WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. retail sales declined last month as Americans cut back their spending on clothes, appliances, and home and garden supplies.

Lana Effron, a Denver-based graphic designer with an online shop and a collaboration with Terrain , the home and garden retailer, has a motto she brings to all her work.

Planning out how to arrange furniture in your home — or plants in your garden — used to involve a pencil, graph paper, a measuring tape and a lot of imagination.

The process has gotten easier — and way more streamlined — thanks to a burgeoning selection of home and garden apps.

"Soil don't get no respect," Rodney Dangerfield might have said (but didn't). Perhaps you know your state bird or flower, but do you know your state soil?

Well, in recent years soil has begun to get more respect. Since the celebration of the Soil Survey Centennial back in 1999, each state has been given its own official state soil. It was in 1899 that the U. S. Department of Agriculture started its survey of all the soils in the country.