Guest Blogs
Knowitall.ch often invites local experts in their field to contribute to their own blogs on our site. This means not only you will benefit from the useful recommendations that we make on our News pages, but you can also profit from some of the great advice and tips that these experts have to make on their favorite subjects. Whilst each of these bloggers has been recommended to us at some point during the evolution of Know-it-all passport and knowitall.ch, obviously we are not able to test out all the suggestions they make on their blogs, nor do we necessarily agree with all their opinions. So if you do find one of their tips useful (or not!), do let us know!
To make these blogs more accessible to you, we have now decided to group them altogether in one section, entitled Guest Blogs, accessible from our main menu bar. We will also post the most recent blogs on the home page of our site in the right hand column.
We are still building up this area of the site, and are looking for bloggers in a number of sections, including Your Home, Travel, and Leisure, so if you feel you have a useful contribution to make in either of these areas, and have the time to submit blog entries approximately every month, then please get in touch!
By Dean Marriott
Trying to keep children entertained is a challenge at the best of times, so with the summer holidays fast approaching, many of my friends and colleagues are starting to go into panic mode. So much free time, but no idea what to do with it!
Not every parent can take their holidays to correspond with their children’s school holidays, so finding daytime care is a constant worry. Local day camps may be limited in your area, as most of the bigger providers focus on the more lucrative residential programmes which draw on a global pool of students.
Whilst many children just want to have fun during their holidays, adding an educational element could maximise the benefit derived from attending a summer day programme. Finding the right combination of education, fun and price is a challenge, but one which could be worth seeking out.
By Tara Lissner, Swiss Gardening School
I often get the feeling that all we gardeners do is talk, or more importantly complain, about the weather, whether it be too warm, too wet, too cold or too dry. It is of course an essential part of our ability to garden, no one likes the thought of mowing the lawn in the rain. My recent discussions with others have been all about the “saints de glace“. In case you were not aware, in local agricultural folklore nothing tender should be planted out unprotected until after the days of the “saints de glace” have passed. These ice saints, SaintMamertus, Saint Pancras and Saint Servatius, celebrate their feast days on 11, 12 and 13 May each year. Until these days have passed there is still the possibility of night frost. I think this year they are dragging their heels as we’ve had some very chilly nights recently. With my garden hovering around +7c as a high one day last week, I’m very glad to be behind with my tomato planting. Do keep an eye on the overnight temperatures and if it looks like it might be very cold and your garden is very exposed, throw some garden fleece over those tender shoots.
By Nicola Ogilvie, Just Sew
When I lived in England I enjoyed many weekend days mooching around craft markets, an activity I have found somewhat limited since moving to Geneva. I always go to the Unicrea markets and enjoy the Coppet garden show but would like to spend more weekends mooching, admiring, and buying gifts and unique hand made products.
But there is good news for fellow moochers, a new series of craft markets is coming to the area! On the 30th and 31st May the first UpMarket Market is being held at the Hotel Beau Rivage in the center of Nyon. It is the same weekend as the Marché de Puce on the streets of Nyon making it a great day of mooching.
By Tara Lissner, Swiss Gardening School
This morning while sitting at my desk I admired the dexterity of a blue tit flitting from branch to branch on my roses enjoying a delicious breakfast of tiny green caterpillars. These little caterpillars feast on the tips of the soft new growth on my roses and manage to fold the leaves on top of themselves creating a cocoon. Whenever I notice these folded leaves I open them and often find that the caterpillar has long since moved on to another spot leaving behind damaged leaves. The blue tit however is most precise and only looks for caterpillars – he was very successful this morning and I enjoyed the show.
The end of April brings showers and sunshine and significant growth in the garden, with May comes warmer temperatures (we hope) and no excuses – it is time to work. Here are a few things that have been keeping me busy recently.
by Johdi Woodford, Little Bird Pilates
Picture this: it’s the evening on the African savannah, a large herd of antelope are grazing calmly. Nearby, a lioness is lying in wait in the long, yellow grass, alert to every movement, tail flicking intently. A young antelope wanders carelessly away for the rest of the herd, in search of greener pastures, and, like a bullet, the lioness leaps up, sprints the five hundred metres or so that separate her from the young buck. The agile lion springs on his back, sinks her canines deep into his jugular vein, and the rest you know from many a happy moment in front of David Attenbrough’s Wildlife on One, perhaps. You’ve seen it a million times, right? But what you never, never see, is the lioness on the sidelines quickly breaking into a few lunges, squats and quad stretches before she sets off for the kill. And what you most certainly never see is the unsuspecting prey giving it a hasty limbering up in case of a predator’s attack. So, if animals, and high-performing, athletic animals, (we’re not talking about the slow-moving koala, or the giant, three-toed sloth here), don’t stretch before they set off, should we, as another active and supposedly highly intelligent animal put so much stock in stretching?
