It's spring, late April, and that means that it's time for this household to spend more time outside. This year, we're expanding our veggie garden a good bit, adding a new plot of about 10 by 60 feet, and enclosing both the new section and our existing raised beds with fencing. Hopefully, we can keep the hungry critters out of the garden area. We've redone a plot on the southern side of the house that will be the new home for tomatoes, onions and basil. An old section of purple cone-flowers has been moved to a plot right next to the house and all of the beds have been mulched recently, thanks to my generous neighbor. Potatoes and peas have been planted in the old raised beds, so we're looking for a prosperous growing season.

In the front yard, the Bleeding Heart came up bigger and stronger than ever, not bad at all for a plant that I've had for more than a dozen years and that has been transplanted at least three times!

I've always liked the idea of using solar devices wherever possible, but many of them in the past have suffered from inferior baters and simply did not perform as well as I would have liked, so I was quite happy to find a little emergency light that not only runs on solar, but actually does it really well!

 We've had this lantern for several years now and have been very happy with how well it works. My husband grabs it all the time when heading out the door to retrieve things from outside - it's bright enough to clearly show him the way. And he's always very careful to set it back on the kitchen windowsill to keep its charge up!

Tea is a very, very popular drink all over the world so that means that there are lots and lots of tea bags getting tossed out all the time, but it should't be that way. Used tea bags have all kinds of uses!

There is very little that I look at on my computer that actually needs to be printed. In fact, my printer isn't even connected to my PC anymore, much less turned on. There is a printer in the house, connected to the PC my husband uses for his business, so if I absolutely have to print something, I can, but the inconveneince factor means that most of the time I simply save a copy of whatever it is where I can access it late if needed and forgo the option of printing it out. Screen capture programs and the ability to print to a file usually eliminates any need for printing. Most of the time, having a digital copy of something rather than a printed copy also makes it easier to move data from one place to another by cutting and pasting. This same idea can also be applied to other areas - if you make it inconvenient to yourself to do something, you will tend to do it less often! How can you apply this idea to your own home?