Needing some serious visual impact for the yard? It's not too late to plant your curbside garden or front porch containers with bright, heat-tolerant annuals. If you're on a tight budget, however, choose carefully. Opt for plants that are cheap, tough, vibrantly hued and fast-growing.

Looking for suggestions? Allow me to share with you my 5 favorite summer-loving annuals:

1. Dusty Miller
2. Geranium
3. Impatiens
4. Coleus
5. Melampodium

Dreaming of a Mediterranean-style oasis in your own yard? Me too! Okay, let's get inspired!

So, what makes certain gardens "Mediterranean," anyway? Well, for starters, they're designed to withstand both lots of heat and irregular rainfall. The garden designs are visually appealing, true. But they're also low-care and eco-friendly. Because plants are selected for toughness, and lawns are absent or insignificant, there's less need for chemicals and watering.

1. It's all about contrast.
Mediterranean styling is pretty easy to imitate. The essential element? Contrast. That is, contrasting hard, structured surfaces with soft, unstructured foliage and blooms. Think tumbling vines atop high stone walls. Think paved walkways next to climbing roses. Think clipped hedges fronting tall, slender cypress trees. You get the picture.

I admit it: I am a chocoholic. I probably eat a tiny bit of chocolate every day, usually a section or two of the super-dark organic Dagoba Eclipse.

And eating it is not enough. I like to make Cocoa Patchouli Body Butter and slather it on my hands and body. I sniff cocoa absolute just for the fun of it. Heck, I just got immense pleasure from writing about it! Now I am thinking about planting a chocolate lover's garden.

I didn't know that some flowers actually come in a rich cocoa color, like cosmos and daisies (called the chocolate flower), and what's more: they actually smell like chocolate. I love that these are perennials and will reseed themselves each year.

One of my favorites, chocolate mint, makes the most amazing tea; it spreads so wildly in your garden that it's nearly invasive.

You can even get a chocolate climbing vine and a chocolate mint geranium that smells like a peppermint patty! So check out Pioneer Thinking's full article on planting a chocolate lover's garden for all the details of the chocolate flowers you can have for your own outdoor chocolate fix!

Green beer, green jewelry, green clothing; green shamrocks, green hats, and green sparklers. We break out these things and more to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in style.

But green bath salts? You bet, and these are the all-natural kind. They won't dye your skin green, or clog your drain, so you have nothing to lose... except the stress and fatigue of a long day, with a relaxing soak in your green tub of water.

Rejuvenating Green Bath Salts

• 1 c. sea salt
• 1 tsp. jojoba
• 1 TB green tea, ground to a fine powder
• 1/4 tsp. chlorella powder
• 20 drops lavender essential oil
• 5 drops geranium essential oil
• 3 drops peppermint essential oil

Instructions after the break!

When it comes to protecting our families from poisonous plants, we go about things wrong, all wrong. Backwards, in fact.

Yes, you are probably already aware that a great many common garden and container plants are poisonous to humans and/or family pets. But if I asked you to identify the ones posing the greatest risk to you and your family, chances are you'd be stumped, or perhaps hard pressed to name more than one or two.

Why? Because we learn about poisonous plants from our teachers at school, from books, and from television. We see pages and pages of photographs of toxic leaves and berries. We scan ultra-long lists of poisonous plant names. The nerdier among us (Ooh! Me! Me!) have tried and failed to memorize some of this mass of information.

Silly thing is, your own yard is the best starting point for learning. Once you feel confident in your own landscape, it will be much easier to branch out and learn about less well-known species, which I'll discuss after the jump. And check out my gallery below if you'd like to see some of the common poisonous plants growing in my yard.