Welcome to The Yankee Gardener Blog. We will be bringing you gardening news and tips. Feel free to leave us comments and suggestions so we may make the blog a valuable resource for you.

In today’s gardening world we have many choices for tools that did not exist many years ago. This makes gardening much more productive and enjoyable. We have a variety of hand tools our grandparents never even dreamed of like bulb planters and different types of weed removing tools. We have power tools to do many jobs to make gardening fast and productive, not to mention easier on our body. Gardening technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in the past fifty years. We can elect to use tools like pesticides or go with a more Eco Friendly approach like organic styles of gardening which is much more kind to our planet. With tools like rototillers and fertilizer spreaders, we can produce more crops and flowers faster, better, and bigger. Gardening should be relaxing and easy. Information is available to anyone that wants it through the World Wide Web and the many universities that offer it for all to enjoy and benefit from. Through these great information sources even a complete novice can become an excellent gardener and not waste resources and money learning how to do things the proper way.

Here at The Yankee Gardener we have used a simple but very effective little tool called a Bulb Planter to plant 70 bulbs in a little over an hour and a half. It made planting bulbs quite a lot of fun. It also made it extremely easy. My wife and I are not into a lot of power tools and that is mainly because we just enjoy getting our hands right into the earth and feeling like we are totally connected. We do use power tools for certain gardening chores like the initial ground breaking and tilling. From there we try to use hand tools for many reasons. Gardening should be about peace and quiet and enjoying your time with nature. There are many new tools on the market today to suit your gardening needs
and wants.

At The Yankee Gardener we will continue to bring you many new resources and connections to information and new education as it becomes available. We want your gardening experience to be a happy and productive one. That is one sure way for you to feel like you have really accomplished something and feel great about working in your own garden. We have tools like Trug’s Tubs to carry your assorted gardening tools and seeds or fertilizers. Trug’s Tubs are an Eco Friendly product made from recycled tires and plastic to keep the landfills in better shape and make use of Earth’s dwindling resources. anything at all we can do to help our planet out is a very welcome effort in our book here at The Yankee Gardener. We also welcome and will use your suggestions and make sure you get the credit deserved for those suggestions. Please feel free to email us with your suggestions and pictures
so we may share them with all the gardeners that enjoy this great hobby.

If you are interested in Hindu art you will not want to miss this video about Buddha statues which is done by a friend that has recently discovered the new Video Boss videos by Andy Jenkins. Andy shows people how to do video marketing as one of his many talents. He is one of the leading Internet Marketers now for the last few years and has a lot to offer as far as teaching people. My friend Rob from Big Buddha Statues Is pretty talented when it comes to making video too but has become very excited after seeing the Video Boss videos Andy Jenkins just released as a pre-launch to his new private coaching video course that is sure to turn video marketing on it’s head as far as the Internet is concerned. According to Andy Jenkins most people are totally afraid of doing video. In the  three videos he released he gives some tips that can get anyone even if they have absolutely no experience at all making a video. He explains enough to get you going on making your first video and tells you that you should not be concerned about the quality of your first few videos. My friend Rob has watched these videos and put out a rather well done video about his  Buddha statues which shows that even most of us amateurs can do video if we just have a little guidance and know what equipment we need to work with. You do not need a bunch of really expensive equipment to make videos. You may already have just about everything you need to work with and in the Video Boss  series Andy gives you some great tips about where to find such things as templates, music, and much more to help make your videos look very professional. Take a look today at the Video Boss series and Rob’s video and see what the video buzz is all about and why it is going to be the new wave in Internet marketing.

Here in the Northeast we have what seems to be with each passing year, longer and longer winters. I suppose it is just the fact that getting older makes the winters seem like they last longer. You tend to dislike the cold more as you get older so you stay inside more and I guess that makes the winter seem longer. On those long winter days you need to find some form of entertainment so you look for things to do that you can enjoy and maybe do some sort of good deed with at the same time. For many years we have thought about the poor little creatures that do not migrate south for the winter season. Life has to be hard enough even in the warmer part of the year for small creatures like birds and squirrels just foraging for their daily food supply. Not only is that a full time  daily job for them but they also have to contend with other obstacles like predators and disappearing habitat. In view of those hazards we here in the Northeast have always enjoyed feeding the little creatures for that reason and other reasons like the fact that it brings those little creatures into a close up view if you have the feeders hanging near a window. We justify in our own minds and hearts that we just have to be helping out the little creatures by giving them an easy chance to acquire an easy food source.  More »

Build a Beautiful DIY Shed With Wood – Free Shed Plans and Woodworking Patterns

Pattern for Birdhouse Spice Shelf

The glory of the garden comes inside on this spice shelf that features winding ivy and birdhouse designs. Spice jars perch handily on the picket fence! 11-1/4″H x 13-1/2″W x 3-1/4″D….

Pattern for Garden Glory Bookends

Hold your [...]

When most people think about mailboxes, they think about very mundane steel containers which serve no other purpose than that of … well … a mailbox. Mailboxes however, actually come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes with many different functions often included in the design of the individual who purchased or built the [...]

I’m new to wood painting. I bought an unfinished wooden birdhouse & I got some acrylic paint…?

Can the birdhouse be kept outside if I use acrylic paint? I bought Folk brand paint.

Yes, my husband used to paint those & drill little holes in the bottom to make them into windchimes. As long as [...]

When winter sets in and you find yourself stuck inside dreaming about what you want to do in your gardens next spring, you can get bored very quickly and disillusioned knowing the wait is going to be a long one. You can spend that time dreaming about the outdoor activities or you can stay occupied doing something totally different than gardening. My wife adopted a hobby a few years ago which I thought at first was kind of silly. She wanted a 1 inch scale dollhouse for Christmas so I bought her a finished dollhouse that required only minimal construction. Well each winter we find ourselves ( yes I got hooked too ) working at improving and making the house look and feel like a real home. It is simply amazing how detailed the objects are that are available to go into a dollhouse. We take trips on the weekends to a town about 30 miles from home which gives us some quality time together in this fast paced world we live in. We make a day of it and have some regular shops we like to visit on our day out. At this point in time my wife has kind of decided to move up to a new and more detailed project. She decided after seeing a fantastic dollhouse constructed from plans drawn of a Sea Captain’s home from Thomaston Maine.  Check it out at Captain George W. Robinson House This dollhouse will amaze you. The builder is definitely a master craftsman and very clever also. He has inspired us to take on a project similar to this house. We have prepared our selves to spend the next few winters working on this project together and get back out into our gardens in the summer. I have a short video of the dollhouse I got for my wife a few years ago and you will see why we need to move on to a bigger project from watching the video. Marion’s Dollhouse I hope you can find a hobby to make your long, cold winters pass quickly

As reported By Sarah Bultema
Loveland Reporter-Herald
This year’s Christmas has been unwrapped, and soon it will be time to say goodbye to the centerpiece of many holiday celebrations: the Christmas tree.

But getting the pine out of the house doesn’t mean it has to end up in a landfill.

There are plenty of ways to recycle and reuse a Christmas tree — both the real and artificial varieties.

“Keep those trees out of the landfill,” said Rob MacDonald, Loveland’s parks forestry specialist. “There are other uses for them.”

MacDonald and Rose Watson, an educator with the Larimer County landfill, offer some ideas to keep your evergreen’s disposal environmentally friendly. More »

The story you see below is a true story and the facts omit the true name of the poor lady that got taken by these unscrupulous scammers. I do know this to be a true story and feel very bad for her but there is a lesson in this for all of us. Only by banding together can we spread the word about businesses like this that prey on people that are just truly trying to form a legitimate business and make a fair living online. I am not so foolish as to think we can ever totally stop them all for good but if we could save even one more person from having to use their child’s education funds to pay their credit cards off after being suckered by companies like this we might all feel a little better about the difference we have made.

OK, Here goes. I’m very embarrassed to say that I have been scammed out of so much money, more than what I make in a year has been taken from me within 2 months. First, I wanted only to start an e-commerce business selling something and arrive at enough income to supplement my retirement when I’m too old to go to work anymore.
It all started with a company called Thrive. I had clicked on a click ad which stated “Work for Google at home”. Duh, why does Google need me? I know that now…. Anyhoo, Thrive turned out to be a $5,000 investment with just a bunch of coaches who I could call in the first 6 weeks with any questions as I struggled through their benchmarks. By the time I got to the drop shippers and products to research using a free keyword discovery tool site I was too late to talk with a live person but I plundered through anyways. I then get a call from a tax person stating I needed them for my bookkeeping of which I said, no I can do that myself, it will just be me. I then contacted Legal Zoom and started my LLC with my husband and me as partners. THEN CAME THE STORM! More »