visit Greentown Labs, the largest climatetech incubator in North America. Shortly after, they will visit Roca Inc., an organization that is focused on young adults aged 16-24 years who “have experienced extensive trauma and are the primary victims or drivers of urban violence.”
On Friday, the prince and princess will undertake separate engagements before the awards show. Kate will visit The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, in keeping with the royal’s work focusing on early childhood development, while William will once again reunite with Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and visit the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Then, it’s off to the awards show for the two’s final Boston engagement.
The ceremony will take place at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway, which is where the five Earthshot winners ― out of the current fifteen nominees ― will be announced.
If the event is anything like the inaugural ceremony last year, it will have a green carpet instead of a traditional red carpet ahead of the show. Last year, the then-Duke and Duchess of Cambridge recycled previously worn looks, as attendees were encouraged to “consider the environment when choosing their outfit.”
Earlier this year, Earthshot Prize CEO Hannah Jones told HuffPost that the organization is also focused on creating a sustainably produced awards show, and gave some insight on how they plan to do that.
“We’re very ambitious about how we really want to walk the talk,” Jones told HuffPost in September at the Plaza Hotel in New York. “So thinking about ‘What is our footprint, and how do we mitigate it and how do we avoid having a bigger impact.’”
“We won’t be perfect. Nobody’s perfect,” Jones added. “This is the journey of sustainability ― it’s about a journey of progress. But our objective is to always make sure that we’re embedding sustainable thinking into everything we do.”
The royals attend the Earthshot Prize 2021 at Alexandra Palace on Oct. 17, 2021, in London. The Earthshot Prize, created by Prince William and The Royal Foundation, is an environmental prize awarded to the most inspiring and innovative solutions to environmental challenges facing the planet.
© Provided by HuffPost
You can tell when strings need changing by how they sound and look. Old strings sound lifeless, and will be discolored over the frets.
What You Need:
How to Do It:
Source: https://www.instructables.com/Everything-You-Ever-Wanted-to-Know-About-Maintaini/
Hankerin’ to have at it? A do-it-yourself project that is? If sanding a piece of wood or furniture is in your future, read on to learn about grit. Yes, true grit in the sanding experience. Check out this handy guide and go too it!
handtoolessentials.com
A new royal show is heading to Netflix—and it isn’t just the next season of The Crown.
Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan’s highly anticipated docuseries will reportedly drop on the streaming giant this December, according to People. Liz Garbus, an Oscar-nominated documentary director who has previously worked on critically acclaimed projects like What Happened, Miss Simone? and Girlhood, will helm the series.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex first signed a multiyear deal with Netflix back in 2020, for which they set out to produce docuseries, feature films, scripted shows, and children’s programming.
© Samir Hussein – Getty Images
Meghan opened up about working with Garbus in a recent interview with Variety.
“It’s nice to be able to trust someone with our story—a seasoned director whose work I’ve long admired—even if it means it may not be the way we would have told it. But that’s not why we’re telling it. We’re trusting our story to someone else, and that means it will go through their lens,” she told the outlet. “It’s interesting. My husband has never worked in this industry before. For me, having worked on Suits, it’s so amazing to be around so much creative energy and to see how people work together and share their own points of view. That’s been really fun.”
Though there were whispers around the time their Netflix deal was announced that the couple would take part in a reality series, a spokesperson for the Sussexes shut the rumors down.
And Meghan said in an interview with The Cut earlier this year, “The piece of my life I haven’t been able to share, that people haven’t been able to see, is our love story. I hope that is the sentiment that people feel when they see any of the content or the projects that we are working on.”
Story by Chelsey Sanchez for Harper’s Bazaar©
There’s still a lot of good in the world — and a lot of reasons to be hopeful. (Even when it doesn’t always feel that way.) Here is some good news for you.
Because of pollution, the Earth’s ozone layer has seriously suffered. And of course, that’s no good for anybody, since the fragile gas layer protects our planet and shields us from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. That’s why it’s such a relief that climate change experts believe that the ozone layer will fully heal within 50 years, according to a 2018 report from the United Nations.
When Jonas Salk created the polio vaccine, he could have patented it and made an estimated $7 billion, according to Forbes. Instead, he chose not to do that. On April 12, 1955, when CBS’s Edward R. Morrow asked the scientist who owned the rights to the vaccine, Salk replied, “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
When the leader of Piplantri, a small village in Rajasthan, India, lost his 16-year-old daughter in 2006, he decided to turn his grief into something beautiful. In order to ensure that the village treasured each baby girl , he set up an initiative that sees trees planted every time a girl is born in the village, according to The Guardian. As of 2018, 350,000 trees had been planted.
Turns out, more millennials donate to charity than any other generation, according to 2018 research by fundraising firm Blackbaud. The researchers found that while 84 percent of millennials donate to charitable organizations, just 72 percent of baby boomers and 59 percent of Generation X do the same. It just goes to show that we’re moving toward a kinder, more charitable world.
Volunteering your time or money won’t only help others, it could also help you. One 2011 study from the University of Michigan found that people who volunteer for selfless reasons live longer than those who don’t volunteer at all. Those who volunteer for more self-centered reasons, such as looking good in their community, don’t experience the same benefits.
There’s nothing wrong with eating chocolate simply to enjoy its delicious taste. But if you need an excuse to indulge, you’ll be thrilled to find out that chocolate can be good for both your mind and body.
According to a 2019 review of research by University Health News, “eating moderate amounts of dark chocolate benefits health in many ways. In fact, chocolate is now considered an anti-aging, anti-inflammatory ‘superfood’ for the brain and body.”
Article by Best Life
It’s best to grow a milkweed that is native to your area so monarch butterflies that visit find the habitat to which they are accustomed. You can grow other species, but the natives are suited to your region. Most milkweeds grow best in full sun, but they will tolerate some shade. With the exception of swamp milkweed, which prefers moist, rich soil, milkweed species will thrive in poor, dry soils and disturbed areas, fields, and ditches. Also keep in mind that milkweed plants have some toxicity — so keep them out of places where livestock may graze and don’t let pets or children chew on them.
Photos courtesy of Prairie Moon Nursery (whorled milkweed); John D. Byrd, Mississippi State University, Bugwood.org (green milkweed); Dave Powell, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org (antelope horns); D.L. Cook (California milkweed)
Though adult monarch butterflies sip nectar from many flowers, monarch caterpillars feed exclusively on milkweed plants, specifically those in the genus Asclepias. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants so their larvae, or caterpillars, have an instant food source once the eggs hatch. Chemicals in the milkweed are ingested by the caterpillars which are toxic to other animals, helping protect them from predators. Caterpillars and adult butterflies are also brightly colored, a natural warning that this insect is toxic.
Buy this Illustrated Print at GardenGateStore.com.
Many people consider milkweed a weed, but go ahead and plant those pretty “weeds.” The monarchs will thank you. However, if you are worried about these plants spreading too much or your neighbors complain, there are a few things you can do:
Since milkweeds multiply through underground rhizomes and by seed, keep a small milkweed clump contained by sinking 12- to 18-inch plastic or metal edging into the ground around the plants. Or periodically spade into the ground around the base of the plants and remove any wandering rhizomes from the soil.
You’ll also want to cut green seed pods off so they can’t produce seed. It won’t bother the monarchs — they feed on leaves and stems as caterpillars and nectar as adults, so they won’t even notice the pods are gone!
BY: Jennifer Howell
