Life is as Sweet as Cotton Candy
a magazine created by Karen Cotton
Tomorrow I will be posting the flags of the readers who are from countries that are new to Life is as Sweet as Cotton candy 🙂 I’ll  also post tourist sites if your country has one.
Have a great night 🙂
thanks for reading Life is as Sweet as Cotton Candy 🙂
I’m looking for a good name for my seven yearold cowboy in a childrens book that I’m writing, it needs to be a name that stands out, can be used as funny nicknames, he likes to read al ot more than his classmates and he’s lean and tall for his age..
Comment with suggestions …or email me at karencottonwriter@gmail.com
Ill be writing my book most of today but I hope to get some nature photos that I took this week posted up here and I’ve got some more articles in the works and from my guest writers too 🙂
Night and thanks for reading life is sweet as cotton candy…
Doing this from my phone …so lisacc is in lowercase
Karen
One of the things that I’ve been busy with is my large garden area in my backyard. Now that it’s spring it’s time to start working on it again.
Two days ago Catherine Wissner, a Laramie County Master Gardener and horticulturalist, made a house call to my home. It’s really neat that Master Gardeners make house calls. Its an excellent service that they provide for free. Look for Master Gardeners in your area, according to Catherine there are Master Gardeners all over the U.S. , as well as in parts of Canada.
Catherine took a closer look at my weeping cottonwood tree. The tree has brown rings and a slimy area that weeps when it rains or snows.
I’m going to take one cup of bleach to one gallon of water and apply that with a sponge to my tree’s weeping spot.
While Catherine was in my front yard, she told me how to fix the trouble spots in our soil and grass. She suggested that Roundup would easily kill vine-like flowering weeds that are creeping into our grass from our neighbor’s yard.
We proceeded to my backyard where my large garden area is. Currently it’s full of weeds and pesky grass from last summer and fall because I had to take a hiatus from gardening when I was pregnant last year.
Catherine told me that household vinegar would kill those weeds and crab grass, without harming my other plants. You just have to take a large rolling paint brush and carefully apply the vinegar to the weeds and crab grass while making sure not to touch your plants that you want to live.
You can also cover those spots with large black trash bags, or yesterday’s newspaper and to keep them in place you can add landscaping stones on top.
My viburnum tree, which is in in the middle of my large garden area, has mossy green shoots on the tops of some of the branches. Catherine told me that I can cut those and place them in cups of water. That way I’ll have new trees to plant. The same goes for my cotoneaster tree, but she said once they’re planted, they would make a nice hedge. They would also take up some of my garden space.
Catherine is also coming up with a list of flowers and plants that are low maintenance and would be great for my backyard area.
If you’d like a house call for your garden, trees, or grass problems you can reach the Laramie County Master Gardeners here: www.lcmg.org
For Master Gardeners in the U.S. Or Canada go here: http://www.ahs.org/master_gardeners/
HAPPY GARDENING 🙂
Here are some upcoming workshops for residents of Laramie County, Wyoming.
“Gardening on the Cheap: Big Garden Dreams on a Small Garden Budget”
with Jodi Torpey
Date and time: Tomorrow, April 21 at 3 p.m.
Event location: Laramie County Library, 2200 Pioneer Ave.
Who to contact: Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, 307-637- 6458, or Catherine Wissner, horticulturalist, phone number: 307-633-4383
Laramie County Cooperative Extension Service website: http://www.uwyo.edu/ces/county/laramie/
Event information: Jodi Torpey is the author of the book “The Colorado Gardener’s Companion: An Insider’s Guide to Gardening in the Centennial State.” Torpey is also an expert on growing great gardens and harvesting healthy crops while pinching pennies. She will explain tricks to cultivate a green thumb without going into the red. She’ll teach people about creative ideas to become a frugal gardener from finding inexpensive or free options for soil amendments, seeds, plants, planters and garden structures.
More information about Torpey: http://www.westerngardeners.com/about-jodi-torpey.html
This event is brought to you by the Laramie County Master Gardeners and the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens.
Another gardening event in Cheyenne, Wyoming :
Laramie County Master Gardener’s Annual Plant Sale and Garden Festival
Event time: Saturday, May 19, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Location: Cheyenne Depot Plaza in downtown Cheyenne. The Depot Plaza is in front of the Cheyenne Depot Museum, which is located at 121 W. 15th St.
Brought to gardeners by: the Laramie County Master Gardeners, The Cheyenne Depot Museum and the City of Cheyenne
      Hey Life is as Sweet as Cotton Candy readers.
Today was a long day. I updated the look of Life is as Sweet as Cotton Candy and created the beginnings of a Facebook page for my magazine/blog.
I’m also working on some really cool future posts 🙂
Of course in between doing that I took care of Katie, made dinner, and had a Public Health nurse and other visitors for Katie come to my home today.
Tonight I’m staying up until 1 a.m.  I’m going to work on my children’s book.
If you’re a writer then you already know that the beginning is actually the hardest part of the book to write. I’ve rewritten mine ten times now over the past few months, but I finally am happy with how it’s going.
Everyone has a first draft, whether it’s an e-mail to a friend, or a business letter, or when you’re trying to figure out exactly what you’re going to say in that blank card for someone special. Before you figure out the perfect thing to say, you write down all kinds of things. You may hit delete, or erase your pencil marks a few times, or use Wite-Out, until you choose the words that you like the best.
My book is about Santa. My goal audience is for third, fourth and fifth grade readers, possibly younger, possibly older … doesn’t every writer dream of having the same kind of audience that J.K. Rowling has had for her books?
It’s always good to set your goals really high, but sometimes that also puts a lot of pressure on you when you write. So, I’ve decided to just write my book in order to get this idea out of my head and onto paper, with the hope of getting it into the hands of readers. I’ve had an agent and a publishing house interested in my idea and writing that I’ve done so far on this book, but that’s intimidation almost, when someone’s anticipating your book.
I now have an editor guiding me along in this process, so I better get off of here and hit the keys.
Before I leave for tonight, though, I wanted to ask you all if you have ever struggled with writing.If so, how do you work past it?
Who are your favorite authors to read? What about authors from your childhood, or new children’s books that you might be reading to your kids.
Let me know on my comments area on my post.
Night,
Karen
 April 15th, 2012
by Karen Cotton
When I woke up this morning there wasn’t any snow on the ground. I was bummed and relieved at the same time. We really needed the moisture, but my tulips are still alive and well.
Around 1 p.m. today I was excited because the clouds  started spitting large snowflakes, my dog loved it, but nothing stuck to the ground.
The clouds were beautiful, though. I’m glad to have our spacious Wyoming skies. I don’t think I’d like it very much if I lived in a big city.
By Karen Cotton
Around 11 a.m. yesterday I was pleasantly surprised by my annual visit from the cedar waxwings.
They were having a berry feast in the tree outside of my living room window. Yet, a visit from the migrating waxwings only means one thing. There’s a storm headed our way because they’re filling up their bellies to get ahead of it.
Spring in Wyoming is as unpredictable as the groundhog’s shadow on Groundhog’s Day. All of the weather stations said it was going to snow yesterday in Cheyenne, but it just rained a skiff here and there.
The moisture from rain is great, especially for the tulips in my flowerbed, the grass that’s greening up and the trees that are budding out. A hard freeze could have a much different outcome, I’m afraid, which is why I picked my prize tulip yesterday morning. 
In the wee morning hours I’ve been contemplating about cutting all of my tulips and making them into a large arrangement for my table because you can’t trust the weather in Wyoming. Nah, it’s 40 degrees outside, hopefully they’re tough.
It’s 12:25 a.m. right now, my daughter is asleep in her crib and my husband is snoring in our bedroom as I write and lounge in our nursery recliner. I found all of these reliable weather media outlets on the Internet that are saying the same thing: A winter storm advisory is in effect
Weather Central: http://www.weathercentral.com/weather/us/cities/wy_cheyenne.html
The Weather Channel: http://www.weather.com/weather/today/82001:4:US
Accuweather: http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/cheyenne-wy/82001/weather-forecast/331604
http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/wyoming/weather-radar?play=true
So, we’ll see what happens when I wake up around 9 a.m., or earlier depending on the baby girl.
I’ll be posting pictures on Life is as Sweet as Cotton Candy 🙂
Thanks for reading my first post …have a blessed Sunday.
Karen
I’m pleased to announce my new magazine Life is as Sweet as Cotton Candy.
Life is as Sweet as Cotton Candy 