When It Snows, Make Snow Cream!

We got our first real snow of the season Sunday night. There was that day a couple of weeks ago where you could see some snowflakes if you looked real hard, but this was a snow that accumulated. We got not quite two inches before it tapered off.

I was sitting on the couch, working on reviewing some of the edits on my new book that will be out in April, THE MONARCH: Saving Our Most-Loved Butterfly, and I had a light bulb moment.

I CAN MAKE SNOW CREAM!

This is something that has taken me over 59 years to experience. That's just crazy. I hadn't even heard of it until a couple of years ago and I just kept forgetting about doing it until tonight. So I jumped up and quickly mixed up the first part, then went outside to gather up some fresh snow.

This was the perfect snow for making Snow Cream!

It couldn't have taken more than five minutes, start to finish. Now I'm not a vanilla ice cream lover, nor do I particularly like homemade ice cream, so this is isn't something I'd crave, but it was sure fun to do and we'll be doing it the next time we have the grandkids here and we've got fresh snow on the ground.

Here's what you do:

SNOW CREAM

1 cup milk
⅓ cup white granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

Mix up the ingredients in a mixing bowl using an electric hand mixer. Mix until well blended. Put the bowl with the mixture into the freezer while you go get the ice cream. Gather up about 8 cups of fresh snow.

From this point on, you have to work fast, because it will melt fairly quickly. Add the snow to the mixture in the bowl and whip it. It should be thick enough that you can use an ice cream scoop to form a ball.

Scoop into bowls and add sprinkles, chocolate syrup, or whatever your favorite topping is. Eat and enjoy!

My chocoholic husband added Hershey's Syrup on top.

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*I would give credit to whomever came up with this recipe if I only knew. I looked up several recipes online and they were all the same, with no credit given, so this is undoubtedly older than I am and may be in the "public domain" by now.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

There's been a lot of yaying and naying lately about the issue of decorating for Christmas before Thanksgiving. Like most things in life, there are various reasons why people choose when to do their Christmas decorating and how they do it. I like to have my tree up by Thanksgiving, and here's why.

I'm a procrastinator. In fact, I'm The Queen of Procrastination and while you might think putting up a Christmas tree before Thanksgiving is contrary to procrastinating, it's actually my way of trying to overcome my affliction. If my house is already in the Christmas spirit, then I'm much more likely to be in the spirit too and get my shopping done before Christmas Eve. It's supposed to work that way in theory anyway.

Now, let's get this whole "celebrating one holiday at a time" thing out of the way. I love Thanksgiving. LOVE. IT. Family, good food, Macy's parade, football (I can't believe I even said that), and relaxing with no guilt about doing it. But of course, Thanksgiving is also all about being grateful for your blessings and our family sure has plenty of those to be thankful for. Just thinking about them puts me in a festive mood.

Christmas decorations put me in a festive mood, too, and as a Christian, the birth of Christ is a blessing to be thankful for. So Thanksgiving is the perfect way to usher in the Christmas season by being first thankful and then celebrating by sharing with others in the form of gifts. Having Christmas decorations up at Thanksgiving just isn't a conflict of interest for me. It's all just one big, long lovefest.

Part of what makes this early decorating possible is that we don't put up a real tree. This year will make the 41st Christmas my husband and I have celebrated as man and wife and in all those years, the only time we had a real tree was our first Christmas. I saved a pine cone from that tree, framed it, and it sits out all year long on a bookshelf.

 I have a fear of a dried-out real Christmas tree going up in flames due to some sort of lighting malfunction and I don't need that kind of stress. Not when there are perfectly lovely artificial trees that give the same effect. I understand the whole experience of shopping for the tree and making that an event in itself, but I'm willing to forgo that for safety's sake.


If you're a real tree kind of person, let me help you keep your cut tree as safe as possible by giving you some tips:

• Firs, pines, and spruces will hold onto their needles equally well, but the biggest factor for this will be how long it's been since the tree was cut. Unless you cut the tree yourself, you probably have no way of really knowing this. If the tree is losing more than a few needles when you shake it or pull your hand along one of its branches, pick another tree.
  
  
•  Just before you put your Christmas tree in its stand, make a fresh cut straight across, at the base of the trunk, removing at least a half-inch of wood. Sap begins to seal off the cut so making a fresh cut will allow the tree to better absorb water.
   
• Do NOT whittle away any of the wood on the sides of the trunk to make it fit in the stand, because it's the outer layer of the trunk (the cambium) just under the bark that transfers the water up into the rest of the tree. Drilling a hole up into the middle of the tree trunk won't help the tree take up water, so don't bother.
   
• Water temperature won't affect uptake and there's no proof that adding substances to the water really helps prolong freshness, so don't waste your time doing that either. Check your water level every day to make sure you keep the base of the trunk submerged. 
   
• Keep your tree well away from any heat source, and the cooler you keep the room, the longer the tree will last before drying out.
   
• Choose low energy lights, such as LED lights or in the case of incandescent lighting, the miniature ones give off less heat, lowering chances of causing dry needles to ignite. Of course, if your tree is that dry and brittle, it shouldn't be in your house anyway. 

The holidays hold special meaning for each of us, so let's all enjoy them in our own way and pray for peace. I think we can all agree we need more of that, no matter what time of year it is.







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A similar version of "O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree" first appeared in my In the Garden weekly column in the Paulding Progress newspaper on December 2, 2015.

Back in the Egg Business

We got an entirely new flock of chicks on Easter Sunday this spring - eight of 'em. I'd say we got eight hens, but it turned out that the two Black Australorps were roosters. We enjoyed the crowing - sort of - but we don't want to feed any that don't feed us, so luckily a local took them off our hands. They wanted Black Australorps for breeding, so they're happy and we're happy.

We've been getting eggs since mid-July, starting with Owl, the Leghorn. She's been a laying machine, having only missed two days since she started laying. Buffy, the Buff Orpington, started laying a couple of weeks later and she's been pretty consistent too. Five days ago, Ruby, our Rhode Island Red, started laying beautiful darker brown eggs.

Today, I got a real surprise when I went out to gather eggs. There were FIVE! Yesterday, three, today, five! The new layers are the ISA brown and one of the Ameraucanas. That's the thing with having so many different breeds - we know who is laying and who isn't.

One of the new eggs today was blue, and since we have two Ameraucanas and they lay blue eggs, we know that one of them is the only one left to start laying. They're also the only two hens that don't have names.

How about Dottie and Dinah?

We ate our last store-bought egg about a week or so ago and I'm really glad to be back in the backyard egg business. I also love how beautiful these eggs are.

In spite of the differences in their colors, the shells themselves come in only two colors. That's right. Hens only lay eggs that are two basic colors - white and blue. "But what about the brown ones?" you say. If you look, the next time you crack open a brown egg, you'll find that it's white on the inside.

The brown coloring is a pigment that the hen applies to the outside of the egg shortly before she lays it. One time, I gathered an egg right after one of our first flock Buff Orpingtons had laid it and it was still wet. I wiped the moisture off and some of that brown coloring came off! But once it dries, it's on there for good.

We had scrambled eggs for supper tonight, so I took some photos to show you that it's true about the coloring.

But the yolks and whites inside all look the same. (They taste the same too.)

Want To Go See the Monarchs in Mexico? Let's GO!

As if it wasn’t exciting enough yesterday, when I announced my upcoming new book, The Monarch: Saving Our Most-Loved Butterfly, I’ve got more exciting news today.

I’ve mentioned that the number one thing on my bucket list is to visit the monarchs at their overwintering location in central Mexico. Each fall, they travel up to 3000 miles one way to the oyamel fir forests high in the Sierra Madre mountains. The habitat there is perfect for them to spend the winter until it’s time for them to make their way north in March.

This location in Mexico wasn’t known by those studying monarchs until 1975. Of course the locals knew the monarchs came there. How could they not know? I have a copy of the 1976 National Geographic magazine, telling the story of the discovery to the rest of the world.

Now, I’m going to be traveling to the state of Michoacán in central Mexico to see them for myself! I can’t tell you how thrilling this is for me. But not only am I going, I will be the co-host, along with a local guide, for a small group tour. This means YOU can go with me!

This is a six-day trip (February 28 – March 5, 2017) that will take you to two of the monarch sanctuaries, where you will stand surrounded by thousands and thousands of monarchs, dripping from the trees, and fluttering all around you. It will be magical.

The monarch sanctuaries and the greater Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve are located about 60 miles northwest of Mexico City, in the Transvolcanic mountains of central Mexico. They have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and as such, is legally protected by both the Geneva Convention, The Hague Convention, and international law.

But first, we'll visit one of the local villages and experience culture that is native, and we’ll see an archeological site. Then, after two days of visiting the monarch sanctuaries near Angangueo, we’ll travel to Toluca to see the Cosmovitral Botanical Garden – a football-sized building, whose walls and ceiling are stained glass works of art. There are over 500 different species of plants showcased in the garden, but you’ve never seen anything like this beautiful structure.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Lexaxis7

We’ll begin and end our trip in Morelia, the state capital, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and you’ll need to arrange your airfare to and from the airport there (MLM). You’ll find all the details and the itinerary for the trip here. Our tour agency, S&S Tours, is based in Sierra Vista, Arizona, specializing in small-group tours to various parts of Latin America. They’ve been in business since 1993 and have a BBB rating of A+. They've been visiting the monarch sanctuaries in Mexico every year since 2003.

Due to the sensitive nature of the sanctuaries, the number of people allowed in at one time is controlled. Our group will be no larger than 10 people, including me. I already know of one other person that’s going on the trip, so that means there are only 8 more that can go. To secure your spot on the trip, you can download the application here and follow its instructions.

If you have any questions that aren’t answered on the tour brochure or application form, just email me at ourlittleacre@gmail.com or call the travel agency direct at 866-780-2813

I hope you’ll join us! It’s sure to be a fun adventure!

Announcing My New Book About Monarchs!

It will come as no surprise to many of you when I tell you I’m writing another book and that the subject of the book is monarch butterflies. It is now listed on Amazon and is available for pre-sale!

In my newspaper column, on Facebook, and in this blog, I’ve talked about the situation with monarchs: their decline in population, the reasons for that decline, and what we can do about it. It’s a subject about which volumes could be written, but I’m limiting my take on it to just one.

The Monarch: Saving Our Most-Loved Butterfly is an assembling of a wide variety of information that I’ve researched, as well as experienced in my own garden. I have included many astounding facts about the monarch, its physiology, life cycle, and why the monarch matters.

There are a few DIY projects included that are easy and will help our favorite butterfly in some way. Those of you who want to learn more will find plenty of reference material to help you keep adding to your knowledge about the monarch beyond what is in my book (and there’s a lot to learn).

I’ve been intimately involved with monarchs here at Our Little Acre for more than ten years now. I raise them from the egg stage all the way through release of the adult butterfly and in my book, I’ll show you how to do it too.

While there is some technical information presented, with plenty of photos to help illustrate much of it, it won’t overwhelm you. It will fascinate you. If you’re not careful, you might just fall in love with the monarch, as I did so many years ago.

As a citizen scientist, I contribute to the collection of information by monarch researchers by reporting data to Journey North, as well as late summer and autumn tagging of migrating monarchs through the University of Kansas. I’ll share how you can do this, if you so choose.

The Monarch: Saving Our Most-Loved Butterfly is a work of passion and love and my hope is that it will open your eyes to one of nature’s most amazing creatures.

Though the current situation with them could be described as depressing, my book isn’t. There’s plenty of reason for optimism, as you’ll see, and I’ll show you how you can be a part of that.

Yes, you can make a difference. Don’t doubt it.

The book will be released on April 3, 2017, but is available for pre-order now. It's a hardcover book and lists for $18.95. If you order through Amazon now, they guarantee if the price goes lower between now and its release (very likely), they’ll honor the lower price. But my hope is that those of you who read it will find it to be worth far more.

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This post contains affiliate links.

Rose Report: At Last™ Rose from Proven Winners®

Let's just get this out of the way right now: I am not a big fan of roses. But it hasn't always been that way. I've grown lots of them over the years and in the past, have staunchly defended them. I've grown hybrid teas, climbers, floribundas, miniatures, David Austins, Knock Outs®, and other types that I can't remember.

My pink mini.

My first roses were miniatures. I'd won one at a dinner I attended and that little pink blooming machine performed beautifully for lots and lots of years. No disease, no real pests, just oodles of little pink blooms. It was my gateway drug to roses.

Then came hybrid teas and floribundas. 'Hot Cocoa' and 'Chihuly' were the rose stars of my garden. 'Disneyland' gave me gorgeous clusters of orangey-pink Kool-Aid® blooms. I reveled in the fragrance of my David Austin beauties. The uniqueness of a new Decorator Rose® wowed me.

I'd hear people wail about aphids and Japanese beetles. They'd curse black spot, powdery mildew, and fungus. They were losing roses to this or that. And while they were ranting away, I was wondering what was "wrong" with my roses, because I had none of these problems.

Until I did.

Pitiful.

It was like the universe was taunting me. I had bragged about the beauty and nobility of roses and poo-pooed the disrespect that roses are often the targets of. If I could grow disease-free and pest-free roses, anyone could, right? Ha.

I hung in there for a few years, taking advice from my rose-growing friends and seeking help by way of googling rose problems to death. One by one, my roses failed to live up to my expectations until one day last year, I'd had enough. One by one, I began taking them out. I couldn't stand to look at them anymore.

Now I didn't remove all of them. And not all of them that I did remove ended up being destroyed. Those that still weren't affected by the aforementioned afflictions found new homes, or received a reprieve (for another year or two, anyway). But you'll only find a fraction of the number of roses that used to call Our Little Acre home.

Those that got to stay include 'Gourmet Popcorn' miniature rose, floribundas 'Ebb Tide', 'Hot Cocoa', 'Chihuly' and 'Disneyland', and 'Morning Magic' climber. But half of those will be disappearing by next year too. I may keep 'Morning Magic' just for its Japanese beetle attracting character. It's a master at it and I rarely see the beetles anywhere else.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention my beloved wingthorn rose - Rosa sericea var. ptericantha - but that is in a class by itself. No pests, and it's been disease-free ever since I planted it in 2011. I hope it continues to behave, because I'd be really sad to lose that one. It's something special.

Aren't those thorns delicious?

So there's my history of roses. When Proven Winners® ColorChoice Flowering Shrubs told me they wanted to send me one of their new roses, I had to think twice about it. I read its description and decided to give it a shot. It was the color and the fragrance that were the tipping points. Fragrance! Imagine that! A rose that smelled like a rose...

I don't usually do a plant review until it's been in my garden for at least an entire season, meaning it's survived our often brutal winter. The plants usually arrive here in decent shape but there's often transplant shock and an adjustment period to our climate and soil to contend with. I'm not a gardening expert, I'm just an average backyard gardener, and sometimes my trial plants don't make it because of gardener error. Sometimes they thrive in spite of the gardener.

Rosa x At Last™

I received three At Last™ roses at the end of June. They've been in the ground for just a month, but oh what a difficult month that has been. Very little rain and extremely hot temperatures have made it hard for even some of my well-established plants.

The roses arrived with one bloom and a few buds. The color - apricot - was just as lovely as the photos. They didn't pout at all once I had them in the ground and in fact, have been throwing out new buds and blooms ever since. And then there is that fragrance. They smell like...ROSES.

Rosa x At Last™

So far, the Japanese beetles have not found them. I don't have a huge beetle problem here, but they're around. It's too soon to say if they will be bothered by disease or other pests.

It's too soon to say much of anything about them. But for now, I'm loving these roses. I hope I can say the same thing next year and for many years after.

Read more about this new rose here.

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*I received these roses gratis from Proven Winners, with no request to say a single word about them. But I'm duly impressed (so far) and wanted to share my experience.

In a Vase on Monday: Love in a Jar

I was walking through my garden last night and saw something blooming that I knew would make a great "In a Vase on Monday" candidate. This something was something I don't grow much of, in fact, there are only two stalks of blooms of this something in my garden at present and that may likely be all I get for this year. This something is also something that I think really does look better in a vase than in a garden and I can't think of much of any other somethings that I can say something like that about.

So this morning, I took my pruners to the garden and of course, you know what happened... I saw something else that needed pruning, so I pruned it. And then I remembered I was going to tip out my milkweed to stimulate some new growth for the monarchs that are not laying eggs on it. (Okay, we've found two eggs, but it should be many more.)

So I pruned that milkweed and inspected it for eggs and caterpillars and found none. :-(
I got rid of that and then remembered the something that I was going to prune for my vase and knew if I waited much longer, the somethings weren't going to be anything because each bloom doesn't last very long anyway.

I cut them and then I cut something else to go with them and went in the house and arranged my bouquet. I'm not a very good bouquet arranger, but flowers are pretty no matter what you do with them, so it looked okay to me. That's what mattered.

I photographed the bouquet from this angle and that and got ready to do my blog post for the meme, "In a Vase on Monday, " hosted by Cathy at Rambling in the Garden. But the photos of the arrangement I did today will have to wait until next Monday. Because there's an even better arrangement already in my house.

You may recognize these as Queen Anne's Lace (Daucus carota). They can be seen with such frequency around here right now that they seem downright invasive. In fact, they are not only on Ohio's Invasive Species list, they're on the Well-Established Invasive Species list.

They're pretty, in their own right. But this bouquet is the most beautiful one I've ever seen or had the pleasure of having in my home. It was a gift, you see...

If you've ever received a floral bouquet picked by a child, you know what I mean.

Thank you, Hannah.

New Chicks and Uh-oh . . .

Last fall, after giving our hens another year to start laying more, when they didn't, we decided to give them up to a local family, who's raising them on their farm. We're told that one of the Buff Orpingtons has turned out to be a good little mother hen, sitting on eggs that later hatched. That makes me happy.

On Easter Sunday this year, we got new chicks, eight of them again. Two Black Australorps, two Americaunas, one Buff Orpington, one Leghorn, one Rhode Island Red, and one ISA Brown. I just wanted a variety.

We took two of the grandkids with us to Rural King, which is where we got our last ones. We had great success with them, with virtually no problems, and we're hoping that will be the case with these too.

I thought the chicks looked older when we got them and I questioned the sales associate. She assured me they were just a few days old, that they'd just gotten them in.

Well.

The first clue was that several of them were quick to use their wings to jump up on the side of the container we started them out in. Within the week, they were hopping up there. Time to put them in the coop.

Owl, the white Leghorn on the lower left, was larger right from the start.

And then one of the Black Australorps started crowing. Crow. Ing.

When my husband first told me, I just went into denial. I researched to see if hens ever crowed. Oh yes they do! Yay for crowing hens!  With no signs of spurs growing on their legs, I remained hopeful. The Australorp kept crowing.

This photo, when posted to Facebook, yielded a number of opinions as to whether
or not one of them (or possibly both) was a rooster.

The Australorp grew beautiful iridescent tail feathers. My hope was fading.

And then I heard a crow IN STEREO.

Nooooooooooo...  NO ROOS.

If you're receiving this post via email, to view the embedded video,
click here.

So now what do we do with two roosters, who most assuredly will not lay eggs? We could eat them, but there's no way I'm going to butcher them. And no one wants roosters. Do they? I wouldn't mind having one, just for the novelty of it, because I actually do love hearing them crow. But not two.

We didn't get them for pets, we got them for eggs. Feeding two roosters who will not hold up our end of the bargain just doesn't work. Doesn't SOMEONE want a rooster? Or two? They're really quite handsome.

The one thing that saved the day that we discovered we had two roosters was this:

Owl, the Leghorn, was the first to lay an egg! How do we know it was her?
She's the only white-egg layer we have.

I just KNEW those chicks were older...

Tart Cherry Crumble Recipe - Yum!

This year, we had our first cherry harvest from the two 'Carmine Jewel' dwarf cherry shrubs we have. I'd gotten two seedlings from Gurney's at a regional GWA (Garden Writers Association) meeting in 2011, and after being gnawed to the ground one winter by rabbits, they came back like gangbusters.

I had my first experience at pitting cherries and I can tell you it was more fun than shelling peas. I don't enjoy shelling peas, which is why I no longer grow them, but pitting the cherries was another one of those tasks that you can do without thinking. Or you can think about the pie or cobbler or liqueur that those cherries will become.

There are several ways to pit cherries if you don't have a proper cherry pitter. I opted to use a straw - a stainless steel straw, which I knew would hold up well. I simply put the end of the straw at the stem end and pushed the pit out the other end. Don't wear a white shirt while doing this, although it doesn't seem to cause a permanent stain if you wash it right away.

The harvest yielded 207 cherries, which was about a pint of cherries, weighing ¾ of a pound after pitting. That wasn't quite as many as the recipe I used them in called for, but it was enough. And it was good.

I pretty much followed this recipe found on The Kitchn:

Tart Cherry Crumble

For the cherries:

1 pound tart cherries
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons finely chopped crystallized ginger, optional (I didn't use this)
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of salt

For the crumble:

6 tablespoons butter
1 cup flour
⅔ cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 large egg, beaten well

Position a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat the oven to 375°F.

Spread the cherries in an ungreased 9x9-inch baking dish, deep pie pan, or similar-sized dish. Toss the cherries with the sugar, flour, ginger, cinnamon, and salt. Cut the butter into several pieces and melt over low heat in a small saucepan. Raise the heat slightly after it has melted, and cook, swirling frequently, until the butter has turned nutty brown. Remove from the heat.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add the beaten egg and use your hands to combine the dry ingredients and egg. As you work the egg into the flour, it will form small moist crumbs. Sprinkle these over the cherries, then drizzle the browned butter over the topping.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top is browned and the cherries are bubbling. Cool for at least 30 minutes before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature with vanilla ice cream or unsweetened whipped cream.

I'd make it again.

Dwarf Sour Cherry 

(Prunus cerasus 'Carmine Jewel')

This is a dwarf shrub-type of tart or sour cherry. It is suitable for growing in Zones 3a to 8b, in sun to part-shade. It prefers neutral to alkaline soil, but is adaptable to most soil types, including heavy clay.

Developed at The University of Saskatchewan (Canada) and introduced in 1999, this black cherry is consistently highly productive, with a high fruit-to-pit ratio.

Field notes on 'Carmine Jewel'

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*I received these cherry plants as seedlings from Gurney's in 2011, free of charge. I have not received any other compensation for writing about them.

Gilmour Spray Nozzle and Flexogen® Hose Review and Giveaway

When the 4^th of July happens around here, it seems like summer is half over. Of course, this isn’t true, except for the school kids and that was a long, long time ago for us. There’s a lot of summer left in the garden too, and one thing that we’re sure to be doing in the hottest and driest part of summer for us here in NW Ohio, is some watering.

Recently, the Fiskars people contacted me about trying some of their products. I’ve always been a fan of Fiskars and somehow missed the fact that they acquired Gilmour, maker of garden watering products, back in 2014.

Among the things they sent me to try were these Gilmour products: 

Of all the things I received to try, the Super Duty Thumb Control Watering Nozzle was my favorite. In their description, they talk about a nozzle having “the right heft” to it, and I have to wholeheartedly agree. This just feels right in your hand. And it’s really easy to control with that thumb lever.

The nozzle head itself has eight spray patterns: Flower, Sweep, Garden, Shrub, Clean, Soft Wash, Rinse, and Jet.

It has stainless steel connectors so it doesn’t corrode and get hard to disconnect from your hose. They also sent me some Quick Connect components though, so I don’t even have to unscrew the nozzle to remove it. I just pop it off.

The Quick Connect set makes it easy to take the nozzle off and on from the hose.

Oh, and it comes with a lifetime warranty, too. I. Love. This. Nozzle.

They also sent me a Flexogen® Super Duty Hose. If there’s one thing that I hear gardeners complain about, it’s hoses. First of all, they don’t like heavy ones and secondly, they hate how they kink. I’ve complained about these very things myself.

The Flexogen® IS lightweight AND it honest-to-goodness DOES NOT KINK. I can't believe it, but it's true. Now this is saying something, because we have really low water pressure. I've had hoses that are supposed to resist kinking under pressure, but when you've got low water pressure, it's hard to make a product that simply won't kink. But Gilmour has done it.

The other thing is, this Flexogen® hose really is pretty lightweight. As someone who suffers from degenerative disc disease in my neck (as so many my age do), I appreciate how much lighter in weight this hose is than some. There's nothing I hate worse about water hoses than dragging one around that behaves like it was a 50-lb. boa constrictor.

Flexogen® hoses have eight layers and have been tested and proven to be the strongest and longest-lasting hose in its class. It's made with heavy-duty brass couplings to hold up well under use.

Also, the polished exterior resists dirt collection, unlike some other hoses I’ve tried. Of course, it’s gray, so it wouldn’t show much dirt anyway, but still. It's my new favorite hose!

It's a GIVEAWAY!

Now, the folks at Fiskars and Gilmour have been so kind to offer both the Super Duty Thumb Control Watering Nozzle AND a Flexogen® hose to one of my readers. If enough people enter, they’ve said they might give away two sets! So enter now and tell all your friends and neighbors. The more people that enter, the greater chance there will be two sets to give away! (And no, I do not know what the tipping point will be. LOL)

This giveaway will end with a random drawing on Saturday evening, July 9^th, at midnight EDT. All you need to do to enter is to fill out the Rafflecopter form. That’s it. But if you want bonus entries, check out the extra options when you fill out the Rafflecopter form. There are lots of ways to get a bonus entry!

a Rafflecopter giveaway    

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*I received these products from Fiskars/Gilmour for the purposes of reviewing them and hosting a giveaway. As always, I won't say anything about a product that isn't the truth from my own personal experience with it. I have received no other form of compensation for writing about these products.