Looking at his beautiful green lawns, Ed Adams can’t help smiling – thanks to a bit of bravery and a lot of hard work, he’s now enjoying the life that is just a fantasy for most of us.

Five years ago, Ed and his wife Laura, along with their three children, moved from their narrow house in the city to the a much larger and more peaceful property in the country. Having grown up on a farm, Ed, a video producer, longed for a more rural lifestyle. Then, in 2016, a new job came up for Ed in the US. They were about to set off when the whole deal was canceled. Although disappointed, it inspired them to buy a new home in rural north Buckinghamshire.

Soon, the whole family moved to their new home, Church End Cottage. They also came up with a plan to turn some of their extra space into an attractive home hotel to increase their family income, which meant lots of building work to create two extra guest rooms.

Besides, with all the building work, the garden had become a mess. To get it back into shape, he had to reseed all the lawns. In time the lawns grew back, but Ed admits keeping them clean and tidy is a big job, especially on top of his daily commute to work in London and the responsibilities of running the home hotel.

Now, there comes a cutting-edge robotic mower. Rather than spending hours working up and down, he is delighted to find he can relax himself while the mower does all the hard work. For Ed, who also has a dog and keeps chickens, the biggest attraction is being able to get so much time back. He says: “Instead of spending boring hours pushing the mower, I can take time to plant the flowerbeds or help out with the hotel. It also means I can spend more time with the kids.”

If you’ve ever taken a handwritten prescription(处方) from a doctor, it seems that you can never make sense of the letters. Bad handwriting almost seems like a requirement for graduating medical school.

However, it’s not like only people with bad handwriting are attracted to the medical field. Ruth Brocato, MD, primary care doctor with Mercy Medical Center says she went from winning a handwriting award in grade school to having totally unreadable handwriting now. So why?

For one thing, doctors have to write more than just about any other job. Long days plus tons of writing equals a very tired hand. Most doctors’ handwriting gets worse over the course of the day as those small hand muscles get overworked, says Asher Goldstein, MD, pain management doctor with Genesis Pain Centers. If doctors could spend an hour with every patient, they might be able to slow down and give their hands a rest. But the fact is, most physicians are rushing around to the next patient. With so many patients to see in a limited time, doctors are more concerned with getting the information down than perfecting their handwriting.

The jargon (术语) that doctors deal with also lends itself to bad handwriting. For instance, QD is shorthand for a Latin phrase meaning “one a day” and TID means “three times a day.” Your pharmacist would know exactly what your doctor meant, but you’d probably just write it off as chicken scratch.

Now, doctors are moving toward electronic medical records to cut down on errors. No studies have looked into whether the yearly death rate from wrong prescriptions has gone down, but doctors agree there’s less chance for errors.

Of course, typing everything isn’t perfect either. There’s still the possibility of entering, say, 30 instead of 300. While we’re all for electronic medical records, we’ll write by hand whenever we can. Now, learn about these secrets hospitals don’t want to tell you—but every patient should know.

When early humans killed a mammoth, how did they keep the meat before they could eat it all? We don’t know; maybe they didn’t. But perhaps they preserved their mammoth steaks in salt. However, it is hard to know for sure. We do know for certain that by 3,000 years ago, the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese were all experts at salting. They used salt to preserve food.

For thousands of years, salting was a common way to preserve food. But for a long time, no one knew why salt worked. Then, in the 1800s, a Frenchman named Louis Pasteur discovered the secret: bacteria. What does salt have to do with bacteria? First, bacteria need moisture to grow and multiply. Salt pulls moisture out of food, so the bacteria no longer have enough moisture. Besides, salt is poisonous to many bacteria. If you cover food with salt, bacteria outside the food die before they get in, and bacteria already in the food are poisoned by the salt.

So how do you preserve food with salt? For meat or fish, you pour on a layer of salt, then rub it in well. Hams are often made this way. Another way is to alternate layers of food and salt in a big container. The salt will draw the moisture out of the food, creating a brine   that the food sits in. You’ll need to make sure the brine completely covers the food; any food left exposed to the air will spoil. If you preserve cabbage this way, you’ll make sauerkraut.

How well salt preserves food depends on how much is used. The more salt, the longer the food is preserved. Unfortunately, using enough salt to preserve food for a very long time can cause problems. It can make food tough. It can destroy flavor. And, of course, it can make the food too salty to eat, which is harmful to our health.

Today, even though we no longer rely on salt to keep our food fresh, we haven’t lost our taste for salt. We don’t want to give up our bacon, salami, and watermelon pickles!

Keys to a Good Family Life

In posters and ads we often see pictures of happy families, but family life is not all smiles and laughter. All families are different and have problems, but you can make your family life better with hard work and determination.     11       

Spend time together as a family. Some people are too busy for family time. You have to set aside time xue to plan and spend special times together.     12     Make the conversation around ke the table pleasant and caring; maybe ask each person how their day was or what is happening wang in their school or work life. Doing household chores together also helps.

    13     Allow members of your family to express their own feelings and ideas. Maintain eye contact and don’t interrupt when someone is talking. Listen carefully to what they are saying, before you judge or disagree. Hearing someone else, and being heard by that person, is the foundation of a good relationship.     14     Try not to be angry at someone’s opinions. Even if you think that they are wrong, listen with an open mind to show that you care - and remember that no one is perfect.

Meet each other’s needs. Give time to each and every one of your family members. Know what is going on in their lives and what they need help with.     15     If they need help with something, set aside time to do so. To be aware of your family members’ emotional and physical needs, you need to communicate.