Taking Advantage of the First Snow of the Winter

Taking Advantage of the First Snow of the Winter

Guest written by our friend Donnie Donovan

The first snow of winter is always such an exciting event. The land is covered with a pristine white blanket of snow that is just begging to be dug into. We wait all year for this big event and are always prepared with snow gear to ensure we can really enjoy the cool temperatures. The first snow always seems so much crisper and more enticing. Snowmen, snow angels and snowball fights are always at the top of the agenda.
If we are lucky and there is enough snow, we build snow forts before the snowball fight. Of course, the first snowfall activities would not be complete without a couple of rounds of sledding. We have the perfect sledding hill within walking distance of our home. The kids bundle up, dig out their sleds from the garage and off to the sledding hill we go.

After a long day in the snow, it is time to curl up with a warm blanket, a cup of hot chocolate and settle in for the night to watch some directv service specials. The day is always filled with lots of fun, but it is completely exhausting. We will definitely sleep well after our day playing in the snow.

200 Year Old Tip on Perennial Gardening

Okay one more fun thing. This is from 1785 and it talks about perennial plantings. I wanted to find something about gardening 200 years old.

A Tomato Transplant Container from 100 Years Ago

A page from Vegetable Gardening 1909

We have a lot in common with gardeners from the past. Even 101 years ago they looked for methods to grow transplants. I thought this was interesting in that they use metal cans and melt parts of it.

About Tomatoes: The Journal of Horitculture May 4th, 1880

Just another example about growing tomatoes.  It is from the Journal of Horticulture May 4th, 1880. This is a great way to read up on the history of vegetable gardening.

Using Google Public Domain Books for the GARDEN

This is a clip from Google. I used their public domain book search. You can create a HTML copy and paste it. This is just an example. Public Domain is a time frame. If you seach the books from 1950 backwards that pretty much covers the free books. That means you can read them for free, use your e-reader, or tag them to a blog like I did. I am always looking for something to do in the winter.

Here is the link to use Google Public Domain Search

What is interesting about the entry below is it is from 1877. Not much has changed in preparing tomatoes. There is lot about tomatoes and gardening that you can use for your needs that was written 100 years ago.