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September is a Catch-Up Month!

It's a time to finish projects that you started during summer that were never completed. And it's an excellent opportunity to see what can be improved, replaced, or repaired while the weather is still nice enough for outdoor projects.

This is also the perfect month to begin your fall home maintenance checklist, add seasonal color to your garden, and bring organization to your home- and your life.

1. Get a jump on fall home maintenance. While you were having fun in the sun this summer, it was no vacation for your house. A fall checklist will tip you off to little problems before they become nasty mid-winter surprises. The easiest way to do it is to check from top to bottom. Start with the roof - are your shingles worn? Check for leaks around skylights, vents, and chimneys (and have that chimney cleaned). Clear out your gutters and check for leaks there, too.
   
   
2. Add seasonal color to your garden. With summer blooms fading, this is the perfect time to boost your garden's color sense. Mums are a popular choice, and for good reason - they are abundant, easy to care for, and colorful. But consider some other "stars" of the fall landscape, among them Black Eyed Susans, Leedplant, Ornamental Kale and other colorful options.
   
   
3. Organize your garage. If your garage has become a catch-all for miscellaneous storage, leaving little to no room for the family car, then now is the time to restore order. Purge items you no longer need and create a plan that will allow you to store more things you do need in a logical way that allows for easy access later on. Look for smart solutions that take advantage of the walls and ceilings and free up valuable floor space. Also, take the guesswork out of locating stored items and be sure to label everything.
   
   
4. Host an end-of-summer yard sale. Looking to clear the clutter (perhaps from your garage)? Make the most of the mild weather to host an end-of-summer yard sale. While it may not put a lot of change in your pocket, it will certainly free up some storage capacity and put your unused goods back into useful circulation.
   
   
5. Analyze your space: Now is also a good time to start considering how your home is going to hold up with holiday guests. Do you need some additional space? Could your guest bathroom or kitchen use an upgrade? If so, now is the time to contact a professional and get your plans in motion!

3 More Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things

1. In January 1998, Ryan Hreljac learned for the first time that many people around the world do not have access to clean water. Although he was only in the first grade, he decided to do something about it.
   
   His goal was to raise enough money to build a well in an African village. He thought it would cost about $70, and his parents agreed to pay him for extra chores so he could earn the money. It took him four months, and by then he had discovered that building a well actually would cost $2,000, so he started speaking to service clubs, school classes, and raising money any way he could.
   
   That first well was built at Angolo Primary School in northern Uganda in 1999, when Ryan was 7 years old. In 2001, the Ryan's Well Foundation was formed, and since then it has helped to build more than 740 water projects and 990 latrines, bringing water to nearly 800,000 people.
   
   
2. Twin sisters Helen Ashe and Ellen Turner grew up poor, but their parents always taught them to be generous with whatever they had.
   
   In 1986, the sisters founded the Love Kitchen in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the basement of a small church. Their goal was to provide meals for those they call the five H's: the hungry, the homeless, the helpless, the hopeless and the homebound. That first day, they prepared 22 meals.
   
   Today, they serve more than 2,000 meals every week and the sisters, now in their mid-80s, are still going strong.
   
   
3. When 14-year-old Julie Bluhm noticed that all the girls in her ballet class thought they were fat, she decided something had to be done.
   
   She blamed the unrealistic images girls are told to emulate - the kind of marketing that researchers say leads to eating disorders and self-harm among teenaged girls - so she wrote to Seventeen magazine asking the editors to stop using Photoshop to make all of their models look thinner and to publish one unaltered photo of a model each month.
   
   She also started an online petition that garnered more than 84,000 signatures.
   
   In August 2012, Seventeen Editor-in-Chief Ann Shoket wrote a letter to readers saying the magazine would not alter the shape of its models' bodies or faces, and would “celebrate every type of beauty.”

Why You Should
Microchip Your Dog

Once upon a time, a license tag was the only option for identifying your dog. Unfortunately, tags and collars can fall off, or be taken off, leaving your pet without identification. The solution for many years was a tattoo, either on the dog's inside earflap or the abdomen.

Now microchips have largely taken the place of tattoos. Microchips are tiny radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips, about the size of a grain of rice. Your veterinarian implants the chip under the dog's skin between the shoulder blades using what looks much like a big hypodermic needle.

You must register the chip number with the company that makes it, so that if your dog is found, he can be traced back to you. The chip must be read using a special scanner, which most veterinarians and shelters own. The scanner is passed over the dog's back and sides, and the chip will transmit the chip's identification number to the scanner. The rescuer then contacts the national database, which in turn contacts the dog's owner.

Recent reports estimate that more than 600,000 dogs have been reunited with their owners through their chips. Not only are chips valuable for returning lost dogs but also for proving ownership.

If you lose a dog that has a microchip, contact the chip manufacturer company with the pet's ID number. If you don't have the ID number at hand, the veterinarian who implanted the chip should have it. If you find a dog, take him to a shelter or veterinarian to be scanned. If he has a chip, the owner can be found.

Dogs have been reunited with their owner's years after being lost, thanks to their microchip. Don't let your dog leave home without it.