This post is in cooperation with the Arbor Day Foundation and Green is Universal. Our family tradition this time of year includes hunting for the perfectly shaped, real Christmas tree at a local tree farm. In a pinch, we’ve bought trees that have been transported from another state. But we try to keep it local, […]
Thought you were allergic to real Christmas trees but didn’t understand why? Organic landscape specialist Tanya Hans thought she was too…until she realized it wasn’t the tree that bothered her but the toxic chemicals sprayed on it. She discovered that trees grown with natural methods and with organic alternatives to toxic pesticides were no longer […]
The Ullrich family has been visiting Christmas tree farms for the past eight years. They proudly picked and sawed down their white pine together on a warm December weekend. The Robinson family made an adventure of finding the perfectly shaped Norway spruce for their living room. “This is something we can do as a family; […]
href=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0Fm08D5vIRY/T3ZD2RaLauI/AAAAAAAAAGY/YBnHfGy47EE/s128/lorax-the.png”> *Sponsored post in cooperation with Stonyfield My kids were wide-eyed for most of the Lorax this weekend, happily munching movie theater popcorn, and bouncing to some of the songs. By this time you probably know the Lorax has been a huge box office hit, you might imagine that the animation is superb, and you […]
Single Frame from Hive It’s barely detectable with the naked eye and can hide easily on a honeybee’s body. As apiarist Virginia Webb explains, “It feeds on the blood of the bee, through the body fluids of the bees. It also feeds on the young larvae of the bees, and it can greatly weaken the […]
Parenting Fantasy: Finding enough time to rest underneath this tree canopy and read an entire book that doesn’t have pictures. Parenting Reality: Catching five minutes to appreciate the beauty of the tree canopy and take this photo. Do you notice how calming it can be to surround yourself with green space? I counted at least five different […]
Do you play outdoors with your kids and talk about the animals that live in forests? We try to connect the bird nesting in the treetop with good reasons not to litter. When we play guessing games like, “where does this animal live?” we try to learn new words like “habitat.” It seemed like an easy […]
I’ve been spending this week sharing about a lovely visit to the Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum. Here are a few of our favorite trees that we spotted on our visit. 100-year-old Red Oak Tag said “cotinas coggyria” (Smoke Tree) Tag said “lagerstroemia indica Natchez” (Crape Myrtle) Century-old Cedars of Lebanon Hundreds of trees in […]
Time and patience can do much to beautify our yards. When some volunteer seedlings popped up in the wrong places, my husband took a few minutes to baby one in a pot, and just leave the other one alone for a while. In this early spring when our ground is thawed, he has transplanted a promising magnolia and a thin maple […]
Time to give a dried up Christmas tree new life with treecycling! A little jostling to unhook the ornaments was all it took for our parched spruce to relinquish many of its prickly needles. It was past time to give the special tree a new place outdoors. I swept up the needles to use for […]
Anne is a mother, wife and independent journalist blogging about carrying on the best of Grandma’s traditions while improving on what we know better.