courtesy: April 2009 issue of FamilyFun magazine.

Gardening Gives a Dose of Nature
Spending time outside yields a bushel of health benefits, including exposure to fresh air and sunlight (the best source around for vitamin D), as well as all the mental and emotional bonuses that derive from communing with nature.

Gardening is a Great Workout
Gardening tasks provide plenty of exercise, from digging, to hoeing, to toting water. Encourage your kids to pitch in by turning garden work into play with a weeding contest or a seeding straw.

It Makes Healthy Eating Fun
Even selective eaters find it hard to resist the fun of nibbling something straight off the plant. Tempt kids with these pick-and-eat favorites: cherry tomatoes, green beans, and strawberries.

It Stimulates your Brain
A garden is like a classroom without all the desks, grades, and homework. It presents endless opportunities for hands-on environmental learning about beneficial bugs, composting, and photosynthesis.

Gardening Boosts Your Mood
A study in the journal Evolutionary Psychology found that just receiving flowers made people feel better – and helped improve memory. Try growing mammoth sunflowers, morning glories, nasturtiums, and lavender.

It Adds Nutrition to your Diet
Most fresh produce offers nutrients, but some vegetables are more high-powered than others. Carrots, tomatoes, and bell peppers are both kid-friendly and super-nutritious.

I was watching 60 minutes last night, to be honest the show was just supposed to be back ground noise.

I was making the invitations to my mother’s graduation party and I just wanted something to listen to as I cut, stamped, glued and taped. I wish I would have picked The Simpsons instead.

The first segment was on healthcare.

Interviewed were these cancer patients who had no insurance and the university clinic where they were receiving treatment had closed.

They had all received one of those, “we regret to inform you…” letters.

They had no idea what they were going to do, but one thng was for sure – they were not going to get the treatment they vitaly needed.

These people who once had a chance at life were basically being told – “sorry.”

They weren’t poor enough to receive government aid and not rich enough to pay the enormous price tag for treatment. One woman said her treatment was $50,000 each.

I believed the university president when she said she felt bad, but what was she to do? The clinic’s funding was cut and they had to make some tough choices.

I took two things away from that story.

1) How can we possibly have the treatment and not give it to those who need it whether they can afford it or not?

and

2) Will that some day be me?

Celebrate Spring at the Wildflower Show & Festival with
Watercolor Artist Phyllis Case Bennett ~ a one-woman exhibition

Where:             Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden
                        1500 North College Ave., Claremont
 
What:               Annual Wildflower Show & Festival
 
When:              Saturday and Sunday, April 11 and 12, 2009
                        10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

 
Claremont:  Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden will host its Annual Wildflower Show and Festival on Saturday and Sunday, April 11 and 12, 2009, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The spectacular indoor display features hundreds of wildflowers collected from the Garden’s living collection, the high and low deserts, inland valleys and foothill regions of our local mountains.
 
A watercolor exhibition by artist Phyllis Case Bennett will be on display during the 2-day Wildflower Show and Festival. Bennett is an instructor with 28 years of experience in watercolor and Chinese Brush painting. When ask about her career as a teacher, she replies, “I teach because it causes me to focus on what’s really important. Students are stimulating, critical and inquisitive.”
 
Bennett explains her life’s work and focus in watercolor by stating, “I work in water media because it is direct, quick, responsive and clean.” She adds, “I believe that intellect and intuition, method and creativity together lead to the highest form of human expression. I have attempted to follow this muse throughout my art life.” 
 
Bennett received her BA degree in Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She  has studied with well-known local artists Rex Brandt, Robert Wood and Millard Sheets, and in Hangzhou, China, at the China Academy of Fine Art, where she has traveled since 1985 to coordinate the Academy’s Foreign Study Programs. 
 
Bennett is a member of The Sumie Society of America, Inc., Pomona Valley Art Association, the Yuan Chinese Brush Painting Association, and a Signature Member of WatercolorWest. She will be on site during the Show and Festival to discuss her work.
 
The 2-day Wildflower Show and Festival offers activity stations, kids’ crafts and face painting by “Claremont’s Face Painter” – Lilly Walters Schermerhorn, Saturday 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Experience a rare and magical time when deserts blooms in “Season of the Sand Blossoms,” an environmental art film set to music. Relax, refresh at the Sycamore Caf serving gourmet salads, sandwiches, nutritious children’s snacks and beverages. This spring the Annual Wildflower Show and Festival at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden makes for a full day of Garden exploration and family fun.
 
Admission: Members, free. Non-members: $8 adults, $6 seniors (65 yrs. and older); $6 students (13 to 17 years old or full-time college students); $4 child (3 to 12 years of age); Children under 3 years, free.

If you’ve never fought a flea infestation count your lucky stars.

I used to scoff at such things as flea collars, flea dips, flea baths, flea medications and other preventive measures to keep my home flea free, but no more!

In tomorrow’s column I talk about how my husband Dan and I made the gruesome discovery of our infestation devastation – it’s not for those with a weak stomach.

My hope is that our experience will alert future flea victims of the warning signs so they nip those little buggers in the larva!

Well, I’m sitting here on this Thursday morning April 2 – when I should be at work – waiting for a mobile glass guy to come repair, or rather replace my window. It’s broken.

It had been cracked for years from one of my boys. Which one? To this day I don’t know neither will own up and each blame the other.

Well last night after getting home from work I do what I love to do when I get home from work – play with my dogs – I have three, but really only two play, one is about 14 and can barely stand let alone run after a ball – so he watches.

Anyway, I stand at one end of my living room and throw a tennis ball across the room into the kitchen and these two adorable little Papillon mixes tear off after it. Well the game was progressing pretty fast – and what can I say – I throw like a girl, so I heaved the ball — right into and through our living room window.

I wonder how many bugs now call my home their own?

So instead of flipping on TV (which I would LOVE to do) I thought I would take another crack at this blogging thing.

I have never received a response so chances are no one is reading it – but I’m really not one to give up.

So now that I’ve dropped a HUGE hint. maybe some one will write back and let me know if they’ve ever done some thing as lame as me.

Gotta go – I think I just heard a vehicle stop outside my house.

Diana:)