Container Gardening Tips for Senior Citizens

Container Gardening Tips for Senior Citizens

Container gardens can create a natural sanctuary in a busy city street, along rooftops or on balconies. Senior Citizens can easily accentuate the welcoming look of a deck or patio with colourful pots of annuals, or fill window boxes with shrub roses or any number of small perennials. Whether Senior Citizens arrange pots in a group for a massed effect or highlight a smaller space with a single specimen, you'll be delighted with this simple way to create a garden.

Container gardening enables Senior Citizens to easily vary a color scheme, and as each plant finishes flowering, it can be replaced with another. Whether Senior Citizens choose to harmonize or contrast colors, make sure there is variety in the height of each plant. Think also of the shape and texture of the leaves. Tall strap-like leaves will give a good vertical background to low-growing, wide-leaved plants. Choose plants with a long flowering season, or have others of a different type ready to replace them as they finish blooming.

Experiment with creative containers. Senior Citizens might have an old porcelain bowl or copper urn to use, or perhaps you'd rather make something really modern with timber or tiles. If Senior Citizens decide to buy containers ready-made, terracotta pots look wonderful, but tend to absorb water. You don't want plants to dry out, so paint the interior of these pots with a special sealer available from hardware stores.

Cheaper plastic pots can also be painted on the outside with water-based paints for good effect. When purchasing pots, don't forget to buy matching saucers to catch the drips. This will save cement floors getting stained, or timber floors rotting.
Always use a good quality potting mix in your containers. This will ensure the best performance possible from plants.

If Senior Citizens have steps leading up to the front door, an attractive pot plant on each one will delight your visitors. Indoors, pots of plants or flowers help to create a cosy and welcoming atmosphere.

Decide ahead of time where pots are to be positioned, then buy plants that suit the situation. There is no point buying sun lovers for a shady position, they will not do well. Some plants also have really large roots, so they are best kept for the open garden.

If there is plenty of space at the front door, a group of potted plants off to one side will be more visually appealing than two similar plants placed each side. Unless they are spectacular, they will look rather boring.

Group the pots in odd numbers rather than even, and vary the height and type. To tie the group together, add large rocks that are similar in appearance and just slightly different in size. Three or five pots of the same type and color, but in different sizes also looks affective.

With a creative mind and some determination, Senior Citizens will soon have a container garden that will be the envy of friends and strangers alike.

Philip Jubb
Overweight Grand Kids
Senior Citizens Information Services
http://www.109b.com

Senior Citizens Health - Alzheimers Disease

Alzheimer's disease What is it?

Alzheimer's is a progressive, degenerative disease that destroys brain cells, causing death. The disease is the most common cause of dementia which is the deterioration of a person's mental faculties. The causes of Alzheimer's are still not known.

The symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's disease causes the loss of intellectual ability use of memory, thinking, reasoning, judgment, orientation, and concentration, and it can cause drastic changes in personality, mood and behavior. In its early stages, it has symptoms similar to those of depression such as withdrawal, apathy, loss of concentration and interest, memory failure, anxiety, agitation, and delusions. Alzheimer's is a disease and not a normal part of aging.

The diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's is difficult to diagnose and is often misdiagnosed. It is made primarily from the symptoms reported by the affected person, by the family members and by a series of tests that evaluate a person's mental function. No brain scan or blood test can make the diagnosis, although the CT scan or MRI may show degeneration of brain tissue that is characteristic of the disease. An important step in diagnosing Alzheimer's is to rule out other possible causes of the symptoms which include depression, adverse effects from some medications, excessive consumption of alcohol, thyroid disorders, liver failure, kidney failure, a vitamin deficiency, bleeding inside the skull, and infections that can effect the brain.

There is NO treatment for Alzheimer's disease!
There is no cure for Alzheimer's disease. Treatment primarily involves caring for him or her and dealing with the worsening symptoms. Most people in the early stages live at home and are cared for by the family members.

What should the family of an Alzheimer's person consider?
Get a diagnosis early
Take care of legal and financial planning
Learn about the disease
Learn how to protect your loved one
Look for adult day-care programs, in home assistance, visiting nurses, and delivery of meals
Don't neglect your own needs
Talk to a support group to try to overcome the difficulty of grieving for a person who is still alive

Care at home.
In the living quarters hand bars (especially at the tub and toilet), ramps and other aids should also be installed. Occupational and physical therapy should emphasize using the effected limbs and to help improve walking, mobility, eating, dressing, toilet functions, avoiding bed ulcers and improving other basic needs.

Bear in mind Alzheimers is a one way ticket to misery for all concerned.

Philip
http://www.oldagepensioners.com/health/

Senior Citizens Gardening - Planting Plan

To make the Planting Plan take a sheet of white paper and a ruler and mark off a space the shape of your garden--which should be rectangular if possible--using a scale of one-quarter or one-eighth inch to the foot. Rows fifty feet long will be found a convenient length for the average home garden. In a garden where many varieties of things are grown it will be best to run the rows the short way of the piece.

We will take a fifty-foot row for the purpose of illustration, though of course it can readily be changed in proportion where rows of that length cannot conveniently be made. In a very small garden it will be better to make the row, say, twenty-five feet long, the aim being always to keep the row a unit and have as few broken ones as possible, and still not to have to plant more of any one thing than will be needed.

In assigning space for the various vegetables things should be kept in mind in order to facilitate planting, replanting and cultivating the garden. Thesecan most quickly be realized by a glance at the plan. Crops that remain several years--rhubarb and asparagus--are kept at an end.
Next come those that will remain a whole season--parsnips, carrots, onions and the like. Finally, those that will be used for a succession of crops-- peas, lettuce, spinach; Tall-growing crops, like pole beans, are kept to the north of lower ones. In the plan the space given to each variety is allotted according to the proportion in which they are ordinarily used. If you have a special weakness for peas, or your mother-in-law an aversion to peppers, keep these tastes and similar ones in mind when laying out.

Do not leave the planning of your garden until you are ready to put the seeds in. Do it in January, as soon as you have received the New Year's catalogs and when you have time to study over them and look up your record of the previous year. Every hour spent on the plan will mean several hours saved in the garden.

The Planting Table is the next important system in the business of gardening, especially for the beginner. In it one can see at a glance all the details of the particular treatment each vegetable requires-- when to sow, how deep, how far apart the rows should be, etc.

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