Earth Day and every day gardening with children

Earth Day ? or any day ? is the peak time to be gardening with children, sowing the seeds of a lifelong habit.

With Earth Day upon us, not to mention the warmer and longer spring days, many of us have been heading into our gardens. Around much of the Northern Hemisphere, this is the peak time to sow some seeds into the ground, as well as plant a lifelong gardening habit into the children in our lives.

Skip to next paragraph Susan Sachs Lipman

Guest blogger

Susan Sachs Lipman is the author of "Fed Up with Frenzy: Slow Parenting in a Fast-Moving World," which grew out of her award-winning blog,?Slow Family Online. She is the social media director for the Children & Nature Network. Susan and her family enjoy gardening, hiking, soap crafting and food canning.

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Gardening helps families spend time together outdoors, take pride in growing our own food, and connect to others who have lived on the land before us. Even though gardening offers a bounty of simple wonder, beauty and fun for even the smallest children, it doesn?t hurt to employ a few methods for getting and keeping them especially engaged.

Here are some simple ways to maximize your child?s interest in the garden.

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Let children select some plants they want to grow.

Something magical happens when one has ownership of a project from its initial stages. When choosing plants, check that you have the right growing conditions for them to help ensure a successful experience. Planting information is available on seed packets and through garden-supply store folks, who are generally very helpful. You can choose seeds, young seedlings, or a combination of the two. Seeds are more cost-effective and can be especially rewarding and wondrous. Bedding plants of course give your garden instant color.

Some plants that come up quickly, and are easy to plant and grow, include nasturtiums, peas, sunflowers and beans.

(As an aside, my daughter always chose marigolds to plant, just like I did I when I was a kid. They?re so colorful and cheery and happen to be easy to grow from seedlings or seeds. Perhaps many children are drawn to bright marigolds.)

Chop chores into small blocks.

Kids can lose interest if the project seems daunting. Try to break up the tasks into doable chunks and over more than one session if necessary.

Make a sign that identifies the garden, area, or container as the child?s.

The sign can be as simple as a painted rock or as ambitious as a mosaic-tile kit from an art-supply store. If other people are sharing the garden, you can still identify different children?s plantings by putting each name on a wooden stick (available in bags at garden-supply stores) in permanent ink.

Create a fun space in the garden.

Create a hiding place with trellises or plantings, or plant a sunflower house by planting sunflowers in the shape of a large playhouse that you can later go inside. (Leave room for your door!) Designate a tree stump to serve as a table for tea parties, or decorate an area with whimsical objects you make or find. For instance, use pipe cleaners and beads to make simple butterflies, ladybugs, mushrooms and flowers, and then place them among the plants.

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Sony to launch PlayMemories Online: 5GB cloud photo-sharing service coming next week (video)

Sony to launch PlayMemories Online: 5GB cloud photo-sharing service coming next week

Sony's PlayMemories photo-editing suite has floated around the PlayStation Store for about a month but it will apparently soon be joined by a new photo-sharing service. PCWorld reports that Sony will launch the cloud-based PlayMemories Online with 5GB of free storage in Japan, US, UK, Canada, Germany and France on May 25. Apparently, you'll be able to access those digitized memories through Sony's proprietary software on both PC and Macs, while your photos can also be streamed to Bravia TVs and digital photo frames. The company's WiFi-capable cameras will also get to hook up with the online storage system, while its Android tablets and phones will get their very own app to upload on their own. In an effort to differentiate the service from existing ones like Dropbox, PlayMemories Online will even sync those precious photos with your PSP and PS Vita. Sony will thus ensure you'll never be without at least four screens to show off those shots of your precocious daughter, pug or beachside view. In case you forgot, we've embedded a video from a few months back that should give a better idea of how the system should work -- in a house filled entirely with Sony merchandise.

Continue reading Sony to launch PlayMemories Online: 5GB cloud photo-sharing service coming next week (video)

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A taste of #TEDMED 2012: Main Course

The initial fare at TEDMED 2012 whet my appetite for the sessions that followed.

Howard-Yana-Shapiro

Howard-Yana Shapiro

Howard-Yana Shapiro, a plant scientist wizard, focused on how to improve nutrition in crops, rather than just the volume of the yield, and the coming crisis in feeding the world?s population. When he began, my cynical side thought, ?Here comes Monsanto and their genetically modified crops and patent wars.? I couldn?t have been more wrong.

Instead, he noted that every hour 300 children die of hunger and one quarter of children suffer stunting, and that plants can be genetically engineered to be more nutritional. He told about cocoa and the African Orphan Crops Consortium, working with UC Davis and Mars corporation to sequence the genomes of cacao and 100 traditional African food crops.

I was in disbelief when he said that the cacao genome would be freely open to all via the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture (PIPRA) and the Cacao Genome Database. Other African crop genomes will follow. (Irony: this important project to revitalize orphan crops was announced by UC Davis? own Linda Katehi, perhaps better known for the nutritional pepper spray use on her campus). When I asked Shapiro about the unusual step of making all these genomes public, he responded, ?I don?t see the logic of restricting 6 ? million small farmers.? That alone was worth my trip to Washington, D.C.

Frieden talk

Frieden talk

Dr. Tom Frieden?s talk also grabbed my attention. Perhaps it was his self-deprecating manner, saying, ?When you see how doctors practice medicine, you realize how resilient? people are. Or perhaps his stories of battling tuberculosis in India and New York. And he told of his father?s dying words to him, when he boasted that he wanted to become the best health commissioner, being ?How would you know?? These experiences led to his conviction that you must have a feedback loop to assess your impact if you are to succeed. And his observation, ?Public health does best when it helps people see the faces behind the numbers,? is well-demonstrated by the CDC?s great new hard-hitting anti-smoking ads.

Jacob-Scott

Jacob Scott

Jacob Scott?s admonition that the direction of medicine is in trouble because medical schools select students based on MCATs, not imagination, resonated with me as well. He should also add the push for conformity in thought and the pressure to ?get along? to his list. Unfortunately, I was confronted with several examples of the issues he highlights in my own medical education.? From day one of my training, when I questioned the need for personal identifiers on what was pitched as an anonymous survey, I was branded as ?having trouble with authority figures.?

Asking hard questions and having a different perspective is something med schools try very hard to beat out of you. I was also criticized for being a ?hand holder? and spending too much time with my patients. Scott similarly warned about schools focusing on requiring encyclopedic knowledge, rather than seeing connections, thus detracting from the human side of being a compassionate physician, as well as stifling creativity.

E.O.-Wilson

E.O.Wilson

E.O. Wilson also hit a nerve, noting that many of the scientists are ??mathematically semi-literate? and that bright students turned away because they are afraid of failure?are mathphobes. Guess he was looking at me. He spoke of the ?stillborn PhDs,? who never really go on to do great things because they are too narrowly focused and specialized.

Instead, in a grandfatherly manner, he encouraged young scientists to become more interdisciplinary and advised, ?The best strategy for success in science is to bring two disparate subjects together.? In science, ?what is crucial?is imagination?leading to hard work?[You must] think like a poet, work like a bookkeeper.?

Albert-László-Barabási

Albert-L?szl? Barab?si

Albert-L?szl? Barab?si gave a provocative perspective comparing the human genome project to a map of Manhattan. He noted that a number of different diseases are manifested by a defect with the same underlying gene. We may know a little about isolated genes or bits of information, but are limited by not understanding the connections between them. He stressed that we need to stop focusing on isolated organs and instead, need to focus on the networks between our cells.

A few of the other TEDMED talks were tougher; I?ll discuss some of these meatier topics in a later post. Save room for dessert, too!

Images: Frieden talk by Chris Seper at MedCity News, other photos provided by TEDMED.

Related at Scientific American:

A Taste of #TEDMED 2012: Appetizers
Words, influence, and identity
Is medical school admission squashing creativity?

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HBT: Joba rehabbing, will be on his feet soon

For a guy who had a horrific injury less than a month ago and who, in the immediate, confused aftermath of his injury was said to have actually had his life placed in danger, Joba Chamberlain is doing pretty darn good, actually:

New York Yankees reliever Joba Chamberlain expects to be out of a walking boot for an injured ankle in about two weeks.

Chamberlain dislocated his right ankle bouncing on a trampoline with his son on March 22. The right-hander has resumed working out at the Yankees? minor league complex, where he played catch in the outfield Friday with his right knee on a stool.

Chamberlain says his arm is at 100 percent following Tommy John surgery, so it?s certainly not crazy to think that, if complications are avoided, he could be pitching sometime this year.

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Most-liked cities: Seattle and Portland tops, Detroit dead last (poll)

Portland, Ore., one of the most popular U.S. cities according to a poll (Photo: AP)

New research from Public Policy Polling finds that Seattle, Wash., and Portland, Ore., are America's most favorably viewed cities. Conversely, Detroit is the nation's least favorably viewed city.

The report found that 57 percent of respondents in the poll view Seattle favorably, compared with 14 percent who view it unfavorably. Similarly, Portland has a favorability rating of 52 percent with only 12 percent taking a negative view of the City of Roses.

In other words, if the Pacific Northwest were a politician, it would be more popular than President Obama and Mitt Romney.

Perhaps not coincidentally, a recent Yahoo News story found Seattle and Portland to be the top two best cities for hipsters.

And while Romney counts Michigan as one of his "home states," he wouldn't want Detroit's poll numbers. Only 22 percent of those polled by PPP had a favorable view of the Motor City, with 49 percent taking a negative view.

These days, it would seem that Portlandia is more popular than Robocop.

The only other two major cities in the poll to have a net negative view are both in California: Los Angeles (33-40) and Oakland (21-39). However, California is home to the 11th most popular city, San Francisco (48-29).

The poll demographics also showed some results that PPP says line up with national political trends. For example, the biggest political gap in the poll was over the nation's capital, Washington, D.C. Democrats like it by a net margin of 44 percent;? Republicans dislike it by 24 percent.

Black and white Americans also had differing views on some of the cities in the poll. Black respondents said they like Los Angeles by a margin of 35 percent, while white respondents dislike it by 16 percent.

Some of the other findings from the poll:

Boston (52-17), Atlanta (51-19), Phoenix (49-18), Dallas (48-21), New York (49-23), New Orleans (47-24), Houston (45-22), Salt Lake City (43-20), Philadelphia (42-22), Baltimore (37-24), Las Vegas (43-33), Chicago (42-33), Cleveland (32-25), and Miami (36-33).

More popular Yahoo! News stories

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? New footage from inside Delta Flight 1063 (video)

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Not A Doubt ? Blog Archive ? Profit & Loss Finest Re-labelling ...

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

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Tell the community These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2012 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Online Finance, The Investment Way. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Israeli defense minister: Assad ouster 'positive'

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MoveInsure Aims To Be Esurance For The Moving Industry

Screen shot 2012-04-17 at 5.30.01 PMBelieve it or not, 37 million Americans, or about 16 million households, pick up and move every year. Depending on whom you ask, we move as frequently as once every three years. Yes, moving is a part of life, albeit a stressful and emotional one. Unsurprisingly, the many services and operations that go into household moves have collectively come to represent a sizable industry. If you take transportation, warehousing and storage, packaging, processing, distribution, and logistics into account, industry revenues total more than $16.5 billion annually. The problem, however, is that the moving industry is rife with legacy systems and is dominated by a fragmented group of players, so a startup called MoveInsure has set out to streamline communication between those players and bring efficiency and automation to moving transactions, aiming to be the Esurance for the moving industry.

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