DIY Life

One of my greatest summer joys is watching butterflies delicately fluttering and swooping in the sun. Last spring, I finally got around to starting my very own butterfly garden. It's still very much a work in progress; however, I'd love to share it with you. Click over to my gallery to take a tour of my butterfly garden.

Want to give butterfly gardening a try yourself? Here are 20 tips to get started!

BUTTERFLIES 101

1. Learn some butterfly garden basics. The most important thing to know is that butterflies are attracted to brightly colored flowers, and to certain plants in particular. Some of the best plants for attracting butterflies are butterfly bush, lantana, pentas, milkweed, purple coneflower, willow, and fennel.

2. Know your local butterflies. Find out which butterflies are commonly found in your state. For example, the butterfly in my picture is a Gulf Fritillary which is found all over Florida. Is there a specific butterfly you want to attract? Perhaps the gorgeous Monarch? Then learn up to find out which plants are most likely to attract that species. Tip: for Monarchs, try planting milkweed.

I have a huge perennial garden in my backyard. Being somewhat persnickety, I have a grid diagram of my garden showing where each plant is and when its flowers are due to bloom. But this year I'm going to have to make some major changes.

Several of my plants have grown to enormous proportions so they need to be split and relocated. Others just aren't performing well, so I need to put out feelers and see if any family or friends are interested in them. Because so much work needs to be done anyway, I've decided this is a perfect year for a garden redesign.

BBC Lifestyle has a virtual garden design tool -- an easy way to envision how your garden may look. The tool is simple to use. You'll enter the dimensions of your garden and select the plants. The selection of plants is somewhat limited, so you may have to choose some that are roughly comparable to what you really want. Next is the fun part -- the tool will render a 3D image of your virtual garden. Enjoy!

For those of you who have heard about the ability to receive a free copy of your credit report each year but who didn't know how to proceed with that wish, you're now covered.

Mortgages, car loans, securing that dream job and buying that new flat-panel television on credit all require a pretty good credit history in most cases, so you're doing yourself a solid if you spend an hour or two per year checking yours out to not and correct any abnormalities. So, how do you begin?