UBCNews

Key Takeaways Fall planting in West Texas should begin as early as late July to early August, especially if starting seeds indoors for brassicas like broccoli and cabbage. The average first freeze in West Texas lands around November 1st - count backward from that date to build your planting schedule. Cool-season crops like spinach, kale, carrots, and cilantro are well-suited for West Texas fall gardens and can produce harvests well into Thanksgiving. Soil prep - especially dealing with caliche and compaction - is just as important as timing, and skipping it is one of the most common reasons fall gardens underperform. Row covers and frost cloth can extend your harvest window significantly, but the type of cover and how you use it matters. If summer has you thinking the garden is done until spring, West Texas actually has a solid second act. Fall growing here is often more forgiving than summer - cooler temps mean less water, fewer pest pressures, and better flavor in leafy greens. The c...

Key Takeaways: Fully loaded human call center agent costs typically start around $72,800 per year and can exceed $110,000 - AI voice agents handle equivalent calls for as little as $0.08 per minute. Most businesses recover their AI voice agent investment within 3-6 months, with average returns of $3.50 for every $1 spent. AI wins on volume and speed; humans win on empathy and complexity - the smartest businesses use both together. Responding to leads within 5 minutes makes them more than 8 times more likely to convert, which is precisely the gap AI voice agents are built to close. The hybrid AI-human model is where the real ROI lives - and understanding how to structure it is the key detail covered further below. The Numbers That Changed the Math Something shifted in the last few years. AI voice technology crossed a threshold - not just in what it could do, but in what it costs to run. The gap between human agent overhead and AI operational costs is now wide enough that ignoring it is ...

Most interior remodeling projects in Southwest Missouri require permits - including work on walls, electrical systems, plumbing, gas lines, and HVAC, even when the job feels like a simple refresh. Skipping permits doesn't make problems disappear - it delays them, often surfacing at the worst possible moment: a home sale, a refinance, or an insurance claim. Springfield and Greene County enforce a layered permitting system, meaning a single remodel can require multiple separate permits stacked on top of each other. The biggest risk isn't the permit process itself - it's the false assumption that interior-only work flies under the radar. Many homeowners learn this the hard way. Knowing exactly which projects trigger permits - and which don't - can save significant money, stress, and legal headaches down the road. Planning to update a kitchen, open up a living room, or gut a bathroom? Most Southwest Missouri homeowners picture those kinds of projects as personal, interior ...

Key Takeaways Visiting the boarding facility before drop-off day - even just once - can dramatically reduce a dog's stress when the real stay begins. Packing a scented item from home, like an old t-shirt, gives anxious dogs a familiar anchor in an unfamiliar place. Most states mandate rabies and distemper vaccinations for boarded dogs, but most reputable facilities require additional shots - knowing what's needed in advance saves last-minute scrambles. Telling the boarding staff everything about your dog - quirks, triggers, medications - is one of the most overlooked steps, and one of the most important. Facilities where owners live on-site offer a level of overnight oversight that's genuinely difficult to replicate elsewhere. Dogs are creatures of routine. They know their couch, their yard, their people. Drop them into a new environment without any preparation, and their brain goes into overdrive - new smells, unfamiliar sounds, strange faces. For some dogs, that's ma...

Key Takeaways A portable watercolor kit lets you capture travel scenes on the spot - producing something no photograph can replicate. Solid paint pans, a water brush, and a built-in mixing palette are the three features that make or break a travel kit's usability. Solid watercolors carry no TSA liquid restrictions, making them one of the most travel-friendly art supplies available - but there's a right way to pack them. Even short waits - a delayed train, a slow café order - become creative opportunities once the right kit is within reach. Painting on the Road Beats Photos Alone A photograph captures a moment. A watercolor painting encodes it. There's a meaningful difference between snapping a picture of a Venetian canal and sitting on the embankment for twenty minutes, observing the light, mixing a color close to it, and putting it on paper. Painting on-site demands a level of observation that photography simply doesn't require - and that deeper attention is what impr...

Key Takeaways A business's current value is what it's worth today; potential value is what it could be worth with the right strategy in place. For many owners, the business is the single largest asset they hold, often outweighing retirement accounts and other investments combined, which makes understanding its value essential. Owners who begin building exit readiness several years before a transition are typically better positioned than those who wait until a sale feels imminent. Many business owners have no formal exit plan in place, even though most expect to depend on the eventual sale to fund their post-exit life, a gap that can quietly cost real value at transition. How to start closing the gap between current and potential value, with a practical roadmap for doing it, is covered below. Know Your Number, Then Build Beyond It There's a question every business owner should be able to answer with confidence: if someone offered to buy your business tomorrow, what would it ...