It is a sizzling summer day; the mercury is rising. You are hot, tired and hungry and looking for a healthy snack to eat. You want to keep active but unsure how. How does a refreshing slice of watermelon sound to you? A crisp, juicy slice of watermelon is undoubtedly what you are looking for. Watermelons are truly one of summertime’s sweetest treats. It is fun to eat, and good for your health too. An all-American favorite, watermelon is highly nutritious and packed full of essential ingredients. Although available throughout the year with all its benefits, producing a good watermelon is a bit tricky in many parts of the nation.

Today there are more than 100 different varieties of watermelons. The sweetest ones usually grow during long hot summers. Harvesting is particularly critical because watermelons do not continue to ripen after they have been removed from the vine. Watermelons prefer a sunny location and fertile, well-drained soils. Incorporate plenty of organic matter and a complete fertilizer into the area before planting. Plant 4-6 seeds, 1-2 inches deep, in mounds 4 feet apart when soils are warm. Transplant watermelon 2 feet apart through black plastic for early maturity. Do not forget to use row covers to protect the plants when planting before the frost-free period. After the vines develop runners, side dress with additional nitrogen fertilizer. Irrigation should be deep and infrequent. Harvest watermelons when the tendril is dry, the ground spot is yellow, and the skin is dull colored.

Watermelons can be grown from seed or transplants. Watermelon fruits take 35-45 days to mature from flowering. To determine the maturity of the fruit, look for the curly tendril opposite the fruit which should be brown and withered; the ground spot under the fruit changes from white to yellow; and the skin color changes from shiny to dull. The rind color should be right for the variety with a waxy bloom. Probably the most important indicator of ripeness is the underside, which sets on the ground. Pick watermelons as they ripen. Watermelon will store for 1-2 weeks if held at 45-50ºF.
Uncut watermelons have a shorter refrigerator life, so store at room temperature until ready to chill and eat. Tightly cover cut pieces in plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 days.

Watermelons are generally warm-season crops that achieve prime quality when grown under warm, sunny conditions. Cool, cloudy weather may result in watermelons with inferior quality. Soils with a history of watermelon diseases should be avoided or fumigated to avoid problems. Litter from previous crops should be disked and deep turned with a plow two to four weeks prior to planting to ensure its decomposition. Diseases are important in determining the success or failure of watermelon production. Certain diseases have destroyed entire watermelon crops in some areas even when the weather conditions favored their development. If disease control practices are not followed, some loss can be expected every year from foliage and stem diseases. There even lies the risk of attack by a variety of insect pests. Certain insect management practices can be used to ensure cost-effective control decisions.

Watermelons require great attention and care to develop into the best variety. The methods adapted for their cultivation depends on the growth and amount of production. Demand for watermelons is particularly high in the US, where 136,400 acres of watermelons had been harvested in 2005! In fact, demand for watermelons has constantly been on the rise. People are acknowledging its health benefits and are keen to intake all the goodness that it provides.

Christine is an expert Internet marketing professional with years of experience in various industries such as: Business, Finance, Real Estate, Web-Design, Health & Medicine and many more.
watermelon- cantaloupe- honeydew

I am a bit of a bad bird watcher. I can recognise a few species but for me recognition is not the whole point of the exercise. I just enjoy watching the birds in their natural habitat.

Birds in their natural habitat tend not to hang around or parade themselves in front of the binoculars to make identification easy. Often all you get is a fleeting glimpse, a distant view or just a call. Even so it is still possible to identify the bird by getting a sense of its giss.

The giss of a bird is its general impression size and shape. It is taking those features you managed to recognise in that brief instant the bird was there and building up the bigger picture. It is the ability to recognise the whole bird from putting together the clues.

In a Shiatsu treatment one often only has access to small clues to a patient’s condition. Ki is like a bird and does not hang around waiting for you to analyse its condition. Ki moves freely and our response to Ki has to be spontaneous.

Unlike a Western doctor the Shiatsu practitioner cannot resort to detailed tests to come to a diagnosis. How they talk, hold themselves or the fleeting connection to an emotion. In Shiatsu one has only the client in front of you.

To be a bad birdwatcher is one thing but to be the best Shiatsu practitioner one has to develop a sense of the giss of Ki.

Tony Brown is currently studying with the Shiatsu College in Brighton. He writes on http://www.ShiatsuBlogger.co.uk about Shiatsu theory and practise.

Greater in-bound tourists of the discerning kind have lead to necessitating service apartments! Service apartments are now the need of the hour, not mere style statements between hotel and home!

The tourism industry in India is privy to a tidal wave-like changeover in terms of the demands and the supply of in-bound tourists to our home shores as rising expectations of foreign and Indian-origin tourists for quality lodging options, especially niche sectors like service apartments availability is on the rise. The nature of a service apartments is that it combines the best of both worlds any discerning hi-flier or busy corporate head may require, but with the growing need for comfortable, classy and temporary accommodation afforded by service apartments, there is still a gap to be filled by India offering wide-ranging choices for discriminating clientele from different parts of the world.

How the concept of service apartments as an ode to high-class hospitality caught on: a sneak peek-

With the bigger Indian cities playing host to a number of MNC’s, IT companies and concept tourism, there has been a rise in the number of service apartment offerings beyond the initial extensions by Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Delhi for the motley lot of NRIs and foreigners. While for most takers of service apartments, the cost factor was not a major issue, the important aspects most guests at service apartments look for when considering this need of the hour lodging option is how well the establishment combines coziness of home, comforts and luxuries of a hotel.

Who’s meeting the need of the hour for service apartment demands?

The answer to that is fast being provided by Star City in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, a service apartments providing company that has six such properties and a Rs. 22-crore serviced apartments complex on Poonamallee High Road scheduled for 2007 opening. Besides them, Global Adjustments, Chennai, too is eyeing this lucrative market of expatriate relocation and is basing its service apartment facilities on the requirements of NRIs looking for quality temporary accommodation by way of their facility at Sriperumbudur, located on the telecom corridor next to the Nokia Special Economic Zone to house executives who want to avoid the hassles of commuting. Mumbai meets the challenge with Taj Wellington Mews, Lakeside Chalet Marriott Executive Apartments, the Grand Hyatt Residences and the Grand Residences.

Manoj Gursahani is the Chairman of India’s first ecommerce travel portal- TravelMartIndia. Visit the blog for more travel related issues, travel tips and destinations

One way to be successful at Texas Hold’em poker is to familiarize yourself with the personalities of the players you’ll be involved with.

As anxious as you are to start playing, the only way to accomplish this is by taking time to observe them. Doing so really can pay off - literally - because once you understand their personalities you’ll be able to fine-tune your Texas Hold’em strategy.

Texas Hold’em poker experts call this “reading the table”.

It is a way to start learning another player’s tells which as you know by now is a change in a player’s appearance or their normal behavior.

Reading a Texas Hold’em table involves taking notes.

During your observations, you’ll encounter many players and even more tells therefore, the only way to keep your observations organized is to put them in writing.

Write down each player’s name, and then as a player reveals a tell write it down next to that player’s name. Take notes before the game starts and also update your notes after the game has ended. Then before the next game, go back and review your notes.

Here’s what to look for:

The confident Texas Hold’em players are the players who aren’t overly loud.

They’re talking with others, consuming alcohol in moderation (or not at all) and they’re ready to put their poker faces on the second the round begins. The confident players usually play tight and most likely won’t reveal many tells. These are the players you’ve got to watch out for.

The impatient Texas Hold’em players are the ones who appear anxious to begin playing.

They’re fidgeting, drumming fingers, playing with chips or doing something to expel their nervous energy. A lot of the time you’ll find that impatient Texas Hold’em players have only a brief time to play or they’re on a mission to recover from a previous loss.

Impatient players often play loose meaning they’re big risk takers. Only by learning their tells will you be able to know when they’re bluffing.

The obnoxious Texas Hold’em players are drinking a lot, talking loudly, telling jokes, jabs and insults, and they’re touching other players.
These personalities tend to play recklessly and they’re classic aggressive-loose players.

They raise when they should be folding.

They’re good at bluffing and do so primarily to scare other players into folding.

It’s important to learn the obnoxious player’s tells because you can’t count on their bidding to reveal what’s in their hands. You really won’t know when he’s bluffing or telling the truth.

Another behavior to note is how the other poker players react when you make friendly eye contact. Those who stare do so as a way of intimidating you and might be bluffing if they stare when you consider calling.

Those Texas Hold’em players who won’t make eye contact likely are nervous or unsure and once the game begins, they’re usually an easy read.

Those players who return your gesture in a friendly or sincere manner are likely to be the Texas Hold’em tight players who you’ll want to watch closely.

Discover Exactly How to Generate An Income for Yourself Through the Game of No Limit Texas Hold’em Poker - visit http://www.ExpertPokerSecrets.com/li/ now

People nowadays are becoming more conscious of their weight. There are compelling reasons to do so. With the emergence of modern beauty and fashion magazines and the continuing adoration to great-bodied celebrities, who would not want to take a piece of the cake? People are now curious how to lose weight and gain muscles.

People in nature would want to be admired and looked up to. That is why no matter how hard and tedious it may take; people tend to be conscious about how they look. Modern beauty is now dictated by how one’s physical statistics are. People will always give it a try to lose fat and gain muscles even if it takes a lot of efforts.

In the Internet alone, it is estimated that most online surfers who seek tips and advise through Internet sites are mostly concerned about weight loss problems. The topic of weight loss is certainly one of the most popular issues being openly discussed in all types of venues nowadays.

Lose Weight and Gain Muscles through Exercise.

As kids, your parents, doctor and teachers in school had often reminded you that exercise never fails to make the body healthy. Indeed, exercise activities are tasks that make the blood circulation remain at healthy levels, muscles firmer and toned and overall senses sharper.

In the regimen concerning weight loss, exercises are activities that surely boost and accelerate the measures to make weight loss programs more effective. Perhaps, people, even in the past, always associate effective control to lose weight and gain muscles through proper, regular and disciplined execution of exercises.

Thus, exercises are necessary to lose weight and gain muscles. But step back, because exercises, in general, would be futile if not properly executed.

Tips on how to make exercises work to lose weight and gain muscles.

You should be aware of the following simple guidelines that would surely help you benefit the most from the execution of all exercises to lose weight and gain muscles. As your gym and fitness instructors would always remind you, exercises are effective not because they make you sweat, but because they are able to make necessary muscles work and effectively burn calories.

It is the form and proper execution in exercises that matter more than the actual duration of the exercise program. Regular exercise sessions would also render useless if the procedures are not done accordingly or in proper form. Nevertheless, proper body conditioning is also needed prior to, during and after exercises.

Here are some simple tips that would help you make exercises work effectively as you aim to lose weight and gain muscles.

• Master the proper movements for each exercise procedure. For example, jogging would be simple, but did you know that there is an effective way to do it to lose weight and gain muscles?
• Learn how to inhale and exhale accordingly. When you exert more muscle effort that is the time you should inhale, while exhaling should be done during the lighter part of the exercise.
• Do not eat before the exercise session. If you take a meal before the session, chances are that your body would just burn the food and calories you just took in. It is more advised to exercise on an empty stomach in the morning, so the body would burn all the stored fats during the process.
• Although you want to lose fat and gain muscles, do not overdo exercises. Listen to your body’s calls. If you are tired, take a rest, do not keep going because you might collapse or experience muscle cramps.

Overall, the best and most effective guideline would be: maintain determination, will power and attitude to make the exercise program work for you to achieve your goals to lose fat and gain muscles. No one said the process would be easy, but if you succeed in losing weight ideally, it would surely be all worth it.

Did you know that even if you’ve never succeeded at losing weight before, even if you have stubborn fat deposits that don’t seem to bulge you can still lose weight and gain muscles if you know the right method to lose weight? Do you want to find out the best weight loss method that changed the lives of many overweight people? Visit Burn The Fat Feed The Muscles at Great Discovery-Health and Beauty

Gerry Restrivera writes informative articles on various subjects including Lose Weight and Gain Muscles: How to Exercise Properly to Lose Weight. You are allowed to publish this article in its entirety provided that author’s name, bio and website links must remain intact and included with every reproduction.

Beating the smoking habit can be one of the most difficult things for someone to do. Some people are able to quit cold turkey, but the majority of people suffering from smoking addiction don’t have it so lucky. I’m going to show you a few stop smoking tips that I’ve learned that may help you in your war against nicotine.

Tip #1- Try to stay busy. Try to do things that will make it almost impossible to smoke. Go to the movies, or go to a restaurant and sit in the non-smoking section. Spend as much free time as you possibly can in places that have banned smoking. Anything you can do to take yourself away from a smoking enviroment can be extremely helpful.

Tip #2. Get rid of any cigarette match’s or ashtray’s that you may have laying around. If you are serious about quitting smoking you must stay as far away from cigarette’s as you possibly can, as everyday is a battle.

Tip #3 Find friends that are fighting the same battle as you are. Many people who don’t smoke can’t understand the power that nicotine has over its victims. Search for quit smoking online forums and message boards online. You will find that there are many other’s that are facing the same obstacles as you. Having someone to help you in the war against nicotine can increase your chances of victory immensely.

Tip #4 Make a goal of what exactly you want to accomplish, and in what time period you want to acomplish it in. Reward yourself for achieving your goals. Maybe you went your first day without smoking. Go buy yourself a gift. Go see your favorite movie, or go buy yourself a cake and celebrate your victory. If you go three days without smoking, go to a movie. Pat yourself on the back and say well done. You deserve it!

Fighting nicotine is a constant struggle, but if you put your mind to it you can defeat it, and you will feel much healthier when you do! Thanks for reading and I hope these tips really help you.

If you suffer from smoking addiction do yourself a favor and visit http://quit-smokingtip.blogspot.com/ for more helpful tips on quitting smoking.

Farriers can have it very tough. The occupation is very physically demanding and there are risks of injury. Being kicked by a horse is not to be taken lightly, I personally know of Farriers who have died from kicks and others having broken bones. Nails in horse’s feet will rip through the farriers flesh as easy as a hot knife through butter. Horses jerk legs while working on them and sit and lean and try everything sometimes in an effort to dislodge the Farrier from his work.

On the other side of the coin accidents occur often enough to the horses as well that the Farrier often has to shoulder the responsibility for. Here’s one such example.

My client called me out to shoe his favorite horse - a nice looking Palomino. It’s a nice warm day and everything was feeling right. More times than not on this particular job I shoe this horse by myself with the owner away - this was one of those times.

This day for some reason the horse was acting just a little bit strange and I was working on accommodating this behavior. On this job location the tie post for the horse is an old short wooden post in the ground and the horse has been tied there many times. Well this day our horse decided to pull slightly against the post - unknown to me the post is rotten at the bottom and starts to make an audible “Cracking sound” which somewhat spooks this beautiful Palomino who then pulls at the post even harder. Easily enough the post snaps.

Now the post becomes the devil from hell and the poor Palomino is panicking and fearing for his life. Now this is all taking place on a long paved driveway and the horse takes off at full speed with the post dragging menacingly behind attached to the lead rope. All hell is breaking loose. The driveway is not straight - it’s got a large sweeping curve and I just took several steps back and prayed - the horse is galloping nearly full speed into the turn on slippery pavement dragging the gates to hell behind him.

Sure enough in the middle of the turn “On Pavement” at nearly full speed the horse goes down, the flowers lining the driveway are flying everywhere as I watched in horror while the horse’s feet are all in the air - he’s upside down! Good lord! He manages to get back up still fearing for his life as the post is still attached - takes off again this time the post jumps the old style all post wood cowboy type fence and yanks the fence down as he’s still running breaks his lead rope and thankfully looses his tie to the post and hell fire. This is one of those Farrier nightmares!

Well the horse stops at the edge of the driveway, I fetch him, and he’s bleeding and scraped up here and there so I take him to the wash rack where I can attend to his needs. Luckily it’s all just superficial scrapes and I wash and clean up the wounds.

Well suddenly the owners’ wife drives up in her car and gets out and I call to her to explain the situation and explain it’s nothing serious to calm her down. We decide since the owner is not home that we put the horse in his stall and my job is done, I pack up and head out. On my way out the owner is now driving up so I turn around to go explain to him what had happened. He seemed to have taken it all very well. It was an accident - accidents happen.

Well in this case this incident came back to bite me on the rear. Later in the week I heard from one of my Farrier friends that the owner of the Palomino was actually angry with me for what happened and was thinking of changing Farriers - “firing me”. So as it turns out that’s exactly what happened. I was held responsible for the incident and terminated.

As word spread through the community of the incident it was uncovered the Palomino has done this very thing before and had gone off running right through the middle of town. So the disaster that happened to me with the Palomino probably came as no surprise to the owner- yet I still took the brunt of the blame.

Often times at the end of the day your Farrier goes home beat up and bleeding and when things go wrong it’s usually the Farriers fault. Farriers risk much while caring for horses and really do deserve our understanding.

Speaking of Caring4Horses if you’d like to discover for yourself a method of horseshoeing with a 16 year 100% track record “Not One Single Lame Horse” just go ahead and click on the web site link below in the author bio. Your horse will love you for it - I guarantee it.

Reprint rights allowed providing nothing is changed.

Author Bio: John Silveira, Farrier, Aikido practitioner, spiritualist, born and raised in San Mateo California the bay area. For information on his shoeing method and the 100% track record just go to http://Care4Horses.com and leave contact information.
thank you and remember to Care4Horses

Shiatsu massage is a phrase one hears and I have used it myself when asked what I do; but should it be called massage at all? What is Shiatsu?

The definition of massage on Wikipedia is

…the practice of applying structured or unstructured pressure, tension, motion, or vibration…to the soft tissues of the body…to achieve a beneficial response.

Shiatsu by this definition is a massage technique since it employs pressure to promote a healing response. A Shiatsu practitioner will also stretch the body and rotate joints and is sometimes called a Japanese physiotherapy.

Apart from this physical aspect there is more to Shiatsu that makes it more than a massage technique. The focus of a Shiatsu practitioner is on the body/mind of the client. I sensed this last year when I felt that my work was too physical and not up to the standard of the practitioners who have given Shiatsu to me.

At the start of a treatment the practitioner will spend some time talking to a client and understanding the movement of physical, emotional and spiritual energies in the body. The physical part of the Shiatsu session is simply a way of allowing those aspects of a person to work together as one unit. It is aim of Shiatsu to let clients feel themselves as a whole person and not a collection of aching body parts.

If one is talking to a potential client then massage is a term that I would use. Physiotherapy is too medical a word and some people can find talk of Ki energy flow too mystical until they experience it. Historically the word massage has suffered an image problem too but it is increasingly seen as a mainstream relaxation therapy. Promoting Shiatsu as stress busting is fine since healing cannot take place until the client is relaxed.

Tony Brown is currently studying with the Shiatsu College in Brighton. He writes on http://www.ShiatsuBlogger.co.uk about Shiatsu theory and practise.

The hardest thing you’ll ever have to do is to ’start’. When you want to travel, the hardest part is to just ‘go ahead and go’. But once you start, everything follows. The same goes with writing. I don’t know about you, but when I write, the first sentence in the article gets erased five times before one becomes permanent. But once you get through the first sentence, writing the whole article will be a breeze.

There are actually a lot of ways by which you could begin your article. You could start it with a quotation, a question, an anecdote, or you could go straight to the point. There is no exact formula for starting. You can start your article with any sentence, as long as it suits your purpose.

What’s the Purpose of the Article?

So think about why you’re writing that article. What is your purpose? Is it to entertain, to inspire, to persuade, or simply to inform? If you want to entertain, then a funny anecdote might do well. If you want to inspire, then a famous quote may do. If you want to persuade, then maybe you could start with a question. If you want to inform, then you could go straight to the point.

Let me give you a concrete example. Let’s say that your aim is to persuade people to buy your product. I mentioned that if you want to persuade, starting the article with a question might do the trick. Let’s say that your product is a water bed. Maybe you could start your article with a question like, “Have you ever had a night when you couldn’t sleep because of your lumpy mattress?” or “When was the last time you had a good night’s sleep?” This is a good strategy because you’re automatically creating a bond with your reader. If your reader answers “yes” to your question, he will be able to relate, and if he is able to relate, then he will be interested.

The First Line

But asking a question isn’t the only way to start an article. If you can make it work, then an anecdote might be perfect for your article. Maybe you could tell a story about a friend of yours who didn’t want to buy the bed at first but was persuaded to do so after a bit of prodding. And then give them a punch line. It has to be funny, or at the very least, unexpected. Maybe you could end your anecdote by saying that your friend went to your office, fuming. He kept on glaring at you so you asked him what was wrong. And then he answered, “I got into trouble at work because of your bed”. And so you ask him why and he answers that he woke up late because the bed was so comfortable. You’ll have showcased how comfortable your bed is and entertained your readers at the same time.

Again, there’s no exact formula for starting to write an article, just let your imagination run wild.

Eric Hartwell oversees “The World’s Best Homepage” intended to be a user-generated resource where YOUR opinion counts. Anybody can contribute and all are welcomed. Visit us to read, comment upon or share opinions on writing resources and visit his associated site articles for free

Raising your level of writing needs you to focus on bigger things, like having your work published for example. This is a surefire way to encourage yourself to go beyond your current limitations and weaknesses as a writer. Taking the step from writing as a hobby towards writing professionally and having an article or a piece published is indeed a big leap for anyone. It needs a long-term commitment, discipline and an almost endless source of inspiration to be able to write constantly and creatively. Not only does it entail having to do intensive research, but it also pushes the writer to find a certain niche from which he can excel.

Moreover, you have to be able to gauge your own work and consciously maintain a higher level of quality as compared to when you were just writing on a journal or your own blog. This leaves the question of how one learns how to write well. How can you raise your level so that it is up to par with what is asked and required of you as a professional writer?

There are different ways to find your way towards fulfilling your worth as a writer. Some of these are the following:

1.-Find your niche. You have to be able to know what you are capable of writing about. You have to know where to focus your attention to, what topics to write about, and what genre of writing you are going to start with. Some may find poetry as your strongest area, while you may feel that writing feature articles are where you are at your best. The important thing is that you are able to decide where to concentrate. For a writer who is just starting, you have to be the master of your specialized craft before branching out to other areas and other genres.

2.-Educate yourself. You were not born with all the information already lodged in your brain. Read and refresh your mind by going through printed materials about the topics close to your heart and the areas where your interest is more attuned. Learn from the best in the business; study their style and their delivery. From those lessons, you can create your own unique style.

3.-Write from the heart. The next important step is to start writing. Pour out your soul and write from an intelligent yet emotional perspective. Show your strengths as a writer and highlight these in all the lines that you write.

4.-Edit and correct your article. Check if the facts add up, review your references, and see to it that you don’t contradict yourself. Give others a chance to critic your work, and be open to suggestions without sacrificing the content of your work.

The above-mentioned ways are just rudiments of how to write a good article. These will help you get started towards your goal of being a good writer and being able to write well. Mastering all these things however does not necessarily mean producing a best seller or getting all the accolades you dream of. Perhaps the true measure of how good a writer you are is the patience and dedication you give towards writing a well written article or book, for even the great ones did not receive praise immediately. So hone your craft and be patient in doing so, as even the longest journeys start on a single step.

Eric Hartwell oversees “The World’s Best Homepage” intended to be a user-generated resource where YOUR opinion counts. Anybody can contribute and all are welcomed. Visit us to read, comment upon or share opinions on writing resources and visit his associated site articles for free