Holiday Health and Safety Tips

The holidays are a time to celebrate, give thanks, and reflect. They are also a time to pay special attention to your health. Give the gift of health and safety to yourself and others by following these holiday tips.

Wash your hands often.
Keeping hands clean is one of the most important steps you can take to avoid getting sick and spreading germs to others. Wash your hands with soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds. Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze.

If you don’t have tissue, cough or sneeze into your upper sleeve or elbow, not your hands.

Stay warm.
Cold temperatures can cause serious health problems, especially in infants and older adults. Stay dry, and dress warmly in several layers of loose-fitting, tightly woven clothing.

Manage stress.
The holidays don't need to take a toll on your health and pocketbook. Keep a check on overcommitment and overspending. Balance work, home, and play. Get support from family and friends. Keep a relaxed and positive outlook. Make sure to get proper sleep.

Travel safely.
Whether you're traveling across town or around the world, help ensure your trip is safe. Don’t drink and drive, and don’t let someone else drink and drive.


Wear a seat belt every time you drive or ride in a motor vehicle. Always buckle your child in the car using a child safety seat, booster seat, or seat belt according to his/her height, weight, and age.

Be smoke-free.
Avoid smoking and breathing other people's smoke. If you smoke, quit today! Call 1-800-QUIT-NOW or talk to your health care provider for help.

Get check-ups and vaccinations.
Exams and screenings can help find potential problems before they start. They can also help find health issues early, when the chances for treatment and cure are often times better. Vaccinations help prevent diseases and save lives. Schedule a visit with your health care provider for a yearly exam. Ask what vaccinations and tests you should get based on your age, lifestyle, travel plans, medical history, and family health history.

Watch the kids.
Children are at high risk for injuries. Keep a watchful eye on your kids when they’re eating and playing. Keep potentially dangerous toys, food, drinks, household items, choking hazards (like coins and hard candy), and other objects out of kids' reach. Learn how to provide early treatment for children who are choking. Make sure toys are used properly. Develop and reinforce rules about acceptable and safe behaviors, including electronic media.

Prevent injuries.
Injuries can occur anywhere and some often occur around the holidays. Use step stools instead of furniture when hanging decorations.  Leave the fireworks to the professionals.

Wear a bicycle helmet to help prevent head injuries. Wear a helmet when riding a bicycle or skateboarding to help prevent head injuries. Keep vaccinations up-to-date.

Most residential fires occur during the winter months. Keep candles away from children, pets, walkways, trees, and curtains. Never leave fireplaces, stoves, or candles unattended. Don't use generators, grills, or other gasoline- or charcoal-burning devices inside your home or garage. Install a smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector in your home. Test them once a month, and replace batteries twice a year.

Handle and prepare food safely.
As you prepare holiday meals, and any meals, keep yourself and your family safe from food-related illness. Wash hands and surfaces often.


Avoid cross-contamination by keeping raw meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs (including their juices) away from ready-to-eat foods and eating surfaces. Cook foods to the proper temperature. Refrigerate promptly. Do not leave perishable foods out for more than two hours.

Eat healthy, and be active.
With balance and moderation, you can enjoy the holidays the healthy way. Choose fresh fruit as a festive and sweet substitute for candy. Select just one or two of your favorites from the host of tempting foods.

Find fun ways to stay active, such as dancing to your favorite holiday music. Be active for at least 2½ hours a week. Help kids and teens be active for at least 1 hour a day.

Resource:  CDC.gov

Top 10 Rules for Spring Gardening

Help ensure your garden's success by heeding these dos and don'ts from HGTV.

Work the soil only when it's moderately dry.
Tilling, walking on, or cultivating the soil when it's wet leads to creating something akin to adobe: the whole structure of the soil is destroyed.

Provide drainage.
If your soil is too wet to work, use raised beds to enable earlier planting in the spring. The soil in raised beds dries out and warms up faster than the surrounding earth.

Check seed packages for the number of days to harvest.
Plant cool-season plants such as peas, onions, Swiss chard, spinach and lettuce in early spring so they mature before hot weather arrives. Delay planting warm-weather crops until you're safely past the last spring frost and the soil has warmed sufficiently.

Know your zone.
Whether you use USDA or Sunset zones, choose your plants not only for cold-hardiness but for heat-tolerance as well. Example: Peonies don't bloom where winters are mild.

Ease your transplants into the garden.
If you've started seedlings indoors, expose them gradually to the conditions they'll have in the garden: start the pots off for only a few hours in a sunny place, then gradually increase the amount of sun exposure before installing the transplants in the garden

Use Mother Nature to feed your plants.
The best amendment for your soil is one you can make yourself: compost. If you don't already have a compost pile, start one now.

Water deeply.
Your veggie garden will need about an inch of water a week; if enough rain hasn't fallen, water till the top 6 inches of soil are wet. Simply wetting the soil's surface with daily watering doesn't reach most of the root zone and is harmful to plants. Saturate the soil around the base of tomato plants and avoid getting the foliage wet to reduce the chances of foliar diseases.

Rotate your veggie crops.
Grow them in different spots every year. Tomatoes are especially vulnerable to diseases that may linger in the soil or in plant residue.

Synchronize pruning chores to bloom time.
Prune summer-blooming shrubs, such as abelia and butterfly bush, in early spring. Buds form on the new wood that emerges the same year. Later, cutting spent flowers on your butterfly bush will produce new flowers.

Hydrangeas are the exception to the pruning rules for summer-flowering shrubs. Mophead hydrangeas — and others that flower in summer — need to be pruned in fall. Fall-blooming hydrangeas such as H. paniculata are pruned in late winter or early spring.