LAWN-AND-GARDEN TIPS

For homeowners, few things are more exciting than a beautiful lawn and garden. Here (courtesy of The Onion) are some lawn and garden tips to help you improve yours:

• Experiment with different nitrogen-based fertilizers to find the one with the best greening power and highest blast radius.
• To preserve your place in the highly competitive neighborhood social hierarchy, make sure your lawn is always 1/8 of an inch shorter than your neighbors'.
• If your lawn doesn't look as green as it could, warn Manuel that you could fire him and hire another one just like him in a second.
• Mowing a pentagram into your lawn not only looks cool, it will also increase your dark powers.
• Do not plant magic beans within 25 feet of your home, Jack. Doing so will place it at risk of severe foundation damage.
• If you own a riding mower, do you have any idea how stupid you look on it?
• Don't let “the fellas” see you growing a flower garden like a fairy sissy girl. Build an indoor greenhouse instead.
• Planting vegetables is a great money-saver. Over the course of a summer, you could shave $75 off your grocery bill with just a few hundred hours of work.
• Gardening may take a lot of hard work and patience, but before you know it, you'll find a vegetable humorously shaped like human genitals.
• Make a Faustian bargain with shadowy garden gnomes in which you exchange your soul for some really good gardenias.
• Remember the movie The Lawnmower Man? Me, neither.

NANCY NON SEQUITUR

With all of the attention paid to the Aging of America, there has been very little discussion of the positive aspects of the process. AccessPrint's Facts of Life newsletter addressed this very issue in:

“THE BENEFITS OF GROWING OLDER”

• Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember them anyway.
• If you've never smoked, you can start now and it won't have time to hurt you.
• Your eyes won't get much worse.
• Things you buy now won't have time to wear out.
• No one expects you to run into a burning building.
• Your joints are more accurate than the National Weather Service.
• People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.
• You no longer have to hold your stomach in, no matter who walks into the room.
• You can eat dinner at 4:00.
• You can have a party and the neighbors won't even realize it. And, with a slight adjustment to your hearing aid, you won't notice their parties either.
• Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.
• There is nothing left to learn the hard way.