Month: December 2022

Dev Depot: Adding to cart with love

BROAD CAST – Jing Castañeda – Philstar.com

December 28, 2022 | 6:30pm

It’s the season of giving and it’s the perfect season for embracing one another’s weaknesses and strengths. But more than the imperfections, Christmas is a lovely moment for us to uplift and give inspiration to each other. We don’t need to be friends or blood-related to do this, all we need is that pure love that can bind even strangers together. 

In an episode of Pamilya Talk, I met this inspiring couple who turned the challenges they faced into an opportunity to start their own business, and at the same time, inspire and help other parents struggling in raising their children (especially kids with special needs). 

Meet Brian and Ann Tan, business owners of Dev Depot. Their business is a haven for parents who wish to look for equipment and furniture that are helpful for children’s development.

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The 5 Best Deals at Home Depot Right Now

A man crouching on the floor next to tools while repairing a bathroom sink.

Image source: Getty Images

Ready to tackle some home projects?

Key points

  • Home Depot is featuring some excellent items this week to help you start the new year off right.
  • If it’s time to whip your closet into shape, check out an organization system that will give you 30 feet of shelf space.
  • You can pick up a pressure washer so you’ll be ready for the upcoming spring cleaning season.

Ah, Home Depot. The smell of freshly cut lumber, the bustle of activity around the paint section. There’s something about home projects and all the materials you need for them that is just exciting. As we head into a new year full of possibilities, you might be making a list of all the projects you plan to take on over the course of the year. To that end, right now Home Depot has some excellent deals on tools to help

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Drought Threatens Future Christmas Tree Supply

Do you prefer a real Christmas tree or an artificial one? Although artificial trees have their advantages—they’re convenient, clean, reusable, fire-safe, and allergen-free—there’s only one right choice for environmentalists: real trees all the way.

So says the Texas A&M Forest Service, which sings the praises of real Christmas trees that are grown on Christmas tree farms in all 50 states. In addition to cleaning the air by converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, it says real Christmas trees filter water, limit runoff and potential flooding, provide shelter and food for wildlife, reduce erosion and pollution, and cool the average temperatures around them by nearly 10 degrees. And that’s just before they’re harvested.

After harvest, it says, real Christmas trees have been found to improve the mental health, productivity, and happiness of those who have them while also boosting their immune system and lowering their anxiety. Plus, real Christmas trees can

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Chores are barely done, but never too early to shop for next year’s gardening season

The time to order seeds is nigh. If you order early, you can ensure you’ll get what you want. Shutterstock/eurobanks

Our 2023 garden, seed and supply catalogs arrived weeks ago, definitely before we were finished with our 2022 gardens. I tried to ignore the catalogs, but when prodded (by my wife, Nancy), I looked at a few for ideas on gift-giving.

Because of the warm autumn, I didn’t finish gardening tasks – a final weeding, harvesting leeks and raking the parts of the yard where we still rake – until the first week of December. That’s when we’d normally start getting ready for Christmas.

Normally, I don’t begin to dig into catalogs until after Christmas (and keep at it until Groundhog Day) in preparation the following spring. As a service to you, my readers, I spent some time picking out highlights from some favorites. But bear in mind, I still

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Model trains passion began with surprise Christmas present for Ozark man

Jim Rudd has only collected model trains for the past 15 years, but the Ozark man is the first to say what started as an interest when he received his first train as a surprise Christmas present from his wife has today grown into a passion.

With some 54 sets of electric trains running on a labyrinth of tracks spiraling throughout the 3,200-square foot ‘Train Depot’ he custom built behind his Ozark home two years ago, Rudd stands with his trademark unlit cigar in hand surveying the scene that he directs.

He points to a child-sized table against one wall with a single train on a 6-foot oblong track. “It all started with that little train over there. That was the first train,” he said. “And the first track.”

Now 2-year old grandson Watson is the director of that station, Rudd said. “When he comes to visit, the

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The surprise lettuce crisis cost Olive Garden’s owner as much as $5 million in 3 months

olive garden

Despite growing sales, Olive Garden hasn’t been immune to rising costs.Steve Helber/AP Photo

  • Olive Garden has lost nearly $5 million in the space of three months, its parent firm’s chief financial officer said.

  • The company is contending with crop disease in California, which is plaguing most US supply.

  • Chick-Fil-A and Taco Bell previously warned customers to expect shortages of the crop.

Olive Garden’s parent company has been hit by a “surprise” lettuce crunch which cost as much as $5 million in the three months to November 27.

At its quarterly analyst call for its fiscal Q2 2023, Darden Restaurants chief financial officer Raj Vennam estimated that issues with lettuce production cost between $4 million to $5 million. The company owns Olive Garden in addition to Longhorn Steakhouse and Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen.

Darden has faced mounting costs this year, with Vennam saying costs are up 20% for chicken and dairy

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Central Garden & Pet Company: Stagnant Revenue Growth (CENT)

Image of different species of goods in pet store

JackF/iStock via Getty Images

Investment Thesis

Central Garden & Pet Company (NASDAQ:CENT) provides products for lawns and gardens and supplies products for pet animals in the United States. It recently announced its FY22 annual results, and it saw stagnant revenue and

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COUNTY COLUMN: Beginning gardening series set at The Well | Community

Gardening connects us with our food supply and with nature, can serve as a form of exercise and stress relief, and gets us out into the open air.

For some, gardening is as simple as putting in a few easy-to-grow herbs or planting some bedding flowers for beautification and pleasure.

For others, the science behind gardening challenges the mind and provides stimulation that may delay dementia in the elderly.

“Preliminary studies have reported the benefits of horticultural therapy and garden settings in reduction of pain, improvement in attention, lessening of stress, modulation of agitation, lowering of as needed medications, antipsychotics and reduction of falls,” according to the National Institutes of Health (bit.ly/3UHb6t5).

Whatever your reasons for gardening, there is help at the Cleveland County Wellness Square (The Well) if you want to learn more.

OSU Extension Horticulturist Courtney DeKalb-Myers will teach a spring gardening series that will begin at 9:30

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Mulberry to establish food venue as part of downtown redevelopment

The City of Mulberry plans to renovate an old Badcock warehouse into an indoor and outdoor dining space to be named Union 303 with seven different restaurants, part food truck, food court model In Mulberry Fl Thursday November 18,2022.Ernst Peters/The Ledger

The City of Mulberry plans to renovate an old Badcock warehouse into an indoor and outdoor dining space to be named Union 303 with seven different restaurants, part food truck, food court model In Mulberry Fl Thursday November 18,2022.Ernst Peters/The Ledger

The city of Mulberry hopes to offer more than its current fast-food dining options for its residents and visitors alike with a new food venue dubbed “Depot 303.”

City Manager Rick Johnson said he hopes up to seven micro-restaurants will lease space there with a shared restaurant-quality dining area in the former Badcock Furniture warehouse where appliances were once repaired.

The site at 303 NW 1st Ave. is within the vicinity of the historic Gem Theater, a performing arts and film screening venue about one and a half blocks from the Depot.

The project is on a course for completion by late 2023 and would share a parking lot

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Garden mastery: Good soil is the ‘magic’ needed for plants to build on

Did you ever wonder how your neighbor gets those beautiful tomatoes every summer? Or how that one house has landscaping that looks so healthy? One secret is what makes a really good home for those plants — the soil.

As gardeners (and everyone can be a gardener), we can’t control a lot of what happens to our plants. The amount of sunlight, the humidity, even the availability of water might be variables that are difficult to manage. But we can work with our soil to give the roots of a plant the best chance of delivering water and nutrients to the leaves and fruit above.

What is soil? Your soil is a mix of 25

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