Tag Archives: garden

Oaken Hardwood Garden Furniture

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If you are going to buy garden furniture, it is a good idea to buy the best quality that you can afford and if you have the money then hardwood garden furniture is the best. There are many kinds of hardwood, obviously, but one of the most popular kinds of hardwood, particularly in the UK and northern Europe, is oak. It will withstand any kind of weather and if it is taken care of, it will last for several decades.

Oaken hardwood garden furniture is not cheap to buy, that is true, but if you take into account the joy that oak furniture will give and the fact that it will last for thirty years if you oil it or varnish it once or twice a year, it is pretty cheap certainly.

In comparison, cheap plastic garden furniture may last two or three years, but then it will need to be replaced. So you can sit on plastic chairs and have to replace them every few years or you can buy expensive oak and enjoy it for the remainder of your life.

Hardwood is heavily sought after, which leads crooked merchants to log it illegally. Therefore, if you want to placate your conscience, try to make sure that you buy your hardwood garden furniture from a renewable source.

What is more, if you buy from a reputable dealer, you will be given directions on how to maintain it, which will enable you to double or even treble its lifespan.

If your oaken hardwood garden furniture is delivered stained or oiled, you should asked the dealer how you should treat the timber. I think that it is better to buy oak furniture oiled or merely stained so that you can make up your own mind how to treat it. Varnished wood has to be varnished again or rubbed down.

If you live in an region where the weather can be severe in the winter or the summer, you might consider buying covers for your furniture, especially if you know that you are not going to use it for a couple days.

Sunlight is practically as damaging to dead wood as the cold, which is why we stain, varnish, oil and preserve it. Fortunately, this is not an onerous task and a treatment once or twice a year will keep your oaken hardwood garden furniture in tip-top condition for numerous years.

There are numerous different types of wood treatment, so ultimately, you should abide by the directions on the tin, but I always like to apply a coat of stain without varnish first and perhaps even a second one to bring out the patterns in the wood’s grain, then I apply oil, say, linseed oil until the timber is completely protected.

However, take note, this approach can go wrong. The wood can only soak up so much oil so do not apply more than it can soak up otherwise you will not be able to sit on your oaken hardwood garden furniture for a long time.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now involved with large dining tables. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Solid Oak Dining Tables.

Keeping Your Dog Motivated

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Keeping the attention of a dog while training is not always an easy task. Dogs can be very easily distracted, and it is important to not allow the dog training sessions to be sabotaged by boredom. Making dog training fun for the dog and the human alike is essential to creating a happy, well-adjusted and well-trained dog.

You should provide random positive stimuli during the day in order to keep the attention of the dog. Doing things the dog enjoys, like walking in the park, riding in the car, and playing with other dogs, are good ways to keep the dog’s attention, but you must reward him for small successes.

For instance, in order to reward the dog for coming to you when you call him, ask the dog to come to you, without giving any clues about a walk, a car ride, or other treats.

After your dog has come to you and obediently sat down, attach the leash and start the reward. This can be either the before-mentioned walk in the park, ride in the car, or anything else the dog enjoys doing.

Giving some kind of reward, whether a treat, a special outing, or just a scratch behind the ears, every time the dog does something you want, is a good method to keep your dog motivated while you are dog training.

If the dog knows something great is going to happen every time he obeys your command, he will be more motivated to please you every time.

Distraction training.

When training any dog, it is important to not let distractions disrupt the training. The dog must be taught to ignore distractions, such as other people, other dogs, other animals and loud noises, and focus on what is being taught These kinds of distractions can even be used as rewards when training the dog to come when called.

For instance, if your dog enjoys playing with other dogs, whether in the local park or with the neighbour’s dogs, let him play freely with those other dogs. Then go into the park or garden and call your dog.

When he comes to you, give him lots of praise, treats and other rewards, then immediately let the dog to return to playing with his friends. Repeat this several times and praise the dog each time he comes over to you.

The dog will quickly learn that coming to you means good things (treats and praise) and not bad ones (being removed from the park).

This so-called distraction training is one of the most difficult things for your dog to learn, because dogs are naturally social animals, and leaving the pack is one of the most difficult things you can ask your dog to do. Most dogs will be understandably reluctant to leave their canine companions, but it is vital to persist in dog training.

Training the dog to come to you when you call can require some creativity on your part at first. For instance, waving a favourite toy, or a lure, is a good way to get your dog’s attention and put the focus back on you. If your dog has been clicker trained, a quick click can be a good motivator too, when training your dog.

Once the dog begins to get the hang of coming when called, you can begin to reduce and eliminate the visual cues and focus on getting the dog to obey your voice alone. It is vital that the dog responds to voice commands alone, since you will not always have the availability of a toy or other lure.

Does your dog require training? If you require more details on dog training, then visit our web site entitled Successful Dog Training

How To Go About Choosing Your Garden Furniture

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If you are going to take your garden seriously, there are a couple items that you have to do. This first thing to do is work out a plan of how you want your garden to look like. This is easily done using graph paper or the more artistic may choose to draw it. Then you need to landscape your garden according to your plan, although you can modify your plan as you go. After all, you are the boss. Put in any electric cables and water pipes that you may need. Put up your shed and greenhouse, if required then you can start planting and start to choose your garden furniture.

The purpose of this article is to help you select your garden furniture. There is so much diversity of garden furniture that it can be fairly difficult to make up your mind. Do you go for hardwood, softwood, metal or plastic?

Which colour and which style? Some of your choice will be restricted, if you are on a budget, but in reality, over the long term of twenty or thirty years, hardwood is the cheapest alternative and plastic the most expensive. Over the short term, two to five years, the opposite is the case.

Whether you want armchairs or recliners is certainly up to you and so outside the scope of this piece, so is the style that you prefer, although I will say that the most successful choice of garden furniture should blend in with the garden rather than stick out like a sore thumb. Plastic tends to look OK on a patio or deck, but rarely goes well with a garden full of pretty plants and bushes, whereas hardwood garden furniture tends to fit in well everywhere. You need to be a little careful with softwood and metal.

In a way, it is a good idea to approach choosing your garden furniture in the your same way that you would select the furniture for inside your home. It has to blend in with your overall style.

Therefore, you might want to put off purchasing your garden furniture until you get your first crop of flowers up, unless you can imagine it in your mind. The only trouble with waiting for Spring is that that is when garden furniture is at its most expensive.

Ask yourself what you intend doing in the area where you are planning having your furniture. Are you and the family just going to collapse there after work and on weekends or are you going to hold more formal garden parties there? If you are going to have guests, it should be big enough for the number you expect and the furniture should be robust enough so that it will not give way under some of the heavier guests. If it is just for the family at least you are dealing with known information: how big they are and how many of them there are.

Another aspect to keep in mind is maintenance. Plastic does not possess to be taken care of, but it will perish – become brittle – after a few hot summers and cold winters. You can prolong the life of your plastic garden furniture by storing it in a shed when not in use. Metal garden furniture might require anti-rust treatment from time to time and if the seat is made of fabric, you should also check for signs of rot, which could lead to someone falling through the seat.

Softwood has to be treated with preservative, paint, varnish or oil quite frequently and you should check for signs of rot or splitting, which can still come about no matter how much you take care of it. Hardwood garden furniture needs to be treated once a year as well, but it is by far the most robust material used for constructing garden furniture.

Plastic and metal furniture are available in many colours; softwood can be painted or stained any colour you like and hardwood is available in all shades of brown from light oak to rich dark mahogany, but it should never be painted only oiled and stained, if you want to.

If you select hardwood, it can be a bit hard on the backside after a few hours, so buy a couple of cushions that match the colour and style of your garden furniture too. These can be stored inside when not in use or they will become unbelievably dirty and if they get wet it can take days for them to dry, during which time they might begin to rot and smell. Removable cushion covers are a good idea.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety of topics, but is now involved with large dining tables. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Solid Oak Dining Tables.

The Use Of Patio Heaters In Business

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If you run a restaurant, pub or any business using outdoor facilities in a temperate climate zone, then you will know that custom is likely to drop off when the weather gets colder. You know that you would not sit outside shivering yourself, so you do not expect anyone else to do it. The only answer is to change the outdoor ambient temperature to an acceptable level.

I have seen this done to stunning effect in Prague in October when there were heavy snow storms. People wanted to sit outside and enjoy the snow storm as long as they were fairly warm. A person’s primary heat comes from the body and is kept in with decent clothing, but it is nice to have a patio heater near-by just to add a glow to your face and hands.

If you have a business that only opens when it is warm enough, then you have an expensive business and these days expensive businesses do not survive long. You need to wring every last cent out of your business real estate and if that means putting patio heaters in, then that is what you should to do.

Patio heaters come in a range of forms, but they are not that dear to buy. Sometimes you can hire them too. Most of these outdoor heaters run on canisters of propane or butane gas, but there are mains gas varieties too. There are also electric ones, but they tend to be costly to run, unless you can generate your own electricity.

I think that the best two types are the box type where the gas canister goes inside the apparatus and the heat is directed at foot to knee height and the street lantern style, where the heat comes down from about seven or eight feet in height. The gas cylinder also fits inside these models lowering their centre of gravity and making them more difficult to unintentionally knock over.

These heaters are very safe although patrons should be advised to exercise care if they have young children with them. A standard heater will keep up to two tables and eight people warm enough to enjoy themselves even while it is snowing.

The lease of a few of these patio heaters or even their purchase will soon be off-set by your increased custom, particularly if your competitors are not using them. My wife and I will never forget our time in Prague, when it was snowing, drinking coffee and eating cake outside, watching people go by while we were as warm as toast due to the restaurateur’s prudence in providing patio heaters.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with the propane outdoor heater. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

Unusual Uses For The Indoor Bug Zapper

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I don’t know whether you have ever used a handheld, indoor bug zapper, but I think that they are wonderful. I?m talking about the handheld sort that looks like a child’s plastic, toy tennis racquet. They come in two basic sorts. I rather the rechargeable bug zapper, for the reason that batteries end up up costing more than the indoor bug zapper itself, although you could always buy rechargeable batteries, but then they are costly too.

My wife and I like to spend time in the garden. We meet friends there, dine there and in general loaf about outside, as do most folks about here, when they are not working. What’s more, it?s much cooler outside than inside. A comfortable chair, a few snacks, a cool drink and a book or a companion and life does not get much better. In fact, it’s idyllic.

That is until about six or seven o’clock when the first wave of mosquitoes have judged that the sun’s rays have lost enough strength that they will not evaporate and they come out looking for blood. Some evenings are worse than others, of course. More often than not, the mosquitoes are quite bearable, particularly since I have discovered the indoor bug zapper. (I don’t know why it is referred to as an ‘indoor bug zapper’, it is just as functional outdoors as in)..

It’s not that I want to kill things, but I find it difficult to have sympathy for mosquitoes. Nevertheless, I do get a certain amount of enjoyment from seeing and hearing mosquitoes and other bugs literally blow up with a flash and a spark as they come into contact with the electric and ground wires of the indoor bug zapper. These electric bug zappers are capable of packing quite a charge, especially if the batteries are new or the pack is wholly charged.

The other day, I found a novel use for my handheld, indoor bug zapper. I’ll tell you how it came about. I was in the garden, as usual, and my bug zapper was close at hand as the first squadron of mosquitoes was due. I had my book in one hand and the bug zapper on my knees, when my wife asked me to go to the store for her. No problem, therefore, I set off on the five minute walk.

I was half-way there when I realized that I had the indoor bug zapper in my hand, but it was not worth taking it home and beginning the trip again. Anyhow, on my return journey, I had my small bag of groceries in one hand and the indoor bug zapper in the other, when a local bully of a dog came running out of a garden straight for me. This has happened often and, although he has never bitten me yet, it is quite menacing. He stood there glaring at me with teeth bared and his ‘pack’ of assorted neighborhood friends came out to encircle me and join in.

I don’t really know what the best course of action is in this situation. I have tried holding my ground, but the intimidation just goes on and I have tried to keep walking, but he gets worryingly close by on occasion. This time, I unexpectedly lashed out with the indoor bug zapper and just caught him on the snout. Well, I’m not sure whether it hurt him, it did not seem to too much, but it gave him a very nasty shock in more ways than one, I can tell you! He leaped about four feet into the air as if he were on a pogo stick and then ran for all he was worth with all his pals following him. It was very gratifying after six months of aggravation from this dog.

Nevertheless, I don’t take my indoor bug zapper everywhere with me, but I will in future, if any more local dogs trouble me. I know it works a treat. I have seen that one since, but he keeps well away from me and doesn’t utter a sound. I believe I would take my indoor bug zapper with me, if I were roaming in an unknown part of town or the park nonetheless.

Have you ever used an indoor bug zapper? If you haven’t, or if you want to get an indoor bug zapper, please click one of the links to our website or blog.