It’s spring, so odds are, it’s time to overseed your lawn. Or, if you’ve already overseeded your lawn, it’s time to put down some treatment for the spring to control weeds and feed your lawn.  In fact, now would be a good time to lay down some Crabgrass preventer.  You can drop by your local home improvement megawarehouse or hardware store and pick up some turf builder with weed/crabgrass prevention.

I won’t get in to the specifics of the importance of keeping your lawn in tip-top shape - that’s more or less a post for another time.  But what I will tell you is that for medium to large lawns, you can’t get any easier than using a push spreader.

And, if I may humbly recommend a spreader, I got a lot of mileage out of my Scotts AccuGreen 2000 Drop Push Spreader.  We have a medium-sized lawn with what the locals call a “south city hill” - our front yard is about 4 ft. above the sidewalk and there’s a rather harsh drop from lawn to sidewalk.  Fully knowing that mowing my front yard is kind of tough, I not only wanted the Scotts AccuGreen 20 Drop Push Spreader, I *needed* it in order to save my legs and back.

The hopper has a large capacity - you can hold roughly 75,000 sq. ft. of fertilizers and/or treatments.  And the large, easy-rolling 12 in. wheels provide enough clearance under the hopper to make sure you’re spreading the hopper contents far and wide.

For re-seeding, overseeding or treating, you can’t beat the Scotts AccuGreen 2000 Drop Push Spreader!

The secret to successful grilling is not to overcook your meat.  Unfortunately, I learned that lesson growing up when my mom - who really had the best intentions - horribly overcooked pork, chicken and steaks on the grill. Now, I’m a “red meat” guy, and I love my steaks and chops to be juicy and tender - you don’t get that when you leave the food on the grill too long.

My secret is the RediCheck Remote Cooking Thermometer with Taste Settings. First thing’s first - because it’s a remote thermometer, there’s no need to obsessively open the grill lid and let all of the heat escape while you check to see if your food is done. I won’t preach time savings (because there’s no way to actually quantify what 3 minutes over the lifetime of the batteries means for you, your food, or your personal life), but I will preach convenience - it has some presets that monitor the temperature of your food and alerts you to when your sweet meats are done cookin’.  As a bonus, if you’re in to smoking meats, there’s a 24 hour timer. This is HUGE here in the midwest, where we love to smoke pork.  And other meats.

Finally, for the ultimate in awkward dad-gear, the RediCheck Remote Cooking Thermometer has a belt clip so you can look, uh, “sylish” as you grill.

Somehow we were lucky enough to buy a house with an abundance of outdoor water spigots.  It was not something I was looking for, but it turned out to be pretty important.  We have a very long, narrow lot so we have a front yard hose and a back yard hose.  It is so much nicer than dragging various mis-matched hoses all over the yard like I remember doing as a kid.  What is not so great is trying to put the hoses away; that is still no fun.

After a few months of trying to hide our sloppily looped hoses we finally bought two Suncast 100′ Capacity Garden Hose Reel Hideaway with Hose Guides.  I was surprised to find, when we were looking, that some hose caddies cost over $150, so the price on the Suncast is right.  It is easy to set up, just attach the included small hose to your spigot and screw your hose into the inside and you are set!  Unless you need to hide the box far from your spigot, in which case you can extend the connecting hose with additional lengths.  You may need to guide the hose as you recoil every once in a while – simply move the hose back and forth while winding.  We have not had any problems with leaks (and plastic connections can be iffy sometimes) and there is no hose laying on our yard for everyone to see.