CAVEBEAR'S LAIR

Gardening Time!

2012-02-01T12:30:00.000-05:00

I've looked at my planting schedule, marked the weeks down to average last frost date on my calendar, and updated all my old seeds. I'm ready to start the new planting season.

The big score of the day was potting soil. I plant a lot of seeds and I need a good mix to plant them in. I used to be able to buy "seed starter soilless mix" in large bags for $8/2 cubic feet. That stuff has ground peat moss, vermiculite and/or perlite, sand, and ground bark. The stuff is sterilized so that there are no organisms in it to attack seedlings. I can't find it any more.

Potting soil is close. Its not sterile, but I do get good seedlings from it. But It has doubled in price the past couple years.

Well, I hit a great sale at Lowe's! The 2 cu ft bags were listed at $10.98 (the best deal I could find), but they rung up at $4.34! I was honest. I told the cashier they were labeled at more than that. She INSISTED that was the price. I even mentioned that they probably had a computer error. But there is no arguing with the sales register computer...

I think I will go back tomorrow and buy several more. It keeps well.

The big news is that I start my first major seeds tomorrow. I wasn't expecting it for 2 weeks but I happened upon a site that shows average last frost dates. I've been using April 22nd for the average last frost date for decades. That was 50/50 that there would be a frost after that date. Well guess what? It is is now 90% likely that there WON'T be a frost after April 10th here now!!!

I've adjusted my calendar. Apparently, in 25 years, I have gained 2 weeks in the growing season.

I start planting on Tuesday! Of course, I couldn't plant seeds this early without a good planting light stand. And I have one.

http://cavebearslair.blogspot.com/2011/05/seedling-light-stand-part-3.html http://cavebearslair.blogspot.com/2011/05/seedling-light-stand-part-3.html

Strange Weather

2012-01-30T23:31:00.000-05:00

The next couple of days are routinely the coldest days of the year, usually down to the teens at night (F).

Tomorrow is expected to reach 64F and Feb 1st 69F! That's not proof of global warming, of course, strange things can happen in any given year. And this is a strangely warm Winter by any accounting. Heck, 50 F would be unusual. But the 10 day forecast says it will not drop TO freezing here and that approaches the normal high.

Don't get me wrong on this, I agree that global warming is occurring, and by human actions of burning fossil fuels. What most people don't understand is that "global warming" really means that while the average global temperature is rising, weather can become more extreme in both directions. I can have a warmer than average Winter this year and a colder and snowier than average Winter next year (as I did 2 Winters ago). It means weather will fluctuate to extremes because a warmer planet means larger and greater weather changes.

On the other hand, I like to think (in humor) that I haven't had any serious snowfall here for 2 Winters because I bought a snowblower machine. ;)

Garden Season is here!

2012-01-13T08:14:00.003-05:00

1. I ordered new seeds. Not many because most of my seeds are recent (and refrigerated). But some are only good for a year and some are 4 years old and needed to be replaced.

Also, I started lettuces in a windowsill planter (inside). I should get some mesclun harvest in a month. YAY!

2. Also, I turned on my seedling light stand yesterday. Mostly for some perennial seedlings from last year I am trying to recover, but also some early "greens".

3. The light stand works. Each shelf has two 4' fluorescent grow-lights and two "daylight" bulbs, I can't control the light outside, but at least I can give all the plants a good start inside.

Changed ISPs

2012-01-07T02:52:00.000-05:00

It was a little bit of a fight. I changed my cable and internet from Comcast to Verizon FiOS. And my telephone from regular telephone to FiOS telephone. Turned in my Comcast equipment today. Know what? They didn't even care.

This brings my total bill down to $140 from $210 per month. And gives me free long distance domestic calling for free. I think I'll call my Dad in Florida tomorrow.

I'm not thrilled with the Verizon remote control. Its fussy about aiming. The old Comcast one worked anywhere in the room. But the Verizon folks say it is a matter of pressing the buttons fast and not holding them down. We'll see about that, but I'll admit I am getting better about that..

If you are getting a blank on the emails you try to send me, the new one is:

cavebear2118 AT verizon DOT net...
If its about the cats, it is: marksmews2118 AT verizon DOT com. You know to replace the words with the symbols, right?

I've emailed everyone who has contacted me in the past 2 years with the new address, so I hope that includes everyone I should tell. I've updated my emails (with new fancier passwords) for all my existing commercial accounts. I've copied the old emails into new folders.

If there is anything else I should do, a suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

They're BAACCKKK!

2012-01-05T12:30:00.000-05:00

My crazy neighbors didn't leave after all. There was the guy, his wife, his mother and some unrelated guy,

But it seems the bedroom furniture I saw being moved out was only the Mother's. She was the sane one...The IDIOTS are still there. In spite of the house being dark for about a week... Curiously, I haven't seen the wife carrying the baby since early December... Something is still odd. But it is January and they are still here,

Sad start to the New Year...

Victory!

2012-01-04T09:54:00.000-05:00

If you know the game of Risk, you know there are many nations to capture. I have a sad fate of always coming in 2nd of 2-5 players. And tonight I was down to 3 nations of (something like 70). I nudged my way into NA, and got control of it while the others fought elsewhere. Then I got SA!

If you know the game, you that means you get 2 continents with only 3 defense spots (Brazil. Alaska, and Greenland).

The 4 opponents worked together to kill me, but I survived. I eliminated 3 (1surrenderred) and I was left with 1 opponent who had most of Asia, Africa, and Europe. And they were very good high-ranked players.

It took 2 hours to win the game. I'm thrilled. Risk is a hard game to win online. The players are very skilled. I win maybe 1 of 20 games. I come in 2nd usually. So a real win was SO GREAT!

The point is that we all have barriers, and I beat one of mine tonight.

Cheers!

Politics

2012-01-03T23:51:00.000-05:00

This was originally a political blog in 2008. I got my college degree in Political Science and it remains an interest of mine. I watch science, history, and nature shows most of the time, but when the political season comes around, I watch the political discussions and primary/caucus voting results all night.

The Iowa caucus voting is fascinating tonight. In 2008, the Republican winner was clear 30 minutes after the voting ended. Tonight, it is not clear after 2.5 hours and maybe not until tomorrow! And likely, it won't matter much. It appears that there will be a virtual 3-way tie among Romney, Santorum, and Paul.

They say "Iowa never chooses, but it winnows the field". Maybe not this time. The top 3 certainly go on when it is so close. But the others can too. Gingrich can because he has been running a "free media" campaign all along and South Carolina is a neighboring state. Bachman and Perry can fight in South Carolina, too. Huntsman has planted his flag in New Hampshire, where his views seem to match up well with New Hampshire voters.

After New Hampshire and South Carolina come Florida. That state is so demographically diverse that anything could happen. After Florida, primaries get spread out geographically and into other large states.

Here's my predictions:

1. Huntsman makes a better than predicted showing in New Hampshire, but Romney wins big. Huntsman withdraws.

2. South Carolina gives Santorum a win, but Romney and Gingrich are "close". Perry and Bachman withdraw.

3. Florida? Flip a coin! Maybe the old folks in Florida vote "for a best chance against Obama" or the rest of the populations goes for Santorum as "the most Republican". That's IF Santorum has any money to spend. IF Santorum does well in Florida (as in, gets 33% of the vote), Gingrich withdraws and endorses Santorum.

4. After that, it is between Romney and Santorum, with Ron Paul pulling a routine 10-15% of the vote on average in later primaries, with Romney getting 45-50% of the vote and Santorum getting 30% overall. It will vary state to state. Romney will do best on the coasts, Santorum will do best in the midwest and South.

5. Southern voters will not be comfortable that Romney is a Mormon.

6. Gingrich will push hard to be the Vice-Presidential nominee for either of them. He will not be chosen.

7. If Romney is the nominee, he will choose a western politician as Vice President. If Santorum is the nominee, he will choose someone like Chris Christie of New Jersey or Bob McDonnell of Virginia for the "more moderate" but still very Republican reputation.. Geo-demographics still matter to Republicans.

8. Barrack Obama will win the 2012 election. Aside from the fact that it is difficult to unseat an incumbent president, there are particular reasons. Mostly, all of the Republican candidates have VERY exploitable flaws. Romney flip-flops more than MOST politicians, Santorum is to the right of about 75% of voters, and while I do have some agreement with Libertarians on some ideas, most people don't feel comfortable with the total package, so Ron Paul is just a protest vote..

And there is the job numbers. The job growth has been positive for 22 months in a row. Not as high as one would like, but compared to the negative numbers in the Bush administration, its a good thing.

Its hard for the Republicans to attack Obama on wars, too, which is usually a strong advantage for them. Obama got Bin Laden, Ghaddafi, and top Al Queda leaders killed.

Its hard for the Republicans to attack President Obama on the financial economy too. The stock market is strong, It was up 5% this past year. The money lent to the US auto industry has been paid back in full (and at a profit by some accounts) and Ford, and General Motors are thriving US companies again!

The Obamacare legislation is harder to judge. Mostly because it hasn't gone fully into effect yet. But the earliest results seem to show it is both reducing costs and improving health services.

We will have to see what the eventual Replican nominee proposes to do as President in the general election campaign. He/She may have some great ideas they have been keeping under their hat during the Republican nomination process.

So, for those reasons, it is probably going to be very difficult for a Republican nominee to replace President Obama this year in the general election.

The next 10 months will be great!

New Year's Fire

2012-01-01T22:28:00.000-05:00

I hope you are ready for a LOT of pictures, LOL!

Well, I like a fire each New Year's Eve, and managed one again. Mostly paper, cardboard, and flimsy boxes that clementines came in. But you use what you have.

First, I had to clear out the area in front of the fireplace. The basement is really my woodworking shop, and I cant have those machines heated by a fire. There was my tablesaw there too, but I moved it before I thought to take a picture. And it was really awkward to maneuver it out of the way even on its mobile base, so I wasn't going to put it back just for the sake of a photo!

Before...

After...

Stuff I had to move...

I had various "stuff to burn":

Wood scraps...

Packing paper, Clementine tangerine boxes, cardboard... BTW, that wood box was built for me by my dad. Its really for kindling storage. I liked it so much I built one like it for a friend. Good ideas should be passed forwards.

Then I set up the fire. As I said, it wasn't a "proper" fire, just accumulated burnable stuff from 2011, so it really did look trashy. But fire makes all look the same afterwards.

The set up...

The initial lighting... Of course I lit a sheet of newspaper in there first to establish the draft (and make sure the damper was open).

The initial burn...

The first good burning...

The funny part was the "old oak board". It was left over since when I had oak floors installed about 15 years ago. It got left out on the patio and deteriorated before I brought it inside again. So I decided it was time to use it up.

The tradition is "yule logs". Yule logs were long and were slowly pushed into the main fire as they burned. I think there used to be some importance as to how long they lasted. Like years of good luck, or something like that. Well, I guess this was a "yule board" and it only lasted an hour. So I hope the "good luck gods" will take that into account. :)

Once I had some good embers and heat, I introduced old Mr Oak Board into the fireplace. You can see it fed slowly into the small fireplace fire here...

The start...

Slowly...

Fed...

In...

As the tip burns!

Almost gone...

It burns nicely.

Oak is great in a fireplace!

The last bit of it!

I even swept up loose bark and tossed that in...

And the finale about 1 am New Year's Day! That gray spot above the ashes? That's actually where the soot on the back of the fireplace was burned off. Looks strange though, like "the ghost of the fire".

BTW, I used to have such hot fires that my grate has sagged. You can see the curve in that last photo. I think I should turn it over and have another hot fire to sag it back to "straight". LOL!

Immersion Blender

2011-12-29T00:30:00.000-05:00

I mentioned my immersion blender on a friend's website, so I thought I would say what I like doing with mine...

Soup: I like to make navy bean soup, and using the immersion blender briefly among the beans thickens it nicely.

Beef Stew: Add and extra potato in chunks. Pressing the immersion blender (IB) on those extra potato chunks 30 minutes before done thickens it nicely too.

Italian Dressing: I make Italian dressing from dry mix envelopes. You are supposed to "shake the contents". Using the IB works better and the contents never separate!

1 cup blender attachment: You want a great marinade/rub? Add 3 cloves of peeled garlic, a 1/2" slice of peeled ginger, 1/4" slice of onion, and a dash of soy sauce. Run it though the small blender attachment! It is small enough not to just spray the contents against the inside walls. The paste liquid flavor is absorbed into the meat wonderfully. 4 hours for chicken, 6 hours for pork, 8 hours for beef.

Cocktail Sauce? 1/4 c ketchup, 1 tblsp minced horseradish, 1 tblsp lemon juice, dash of hot sauce. Blend 10 seconds.

Tartar Sauce? 1/4 c mayonaise, 1 tblsp pickle relish, 1 tsp lemon juice.

Gravy lumpy? Use the IB to blend!

Want spaghetti sauce from canned diced tomatoes fast? Use the IB on it and heat it in a nonstick skillet about 10 minutes! But stir frequently.

I'm sure there are more uses, those are just the ones I use...

YAY!

2011-12-26T06:18:00.000-05:00

Friends, among all the mediocre and even failing customer support staff, there sometimes appears a bright shining star. One such person was granted to me this morning.

Jesus De Leon, of Verizon, is that person, and I applaud and salute him. He fixed my email problem when the previous 5 Verizon agents could not. For the first time since I switched from Comcast to Verizon, my email WORKS! It took 2 days, 16 hours, and 5 Agents, but Mr. De Leon knew everything right.

If you ever need Verizon internet email help, ask for him!

So my new email address is "cavebear2118 AT verizon DOT net".

Switching From Comcast ISP To Verizon ISP

2011-12-26T00:51:00.000-05:00

Last week, I decided to finally rid myself of Comcast Internet and Cable TV service. I did not have their internet telephone service because (1) they could not keep my current telephone number and (2) they did not have a good quality rating for it anyway. I used Verizon for telephone, with a "foreign exchange" (allowed me "local" calls to my friends in the Washington DC area). The combined services were costing me $210 per month.

Verizon kept sending me ads for all 3 services at $99 per month. Of course, I wanted better TV than the basic, but I estimated (from the bill of a friend) that the total cost would drop to about $140 per month. And with faster internet speed, less or no TV picture freezing (brief, but frequent on Comcast), no modem rental fee, no charge to service failed equipment (Comcast charges for any visit unless you pay a monthly support fee), etc, etc, etc.

So I arranged for Verizon FiOS service. It was installed Dec 23rd. I've got some gripes. The Verizon TV remote control needs to be aimed dead on to register; the Comcast remote could be aimed anywhere in the general direction of the set top box. I think I can fix that by raising the set top box to a higher shelf and angling it upwards a bit with rubber doorstop wedges. The Comcast TV listings were easy to read and navigate; The Verizon TV listings are more like navigating a website. And while the Comcast HD channels were a "bit" randomly numbered, they HAPPENED to have clumped MY favorite channels closely together. On Verizon, the channels are logically grouped by topic, but my favorite channels are now far apart. I'll get used to that once I memorize the new channel numbers.

Sounds OK, right? Not! So far, I have spent 16 hours in 2 days fighting to get my new email addresses working. OK, Christmas weekend might not seem the best time, but it seemed to me the best. Everyone is busy with Christmas stuff! But I think only the least able Verizon agents were online too.

My Mac Mail was easy to set up with my Comcast service years ago. Straightforward, no problems. I got instructions, they worked, I had functional email. I didn't even have any problem with Comcast when I switched from Windows to Apple.

But, oh boy, am I having problems NOW with Verizon email! Verizon has many customer support options; telephone, virtual agent, live chat with real agents, user forums, and a downloadable diagnostic program. The telephone que was 45 minutes, so I tried the live chat (online streaming service). That was "not available). So I tried the virtual agent. My problem was beyond its programming, but it DID offer to connect me to Live Chat (not available according to its own link). SURPRISE! Virtual Agent can get me to Live Chat even when Live Chat thinks it is "not available".

Sadly, I had to pull that little maneuver several times Saturday...

Saturday, into Sunday morning, I contacted Live Chat Agents 4 times. Here is the problem I was trying to solve (and to anyone who has read this far, type "artichoke" into the comments, so that I'll know).

The agents were Kumar, Carlos, Moad, and Salvador. I think I went all over the world! Maybe I need a Li and an Umlak to complete the continents. I may, yet...

The problem was that, while I could set up email accounts at the Verizon site, and set up the same on my Mac Mail, they wouldn't connect. At first, I could send emails from my new Verizon address via Mac Mail, but not receive emails from the Verizon server.

The first Verizon Live Chat agent fixed that. I could send emails. But then I couldn't receive them. I discovered he had reset my primary user name from "cavebear2118" to "vze1983ol" and THAT godwful ugly thing was my new email name (as in "vze1982ol@verizon.net"). He also deleted one of my new Verizon email sub-accounts (marksmews) AND even (in his hapless inept attempts at fixing my problem while he controlled my screen, changed my PRINTER connections (as if that had anything to do with the problem. But afterwards, I couldn't RECEIVE any emails to my new Verizon accounts.

So after an hour of struggling, I went to Live Chat again (only game in town Xmas Eve). THAT agent got me able to RECEIVE emails to the new account, but I discovered afterwards that I couldn't SEND!

I am not a really patient person, but I AM persistent! The next Verizon Live Chat agent assured me he understood the problem and could fix it. He got me back to sending emails, but after he signed off, I found I couldn't send them again.

I should mention that setting up email accounts involves specific incoming and outgoing addresses and port numbers, SSL (secure socket layer -whatever those are) choices, user names, STMPs, etc; few of which I know much about (but can enter in the right places upon instructions. I know how to find those places when asked, but I don't know what they mean.

The 3rd Live Chat agent brought me back to where the 1st one had me, but stated that the Verizon setting were right, my Mac Mail settings were right, so it had to be a Mac problem. I let him go after only 30 minutes because my Mac Mail works just GREAT with my Comcast email addresses and there is no difference between Comcast and Verizon in that regard.

The 4th Verizon agent smiled when I explained my problem and said he knew exactly what I needed to do to fix the problem because he was familiar with it. He gave me specific settings to enter and specific ports and where to "allow SSL with authentication". He sure seemed to know what he was doing! I was grateful. But then afterwards, I discovered I STILL couldn't both send AND receive emails (as usual so far).

I gave up for the night...

I tried again today. This time, the agent apologised for the problems the previous agents had caused and gave me very different and very specific instructions. Even told me how to change my primary email address from that awful "vze1982ol" to "cavebear2118". He explained I was a POP3 on the Verizon FiOS (not the standard POP the other agents had assumed), and gave me specifv port numbers to use in several places. He included a link to the "24/7 restart" site. I was thrilled!!!

The link was down... ROTFLMAO!

Basically. all YOU will see is that my email address will change (eventually) but not yet. Iam debating whether to attack this again tonight (it is 12:40 am here). I'm alert at late night... Thinking, thinking, thinking...

Well, well, what the hell, I'll go "once more into the breach, dear friends"...

My Crazy Neighbors

2011-12-22T21:38:00.000-05:00

Hey, DIFFERENT vehicles are showing up at the house late tonight. Does that mean there will REALLY be new neighbors? I can only hope.

Games

2011-12-22T08:21:00.001-05:00

Don't you hate it when you THINK you have deleted a post you started? LOL!

I THINK I am too nervous about changing internet companies tomorrow. I don't know how that is going to mess up my email...

http://micom.net/oops/

My Crazy Neighbors

2011-12-22T08:20:00.003-05:00

They aren't quite going away yet. Its very odd.

But t still seems they are leaving. The woman never shows up with the baby anymore, and there are boxes thrown out the door, It is getting even more odd. There was a police car in front of their house for an hour last night. Just watching... Then it just drove away.

Odder and odder...

Cars with some of them show up daily, but leave after 15 minutes. Several times a day. I can't figure out what they are doing. More weirdly, they fill a bucket of creek water and bring it inside.

A wild guess would be that their water is turned off and they need outside water to flush the toilets. But then why return?

Mysteries abound.

On a completely other subject, I got my backgammon rating up from 1420 to 1675 today, It was just a matter of game discipline. "Don't hit them, don't hit them, don't hit them". It really works. Now I have to decide whether to try to take the rating above 1700. I am sure there is a new lesson to learn after 1700. Maybe WHEN to hit. But I love the game.

Christmas Cards

2011-12-17T00:16:00.000-05:00

Well, I botched it this year. First, most of the cards we send from here are to cats. So I design a new cat card each year. 44 cat cards and 9 family cards this year. I seem to be running out of family but not friends of my cats.

So I use the computer to make address and return labels (neat stuff from Avery). Partly because I can't write script anymore, and partly because even my printing is getting worse, I pre-printed the cats names on the cards.

So I printed all the cards for the cats, intending to make different cards for friends and family.

Oops. In the process of "doing" the cards, I forgot the family cards and use the cat cards. So, family, sorry that the cards seemed more cat-oriented than usual. Well, just consider that any card I send that involves the cats is important to me and let it go at that. I meant well.

The other half of this is that we forgot to make a list of the cards we sent. So now that we are receiving them, we can't tell if we sent one to you or not except on the Huffington list.. If you sent one and didn't receive one, it is entirely my fault. We will make up for that next year because I will keep all the addressed envelopes we get and add it to our spreadsheet.

Feeling lame this year,

Mark

My Crazy Neighbors

2011-12-12T05:13:00.000-05:00

I THINK they have moved out!!! I happened to look out the window late Friday afternoon and saw THIS...

That is bedroom furniture packed up in the pickup truck. I couldn't tell what was packed in the other vehicle, but it's full of some stuff.

I can't be sure yet if it is ALL of them moving. There is FIG (Fat Idiot Guy), his wife SDA (Stupid Dumb Ass), his mother, and an apparently unrelated male. So it might be only some of them. But I seem to recall them moving in about this time of year (it's a rental), so it would make sense for them all to be leaving. They don't seem like people who make their landlords happy.

I haven't seen a single car in the driveway since, so it looks promising... On the other hand, a hauling trailer is still on the front lawn. Since FIG built it himself (on top of a flat boat trailer) just this Summer, I don't think he would leave it behind. But they didn't use it to haul any furniture, so maybe there is something wrong with it and he abandoned it.

I'll be watching for cleaning or maintenance trucks showing up soon!

Now, I've mentioned all the yelling screaming fights. Outdoors. Late at night.

But there were other odd things they did.

Let me count the OTHER ways...

FIG standing at the mailbox sorting through it. Some he would just toss back in the mailbox (presumably not stuff for him). But also tossed an occasional piece into the drainage easement. I'm guessing it was misdelivered mail and he just wouldn't bother to deliver it next door. I get those from time to time myself. I deliver them to the correct address.

There is an advertising "newspaper" that lands on all our driveways each Friday. I pick it up and it goes directly into the recycling bin. FIG shoves them aside of the driveway until they collect for months.

Last Spring, they removed a window screen so that they could move some odd pieces of furniture through the far bedroom window. That's fine. But the removed window screen is STILL sitting against the front of the house 8 months later.

They mowed a strip of lawn one day. The mower died. It sat there for WEEKS!

Their back yard is covered with "pink stuff". I think they are ripping out the insulation from somewhere in the house. But I dare not go look at what it really is.

The Mom there is in denial. In the last screaming fight late at night last week, she claimed it was about a cell phone. Rather strange since the wife was screaming about an evident affair the husband was having. I'll put it as delicately as I can. She was screaming "Why are you F,ing her, Why are you F,ing her, Why are you F.ing" her over and over and over at the top of her lungs at 4 a.m. I have no idea who "her" is or whether it is true. and I don't want to know. SDA is as crazy as FIG as far as I can tell.

And THAT didn't seem to be about a cell phone...

Thats when I finally went out and screamed at them to just move away. I felt bad about it afterwards, but there are limits.

I like my house and yard. Living in one place for 25 years matters. But I'm getting more concerned about the neighborhood. The neighbor on one side started building a garage then stopped halfway for several years. I've read that is a clear sign of marital problems, and they moved away suddenly this summer.

The male neighbor on the OTHER side of me had an affair with the lady next door to him. When they were found out, the male neighbor wife left him and the lady next door to THEM killed herself. Wow! He seldom stays in the house. The fence gate is BUSTED wide open! I think he drove his motorcycle through it one angry morning. There is a riding lawn mower that just stays outside in the rain in spite of there being a large storage shed in the back yard.

I told the policeman I talked to last week that I have never seen anything like this in the 25 years I lived here. He said that neighborhoods sometimes fall apart...

I got the impression that he expects to visit this neighborhood a lot more often than he has in the past. Not a good sign...

But FIG and friends moved out, so that may be good. You know what else they did? They backed their cars onto my rain-soaked lawn and left gouges in it. I had JUST gotten grass to grow near the street and they ruined it!

..........

But it gets better. Some older guy came by their house tonite, turned off all the outside lights they left on, and left the place dark as a stygian pit! I think it was the landlord. This may be my best day in months... I THINK they are really gone!

Fun With The old Watch

2011-12-08T12:00:00.000-05:00

I have a very old digital watch. My Dad bought this digital watch for me when I was about 16. It didn't cost much, but it has simple time/date controls and it keeps perfect time. I have it on a simple velcro watchstrap (I'm not into BLING).

It keeps near-perfect time and it suits me well, so for 44 years, all I've had to do is get the battery replaced every couple years. I've spent more money on batteries than the watch cost. More on velcro straps, too.

It's fun bringing it to the local jeweler, The same old guy is there every time, and every time he mentions that he hasn't seen a watch like that in 30 years. I think he means it, just that he forgets he saw MINE a couple years before. But I get to tell the story of the watch, and it seems to please him. I wonder who is pleasing who, sometimes, but he seems sincere.

Someday, the watch is just going to die. I hope it lasts as long as I do, at least. I'd hate to have to get used to a new one. It is strange sometimes, looking at that watch. Like looking at the strange light bulb way up in the ceiling of a warehouse that has been lit for longer than anyone can remember.

If you'll forgive a similar memory, there was an odd Santa Claus head bulb in our old Christmas tree lights when I was young. Dad remembered it from when HE was young. One year, it finally didn't light. I missed that bulb, but I know that Dad missed it more. It was something he trusted to keep going on.

Like I do my watch...

My Crazy Neighbors

2011-12-06T08:51:00.001-05:00

There are apparently 2 couples and a Mother in the rental house across the street. The problem is FIG (Fat Idiot Guy) and his wife SDA (Stupid Dumb Ass). She screams at him outside and always late at night, that he is (let's just say "having an affair"). The language is much more graphic... He uses the baby(?) and his car as a weapon. He tries to drive off and she stands in front of the car screaming. She pounds on the hood of the car and he bumps the car forward a few feet at a time to push her away. Eventually she gives up and screams at him until he peels out of sight through the neighborhood.

I had to call the cops once because he took their phone and she said he beat her and took the baby and she asked for help calling the police. But she seems as nuts as he is...

I hate the term "trailer trash", but boy do they fit the stereotype.

They are all entirely crazy.

The older woman is FIG's mother and the guy next door seems to be her "ex". They all have screaming ranting raging arguments at night, about once a week in good weather, less often in Fall/Winter. Meaning that FIG screams raging at his mother, too. I can't even tell you what he calls her sometimes. Not the ex, he seems resigned to the situation and preturnaturally calm about it.

After the 5th or 6th MAJOR event, I finally went out and yelled at them that I wished they would move away. I wasn't polite about it and used "bad words". And I didn't feel pleased with myself afterwards. And when the police showed up (as is becoming a routine), I yelled about the neighbors.

I got "talked to" by the cops for "yelling"... That's somewhere between irony and ludicrousness.

The Ex is no gem either. He did some suspicious deal to get a designated wetland across the street rezoned for a house. He even bragged to me about it once . So I can't think much of him either. I should investigate that deal one day. Might be a local political scandal in there somewhere.

All that was a week ago. And there were cop cars in front of their house again this past night. I HOPE that FIG broke a no-visit zone, but thats just a guess. There MIGHT be a crime ring there. Couple months ago, the cops were there about some thefts involving FIGs car. Sadly, they didn't haul his ass away.

I've lived here 25 years and never seen anything like this before. I look out the window every day hoping to see a moving van appear. But it never does show up.

I should move...

Fun Yard Work, And A Little Nature Philosophy

2011-12-03T01:05:00.000-05:00

As much as I regret the coming of Winter, and the end of the growing season, there is one activity I positively enjoy. I refer to taking care of the leaves that fall on the lawn. I have a heavily treed yard. There are huge oaks, tulip poplars, sweet gums, and maples on half the back yard. They are mostly upwind of the back and front. So the grass gets carpeted fully every Fall.

I don't mean that I enjoy raking leaves. I do that only to the extent required to get them out of corners and off the decks into the yard itself.

Then I mow!!! I love shredding the leaves into small bits that nestle in between the grass leaves and decompose to improve the lawn soil. I used to use a standard push mower, now I have a riding mower, which is easier to use. I just keep driving back and forth over the leaves shredding them more and more each time. With a little practice, you can keep the flung bits in rows for efficient remowing and re-re-mowing. After a few repeated patterns, the leaves are "gone", the grass seems clean, and the lawn has effectively been mulched.

When I chose this lot 25 years ago, I tested the soil in the areas that would become lawn. Its easy, You take a 6" soil plug, put it in a large clear jug, fill it half up with water and then shake the hell out of it. The gravel and mineral grit settles out first, the sand 2nd, the clay next, then the humus/loam, and finally fine silt. After several days, you can read the composition of the soil in the layers that form. The lot I chose had great trees, was large, and had great soil.

So imagine my shock when the house was built and I discovered the builder had cleared off the top foot of soil. I was left with gravel, sand, and clay. So, over the years, I kept shredding the leaves onto the top. Today, I have 6" of loamy soil mixed with some clay. A lot better than I started with (after the builder scraped the good soil off).

The trees don't suffer. They depend on their fallen leaves decomposing around them to be taken up again in Spring. But tree leaves tend to blow away. So shredding them on the spot saves the nutrients from the leaves for the trees. The lawn soil gets a little softer each year so that the rain soaks in better, and more air reaches the tree roots. Tree roots actually need air.

The grass benefits too. Aside from leaving the grass clippings on the lawn (there is no better grass fertilizer than grass clippings), the shredded leaves provide more. That passes through the grass and eventually goes deeper into the tree root zone. And, BTW, grass clippings do not cause thatch; spreading grass roots at the surface cause thatch. That's why I have a fescue lawn. Fescue does not spread by root runners. And even grasses that spread by root runners don't cause thatch unless they are watered shallowly so that the roots all stay on the surface. If you have thatch, you are watering too little, too often.

So yesterday was my big leaf-shredding day. My neighbors sometimes look at me like I'm crazy, driving all around the yard with the riding mower in weird patterns. I'm mowing leaves, not grass, so I go where the leaves are. They rake up their leaves carefully and put them in bags to be hauled away. Then they buy synthetic fertilizers several times a year to feed their lawns (with stuff that provides only the major 3 nutrients and none of the minor ones (like us eating meat and no vegetables).

There is also an aesthetic pleasure to the process. It is amazing to watch the shredded and re-shredded leaves "disappear" into the lawn...

It's not perfect; I'm burning gasoline to do it. But nothing is perfect. If I did it as perfectly as I could locally, I would use a non-motor reel-type push mower. But those are lousy at dealing with large leaves. I used one at a Grandfathers place and it just bulldozed the leaves into piles in front of it. I had to rake them up and (guess what?) they got bagged and hauled away.

So I enjoyed the grand once-a year leaf shredding.

Cousin Bobby

2011-11-29T17:23:00.000-05:00

My cousin Bobby, about the same age as me, drowned at about age 12. I cant remember the exact time anymore. I remember Mom sitting on the edge of the bed trying to explain what happened, He had cramps swimming in a quarry hole with other kids and drowned.

We visited my Grandparents, where he lived, the next summer. I still expected to see him again. Stupid, of course, but I did. And he wasn't there. He had polio at a younger age. He pulled himself around by his arms and he was real strong. He recovered, and could run around as well as I could. But one day, suddenly, he was gone.

While we were visiting, I saw a telescope Bobby enjoyed using. I asked for it. The adults didn't understand. I didn't want the telescope for itself, I wanted it because it was something he had handled and enjoyed. I wanted it BECAUSE he had used it. That made a connection to me for my lost cousin.

The adults just thought I wanted the telescope for itself... As if I just wanted a gift. They never understood. And I was too young to explain it right...

I wanted a remembrance, something Bobby had touched and used. I wasn't given it. Instead, I got a new telescope as a Christmas present that year. None of the adults understood what I meant by my request. They thought I wanted a "thing".

All I wanted was something to remind me of Bobby. And no matter how I tried to explain, I never got anything he used.

I am that way still about lost loved ones. Just any little thing is fine... Something tangible to remember them by is all I ask. I've been luckier lately. I have Grampa's carved whale, Dad's wooden-built tool chest (he's still alive), Mom's corn-on-the-cob plates and the imitation Tiffany Lamp she loved...

These things are treasures to me...

A Childhood Friend

2011-11-27T00:03:00.000-05:00

I got to thinking about Ronnie tonight. He was a childhood friend who had muscular dystrophy. When I first met him at 9 years, he was fine. Then we kids noticed that he was walking around on his toes.

Then he started to fall over. That is a scary thing for kids. You know, when things don't work right...

I don't remember perfectly now, but I think he was a couple years older than me. His problems grew until he couldn't leave the house anymore. I used to visit him and we would play Monopoly. He enjoyed that. He had a bed with a lifting device eventually. It allowed his mother to change his sheets and clothes.

I don't understand the details of MS, but there came a day when he didn't understand Monopoly anymore. So I moved the pieces around the board and made up stories about his piece having fun on the board . Toward the end, he couldn't even move the hotels, so I did it for him. He was pretty much "out of it" by that point.

Then we moved away. I wrote him some letters at 14 years old. One day I got a letter back. His Mom said he had died. That was a terrible shock. My cousin Bobby had drowned 2 years before, now Ronnie was dead. I didn't understand death then very well. Kids were protected from that stuff when I was young.

No purpose to this, just a remembrance from many years ago... I think it was about this time of year.

Remembering you, Ronnie Richards...

The Lord of the Rings

2011-11-25T23:15:00.001-05:00

I happened to watch LotR, Fellowship of the Ring tonite. I think it is the best of the 3 movies. I never liked the one where Frodo and Sam are slogging through the swamps and fighting Shelob. Quite frankly, that was dull. Essential to the story, but it didn't develop the story much. And I never quite thought the ending was right. Dramatic, yes, but I always thought Frodo should have been able to throw the Ring into the fires of Mt Doom himself.

He had already managed to release or offer the Ring several times. He handed it to Gandalf at home where it was tossed in the fireplace, placed it on the table at the Council of Elrond, offered it to Galadriel, and held it out for taking by Aragorn just before the Fellowship split up.

And I'm one who gets annoyed by story changes. Frodo DIDN'T go over the cliff in the books when Gollum fell clutching the ring, for example. And it wasn't Arwen who saved him from the Black Riders over the river, it was Glorfindel.

But that's not why I am mentioning all of this.

I wish I could read the books for the first time again. Watching the movie, I knew what the characters were going to say too many times in precise quotes. I wish I did not have that memory. It may sound stupid, but I really wish I could read the story anew.

Sone day, there will be a forgetfulness pill, where you take a pill, watch a movie (or read a book) and you will forget it entirely. And enjoy the watching or reading brand new...

PS, my other prediction is that someone will produce a perpetual kittenhood shot. Cats will stay kittens until old age and suddenly die at the usual 16 years old. Who doesn't want utterly cute kittens?

I Miss JFK

2011-11-22T19:07:00.001-05:00

I remember where I was when I heard he died. In a classroom, staring at the public announcement speaker at the top of the wall behind the teacher. 7th grade Social Studies class, I think, but that wasn't important. The PA Speaker was light brown wood, about a 12" cube, dark brown cloth covering the grill. The announcement from the Principal, that President Kennedy had been killed in Dallas Texas and that school would be closing for the day. That students who took buses were to go to the assigned pickup points and wait with teachers. That students who walked or rode bikes and had a parent at home (pretty routine in those days) should go directly home. That those who did not should go directly to the cafeteria to wait for a parent to pick them up. And then just stunned silence.

I sometimes wonder what he would have been like in a 2nd term, then retired to "senior statesman" status for another 30 years. Would the Vietnam War have developed as it did? Would he have influenced the Civil Rights years? Would he have become a great person in his elder years? We'll never know, of course.

I wonder what he would think about our current political situation. Could he have imagined that both parties would cease having conservative, moderate, and liberal factions? Yes, there used to be Conservative Democrats and Liberal Republicans...

There used to be only 3 TV networks, too. NBC, CBS, and ABC. All that was on TV for several days was news about his death, the aftermath (Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald), and the funeral.

I miss him. A glowing candle, snuffed too soon, dimming the room for us all...

Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-20T01:40:00.001-05:00

I haven't followed the OWS movement city-by-city, or day-by-day. And as a Vietnam War college protestor, I have a certain sympathy for their actions. Peaceful assembly is is protected Constitutional right.

But I saw something on TV yesterday that angered me. I do not know which city it occurred in, I could Google it, but it is irrelevant. The problem is that it happened somewhere in the US, not where it happened.

In some city, peaceful protesters were blocking a street. They weren't digging holes in the street, they weren't threatening to throw rocks or bottles at passing cars or at surrounding buildings, and they weren't threatening the police. They were sitting quietly in a street.

Yes, that disturbed commuters. As a Washington DC worker for 30 years, I have sufferred that many times, and it is truly annoying.

The role of the police in those situations is to remove the offending people from the street to permit traffic to move again and guide the protestors to places where they can express their views without unreasonably disaccomodating other citizens.

The police were entirely capable (protected by their armor and the non-resistance of the protestors) of simply removing the protestors blocking the road. This is what disturbs me. They didn't DO that. Instead of just removing the offending protestors, they pepper-sprayed them first, several times! Not just once, but back and forth along the line several times. And THEN they removed them. I watched that on TV. I saw the repeated, and unneccesary chemical attack on people how would would have peacefully allowed themselves to be arrested.

Something is wrong there. If they were going to remove the non-violent protestors anyway, why torture them first with pepper spray? And it wasn't a small shot to subdue anyone. It was from a fire-extinguisher-sized cannister back and forth along the line of quietly sitting protestors several times.

Where have we gone so wrong, that a few people sitting in a street, who could be easily removed by police without resistance, OUGHT to be sprayed repeatedly by pepper spray.

For no practical reason! Most of the handcuffed pepper-sprayed protestors cooperatively walked away with the police. They didn't even make it hard by going limp and having to be dragged away. WHY did they have to be pepper-sprayed? I keep searching for any tactical reason, and I can't find one.

Part of the irony is that the protestors were protesting the loss of police jobs (along with teachers and fire-fighters) in their community.

There is something imbalanced here, and I don't like it. Every day, I am coming down in support on the OWS people.

I'm 61. I can't spend months outside in a tent. I sure wish I was 20 again, when I COULD do that...

It Is Time to Say This.

2011-11-16T06:13:00.001-05:00

Given the Penn State University scandal, I have to say my own bad experience.

I got over it (I thought), and it never SEEMED to bother me too much, but I've been thinking about it lately. It always seemed a bit weird. I can only hope someone out there can corroborate my strange experience,

The first year I attended The University of MD, I took Physical Education class. We played tennis, football, etc. I have good memories of that football. I was a small guy lined up against very bigger guys. I crashed at them as hard as I could. One of the big guys even said afterwards, I was the hardest hitting little guy he ever met. I did what I could. So I was pleased with the physical education class,

The next is going to sound weird. Part of the Pys Ed class involved swimming and diving, The teacher/coach ordered us not to wear bathing suits. Because "the lint in the bathing suits was a problem". OK, I would know that was wrong today. I didn't then. An adult guy told us to do it and we did. All the other guys went along. I did too because they did.

We swam and dove naked for 2 weeks in the pool. There was no inappropriate touching, but it was still wrong. I am angrier today about it than I was then. I wish now that I had gone to the Dean of the College. And I am starting to understand that it bothers me more to this day than it did then. It was all more wrong than I could understand at the time. I feel guilty that I didn't say anything at the time. I know now that that was dumb.

I/we weren't molested directly. But being watched naked for a couple weeks had an effect on me,

And it may not be an accident that I suddenly have hiccups.... This has begun to bother me many days and nights.

I had to finally tell about it to try to get it out of my mind.

Who should I talk to?

Veterans Day, Part 2

2011-11-12T21:04:00.001-05:00

I feel that I never do right by Veterans Day. I can't really; I did not serve in time of war, nor in the military at all. I don't mean that I couldn't have eaten lousy food, slept in mud, or hiked through rain. I've done that.

What I mean is that I am not a loyal group person, and that I just will not follow blind orders. I would not have been the person you needed to trust in battle. That doesn't mean I'm a pacifist. I would kill a real enemy without any serious compunction. I might actually make a good guerilla fighter.

So I would like to spent a few minutes honoring those who did serve, in war or not. You did what I could not. You learned to work together as a team preparing or actually engaging in terrible situations. You learned to follow orders. More importantly, you learned to follow orders yet act individually when circumstances required it. That is a great part of our military; follow orders but also be trained and able to act on your own.

I was born in 1950. Too young for WWII or Korea, too unwilling to volunteer to fight in Vietnam, and too old for military training after that. I took my chances in 1969 (1970?). When the draft lottery was announced, I dropped my college deferment. I would have gone. My number was 256, and I was passed by. I was not exactly saddened by that. I did not consider the Vietnam War to be the same as WWII.

I grew up hearing of the then-recent WWII. I had family members who fought, and luckily, none of them died. I respected then greatly. I respected all WWII military greatly. Family history says one uncle dropped a bomb down a Japanese destroyer smokestack and sank it. Other family members were in other fields of war, or spend the war building ships.

It is partly for reasons like that that I minored in history in college. I studied wartimes. I watch wartime documentaries. The bravery of soldiers matters. I am not one of them. But I have done the best I could to try to understand.

If the respect or thanks of a civilian matters, I offer it. If you refuse it because I did not participate, I understand.

I cannot salute you, as a civilian. But there seems to be a Roman Empire gesture that civilians could use respectfully (there is some disagreement on this) to their soldiers. Right arm held out, hand angled down. If that is correct, I offer it.

Please accept my gratitude for defending your country whenever called upon.

Veterans Day

2011-11-11T00:03:00.000-05:00

Michael Jackson

2011-11-07T23:03:00.000-05:00

I'm tired of hearing about Michael Jackson, his strange life, his spiral into near-lunacy, the charges of child molestation, his death, and FINALLY the last gasp of the trial of his doctor. I'm glad it's over.

I am not big into "celebrity".

But I recognize talent. Michael Jackson was probably the most multi-talented entertainer I have ever seen. He could dance better than Fred Astaire and Elvis Presley combined, he could sing with a breathless passion, and he produced songs (so far as I know) of an originality slightly beyond the Beatles or Bob Dylan. The Moonwalk, Billy Jean, and Thriller amaze me to this day almost 30 years later. But that WAS almost 30 years ago.

I regret the curse of great riches that happens to some people. As it did Michael Jackson. Some people can handle money, some can't. Jackson couldn't. I wish he could have stayed "merely wealthy". At some level of income that would have have made his life great but not overpowering.

I couldn't like him in his last 20 years. He just became too weird. He "lost touch". We will probably never really know what drove him down his own personal rabbit hole, and I regret it happened, as I would regret it happened to the poor and average among us. But it happened.

I an reminded of a question in a Philosophy class. "Your very good tennis partner is accused and acquitted of child porn. What do you do?"

My answer was "play tennis, but not allow him to babysit the kids". I gave reasons, of course; it was an essay question. But that was the the core of the answer.

In the same way, I admire Billy Jean and Thriller, etc, but I am vaguely glad that he is gone... And with the trial of his "doctor" over and done, I hope to never hear his name again on TV.

Computer Scare

2011-11-05T00:08:00.000-04:00

I have a confession. I am hard on inanimate objects when I get angry. I have punched holes in walls, in hollow doors, and I have been known to throw things. There are reasons why some people live alone...

Don't worry, I never take out anger on people or pets. I also play online computer games with other people. That's not really a good combination.

I thought I had ruined my computer last night. I was playing Risk and had won 3 games in a row, and reached a level where I was playing a real expert. I had him on the ropes when suddenly I couldn't make any moves. After 3 turns of complete frustration, I threw the wireless mouse at the wall. It broke apart quite satisfactorily...

I had an older wired mouse to replace it. I still couldn't make any moves. The keyboard went next, then the wineglass (which had only ginger ale). So I shut off the computer. I spent the next hour on my hands and knees carefully collecting bits of glass in a small wastebasket so the cats wouldn't step on them. That was penance...

This morning, I set about reconstructing the computer... The wireless mouse went back together well, the keyboard was plugged in... Nothing. I tried an older keyboard. The only problem with it was a "B" key, so it should have at least worked otherwise. I tried an older wired mouse that would only scroll up. That didn't work either. I checked the monitor for power, it had it. Rebooting my Mac-Mini, I could hear the power-up sound. The monitor would come on with the "no signal" graphic normal at start up. I was baffled. I tried every combination I could think of.

I worried about what scheduled blog posts said that I meant to edit. I worried about emails I wasn't receiving. I worried about what I was missing on the CB...

I was so annoyed that I ate dinner early because I didn't have anything else to do.

I kept going at it all night. I am not skilled at computers, but I am analytical and persistent.

-->

-->

-->

The monitor connection to the computer had come loose...

All is well. The wireless mouse still works, the keyboard still works, the computer still works. Meanwhile, I feel pretty stupid... Throwing things at walls never accomplishes anything useful.

Unhappy Halloween

2011-11-01T10:14:00.000-04:00

This may sound strange. I don't like Halloween. I used to. I used to carve pumpkins and stay by the front door to give out candy and admire costumes.

But about 6 years ago, no kids came to the door (or my neighbor's) and after a couple years of that, I just stopped trying. I don't eat candy, so I had to throw it away after the holiday. I started just ignoring Halloween.

To avoid an odd single trick-or-treater disturbing the evening meal, I started just blacking out the windows and turning the room lights off to signal I wasn't participating.

Until THIS year! I read in the local newspaper that sex offenders in many places were REQUIRED to do what I was doing. Turn out the lights, not give out candy... Oh GREAT, if I DON'T give out candy and participate, I will be viewed as a sex offender by some neighbor, and you know how rumors spread...

I batted that back and forth all day in my head, and I hate to say that I caved!

I worry about rumors. I'm an aging (61) single guy; the modern version of aging females considered witches in the older days. So I rushed out to buy candy, kept all the house lights on, ate dinner early, and waited for trick-or-treaters. None came. Well, the cats were happy, they HATE the doorbell!

And you know what I noticed at prime trick-or-treating time? Half the houses on my street were dark! Either I live in a very BAD neighborhood, or THEY weren't worried about appearances... So a good lesson about appearances.

Now WHAT do I do with a year's supply of Hershey Hugs...?

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T11:28:00.002-04:00

Mulch

2011-10-25T21:32:00.000-04:00

So I was shoveling the mulch out of the trailer. Here are pictures...

First step. shoveling the mulch away from the back so I can remove the back of the trailer...

Half done...

3/4...

The pile off the trailer...

The mosquitos got too fierce. I had to stop. The only good thing about the skeeters this time of year is that they are slow. Still, I got 8 bites. It was that they were around my face that made it hard.

Really, it was harder than it looks... It was close to like chopping ice off the driveway...

A Neat Trick

2011-10-24T17:33:00.001-04:00

My most immediate outdoors project is emptying the trailerload of mulch. And I made good progress at it today (about 2/3 emptied - pictures another time). Unfortunately, the mulch is packed down by rain and weight and it has to be broken loose in chunks even using a mulching fork. That was a bit of work.

So I took a breather every 15 minutes and walked around the yard a bit, which is semi-forest and lots of field weeds. Guess what, those triangular sticky-seed plants are in full seed! I can never remember the name of the plant and I never remember what it looks like, but if they grow where you live, you know the seeds. By the time I was done with the mulch for the day, my pants were coated with 100s of them. I HATE picking those stupid seeds off. I even considered just trashing the pants (they ARE old).

But I had a thought. I have a hand vac with a rotating brush head. Spreading the pants out flat on the floor, I tried the vac. It worked beautifully. In about 3 minutes, they were completely cleaned of sticky-seeds!!!

Give it a try. Just remember not to empty the collection bag outside where the seeds will sprout... LOL!

Sometimes I am REALLY Dense

2011-10-19T00:08:00.000-04:00

Recently, I posted about my frustrations in trying to repair the drip irrigation hoses. I had 4 of them mounted to a 4 gang valve on a 12" post. Two winters ago, the heavy snow broke the drip hoses off the couplings at the gang valve. I became obsessed trying to find an internal connection (like a stent, I suppose) to reattach the hoses to the couplings. I wasn't having any luck, because I needed 7/16" tubing and couldn't find that size anywhere.

One person, seybernetx, suggested standard garden hose repair kits. I dismissed the idea because, well, it wasn't a standard garden hose. Have you ever dismissed an idea because it didn't fit the way you were thinking of a problem? Yeah, me too!

Well, I was walking past the broken drip hoses today, and the old LIGHT BULB OVER THE HEAD lit up! A hose is a hose is a hose... WHY was I caring about the existing brass hose couplings? A standard hose repair kit would work just fine. I had simply assumed the drip hoses were some odd size that wouldn't work with standard hose repair kits!

Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb!!!

The hard part is that I am usually quite resourceful about fixing things, using odd unrelated objects to make repairs... I guess this is one of the top 10 list of THINGS I FLUBBED! I even had one of the right size repair kits sitting around. It worked just fine. I just need 3 more from the hardware store tomorrow.

Thank you, seybernetx. And my cats say "hello" to your cats...

Outdoor Fall Projects

2011-10-12T22:02:00.001-04:00

Well, it is raining again today. It must be the rainiest Sept/Oct I have experienced. And that has exploded the mosquito population. Even with deet on my arms and neck, they swarm around my face. They are pretty desperate. Probably because there are so many of them and so few victims outside in suburbia. Really, when I was young, all kids were outside from dawn to dusk except during school. Now, hardly a kid is outside.

And with more pets being cats, and kept indoors, less pets for the skeeters to feed on. I am considering getting my hunting garb mosquito netting headgear out... That may seem extreme, but when the skeeters are biting your face, its not!

I haven't been doing too much outside the past week. The inside of the house needed a lot of cleaning and organizing. And I have that trail-load of mulch to empty...

Project 1 - Empty the trailer of mulch.
Project 2 - Deadhead all the perennial flowers of flowerstems and hang them up for the finches to eat the seeds.
Project 3 - Deepen the drainage ditch from the patio and install real perforated drainage pipe to the downslope area.
Project 4 - Clean the patio of silt and debris.
Project 5 - Protect the patio from rain from the deck above. My idea is to put plastic on the deck and then cover it with outdoor carpet. I plan to rebuild the 20 year old deck in a year or two, so it is a temporary measure. The deck has given its expected lifetime.
Project 6 - Kill the ivy that has taken over the ridge in the backyard. Too awkward to mow, but I cant till it down and spread the soil until the ivy is all dead. The vines wrap around the tiller tines.

THAT should keep me busy for awhile! And I'll try for pictures...

Crazy Neighbors

2011-10-03T11:12:00.000-04:00

Well, I stayed up all night playing Risk and Hearts online, and I heard a familiar scream out the window. The neighbors across the street were at it again. Usually the Fat Idiot Guy (FIG) is ranting and screaming at the woman.

Ofentimes, this results in him peeling the car backwards out of the driveway, then peeling rubber down the street out of the neigborhood. She sometimes runs in front of the car. He USED to STOP.

Its gotten worse lately and I have been very worried about her safety. And recently, there has been a child involved in the fight. FIG suddenly likes to take the infant with him in the car. Driving away recklessly.

This morning, FIG took off again. with infant, and the woman stood there screaming. I have intervened before with threats of "calling the cops". I have spoken to the renters there (there are at least 2 couples, I think). Its hard to tell.

But this time I asked the woman (18? 21?) if she needed help. She asked my to call the police. I did.

They were there in 5 minutes. Two County and two State cars. I explained that I had called on her behalf, and backed off so they could talk to her. One cop stayed aside , and I gave him a brief background on the problems of the past year.

He talked to the woman for about 20 minutes, giving her advice and explaining the limitations (FIG IS the child's father, so it isn't kidnapping). I lent her my cordless phone to call friends for a safe haven. I was amazed the phone worked outside like that, but it did.

After overhearing that she needed to file legal papers at the County Courthouse10 miles away (and knowing she had no car), I offerred to drive her there if her friends/family couldn't. I'll bring a book if asked to drive. Paperwork takes time.

But I just couldn't continue to hear her screaming in mental agony every week. Yes, maybe I should have acted more forcibly before. But it is difficult to know the dynamics of bad relationships. I have acted before in other places and been told (rather forcibly) to "BUTT OUT". But I guess I judged this one correctly.

I did not know before this that there was physical violence involved. It was all yelling and screaming before. But she had blood on her nose (interestingly, she was not aware of that). That shows how bad things can get behind closed doors.

I'm glad I called the police, I think she is going to get some legal help and it is now "on the record".

On the other hand, this FIG is a real looney tunes type. If someone bangs on my door, I will answer through the computer room window. That's safe. If it's the woman, I will drive her to a safe house or legal place of her choice. If its the FIG, well, I have a real Gladius propped by the front door and another at the top of the stairs for self-protection. He IS the kind of person who would beat down a door and attack.

Sorry to bother you all with this, but I have to write sometimes to get things straight and put disturbing events in print. Some good news. A car pulled into the driveway a few minutes ago. It wasn't FIG. It was her dad. (Well, I went out and asked) He came by to help her pack some things and bring her home for some shelter for a while. I offerred any help I could give.

*SIGH*

BTW, the cats didn't know the earthquake was coming, but they DID know the neighbor screams were going to start before I did. They went all poofed and UTB about 3 seconds before I heard the first yells. Good for them.

(Very Tired) Mark

Garden Watering Stand

2011-09-30T12:23:00.000-04:00

I like to keep the garden watered, but it's boring. It's wasteful to use an oscillating sprinkler on the raised veggie beds because of the walkways between them, and the flowerbeds are too narrow for one. It is too boring to just stand there and water all the beds by hand. I have drip irrigation hoses, but they all broke off at the raised brass couplings under the weight of the snow 2 winters ago (haven't quite figured out how to repair them).

I had developed a rather convenient way to water them all a patch at a time using a fat hose nozzle and a spading fork. I stabbed the fork in the ground abut 10' away and nestled the fat hose nozzle (shower setting) in the fork's D handle. But that required getting the garden fork firmly in the ground at each 6' section or raised bed. Naturally, if I needed to water the beds, the lawn soil was rather hard to penetrate with the fork.

I needed a better way. My first thought was a pole with a clamp on top and a flat "X" at the bottom with spikes to "step" into the lawn. I couldn't find any parts like that, and I'm not a welder. Then I looked at my camera tripod. It looked a bit flimsy, needed some kind of attachment at the top, and I wasn't sure how waterproof it was. But a tripod seemed the way to go.

I built one using pressure treated wood and stainless steel hardware. The PT wood is 2x2"deck balusters. The tripod is designed with 1 forward and 2 back legs. It is 2 back legs to resist the backwards force of the water and the weight of the hose.

The balusters come with pointed ends. I wanted the points for the bottoms, but I wanted flat tops to attach a nozzle platform. So I cut off the tops of each of the 3 balusters. Then I cut 3" off the 2 back legs to use to widen the attachment surface. Two pieces of scrap wood added some width. It was all glued and screwed to the front leg.

Next, I used a tapering jig on the tablesaw to cut angles for the 2 back legs to attach to the front leg. They are shorter because I used 3" to make the top attachment surfaces, but also because the front needs to be longer to create an upwards angle for the nozzle platform. That will make more sense in the last pictures. I can't give an exact angle for the cut (I really just overlayed one on the other and eyeballed the "right" spread). It looks about 30 degrees though.

I needed to drill a hole through the 3 legs for an axle bolt. I rigged up some stops and supports on my drill press for the 2 angled back legs. The front leg just needed a spacer to account for the platform support.

It looks like this when the bolt and nut is put through all 3 legs. This holds the legs all at the angles. But I also wanted to be able to store it easily for the winter. That meant being able to collapse it. So I took the back legs back to the drill press and lifted them up slightly to angle the holes.

I may not be explaining that well. To store it, I wanted the 3 legs to compress flat to each other, and the lengthened hole allowed that. And so that the bolthead and wing nut (for tightening securely on a flat surface, I used a forstener bit to make an angled hole the size of the flat washers. I don't have a picture of that, but it will be obvious when/if you make one of these yourself.

Notes: 1, The washers between the legs were removed later. I realized I DIDN'T want the legs to slide easily when being set up. 2, The spacer washers below the wing nut are there because the wing nut catches on the wood before the bolt is tight. 3, Use a bolt with threads the whole length. The bolts with about 1" of threads don't have enough thread length.

Here is the tripod in the storage position. That's what I mean by "compressing flat" and why the back legs have elongated holes.

Here is the tripod set up, minus the hose nozzle platform on top... You can see that with the front leg longer, it creates an upwards angle.

Here is the finished tripod. A piece of PT board is glued an screwed to the platform support on the front leg (the screws are countersunk under the wand nozzle). Copper clamp-downs hold the wand in place with pan-head exterior screws. A wand nozzle is much easier to attach than a standard nozzle. The wand, BTW, has the most uniform spray of any nozzle I have ever tried. This brand is Melcor; others may be just as good.

To relieve hose-weight pressure on the wand, I attached an angled hose connector. I have quick-connect attachments on all my hoses and attachments.

And here is the watering tripod in action! Adjusting the angle of the front leg easily adjusts the angle of spray.

It's easy to move from spot to spot, stores nicely, and should last decades!

Pictures Again!

2011-09-28T17:22:00.001-04:00

I've been a bit frustrated lately, often not being able to get pictures into the posts. They would upload in the Choose Files box, but would not transfer to the post. I even posted a question on the Blogger Help forum (no replies). So, today I tried the new Blogger interface, and pictures load properly.

Hurray!

I am showing the pictures of the "Poor Old Storm Drain" to add to THIS POST today...

The overview... Yes, believe it or not there is a 4x4x4 foot brick well and heavy metal grate under there!

At first, I tried to pull the debris off.

Most of it was too entangled. I wasn't surprised. The last time the drain was like this, the County needed power equipment!

But I stopped trying as soon as I saw that the brick structure was broken! You can see part of the brick wall is at an angle.

I also noticed that the metal grate on top is actually shoved OFF the brick structure! You can also see that the woody debris is packed so tightly that stones washed over the top and wouldn't fall through.

I called County Maintenance and reported the problem. They politely took all the information, but wouldn't suggest a repair date. I'll be happy to see them out here by next Spring. That's about how long it took the last time. However, I will say that they do good work when they come.

A Redo On The Lawn

2011-09-19T22:22:00.000-04:00

I haven't re-seeded the lawn in years and there are thin/bare spots. So before Tropical Storm Lee came through, I thought I would take advantage of the predicted rain for the week to keep new grass seed wet while it germinated.

I didn't realize how MUCH rain there would be and how HARD it would fall at times. Some of the seed I put down then has germinated - in thick separated bands. It looks like the lime markers on a football field! And all the formerly bare spots are still bare.

So much for THAT $42 worth of grass seed! So, today, I bought another bag and I re-seeded the lawn after mowing it down as short as I dared (1"). This time, I even raked the lawn roughly and collected dried crumbled grass clippings to cover the bare areas after seeding.

After seeding the lawn again, I sprinkled the dried grass clippings over the bare spots. Not thickly, just enough to give a little cover and hide them from the birds... Then I spent an hour gradually watering the seeds enough to let then soak up some moisture and start germinating.

I saved about a lb of grass seed for patching spots that don't grow this time. Its a blend of 3 Rebel tall fescue. I like fescue, but it isn't a spreading grass, so bare spots develop. I think I will get some bluegrass for the sunnier areas next time. It spreads. But the lawn is at least half shaded, so I need fescue on most of it.

Sorry no pictures again, but for some odd reason, I can't upload pictures on THIS blog. Works fine on the cat blog, and as far as I can tell, the settings are the same. I don't have any maximum picture upload issues, as all of mine are in the "free" range. And pictures that won't upload here WILL upload to the cat blog. It's driving me nuts. I posted a question on the Blogger Help Forum days ago, but have not gotten any responses. Any ideas are more than welcome!

Poor Old Storm Drain

2011-09-16T13:30:00.000-04:00

Tropical Storm Lee finally did it in. I'm used to it getting covered with fallen branches and washed-down debris, but this time the washed-down stuff actually broke the storm drain apart. It is a brick shell covered by a heavy metal grate that sits on the bricks.

Not any more...

The back of the brick structure is batterred loose and at an angle. the top is covered with tree debris I can't pull apart. It is so tightly interwoven that stones piled up on the top.

I would show the pictures of the broken storm drain, but blogger isn't letting me upload any pictures on this blog.. I getting a bit pissed about that. Not only that, but all of a sudden, I have to sign in to each of my 2 blogs every time with full username and password. Two days ago, I could select them from a drop-down list or use a bookmark.

9-11-2011

2011-09-11T01:08:00.003-04:00

On 9-11-2001, I was quietly doing my regular job. An odd news announcement caught my ear at 9 a.m. A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Strange accident, but one hit the empire State Building many decades before in heavy fog. But I mentioned it to a supervisor (his office included FEMA responses for our agency).

Then there was a 2nd.

Later, I felt a "thump" through my feet. A few moments afterwards, I learned the Pentagon had been struck by "something". I worked a couple miles away from the Pentagon, and 2 blocks from the White House. It was a really bad day after that. We all watched the terrible events. I won't go into that further.

When I got home, I bought and set out a flag from my back deck vowing to leave it there until the perpetrators were caught and punished for such a horrific act. I have decided to leave it up (4th one actually, they do wear out).

In past years, I have said many things about the events. This time, I think it best to display a couple of images. I searched 1,000s of pictures. Most I found were far too graphic, or xenographic, or bloody, or boastful.

I hope these 2 wordless graphics will strike the right balance on this 10th year commemoration of 9/11...

Earthquake and Storms

2011-09-09T17:23:00.000-04:00

[Sorry no pictures today. Blogger has been rejecting pictures on THIS blog, but not my other. Can't figure out why. I'm not exceeding any limits.]

Well it sure has been an interesting few weeks. First an earthquake on Aug 23rd, then Hurricane Irene Aug 27th/28th, and then Tropical Storm Lee Sept 5th-9th!

It was the 1st earthquake I ever felt, and while it was nothing like West Coast earthquakes, it was certainly more of a surprise. My first thought was "It CAN'T be an earthquake, they don't happen here!", but after a few seconds, it was obvious it wasn't a tree falling on the house. And then we had to wait to see if there would be aftershocks.

Hurricanes aren't terribly common here. They tend to either make landfall south and approach over land, weakening rapidly, or pass by further off the coast. But we do get serious ones occasionally. I remember Hurricane Agnes in 1972. It came right up the Chesapeake Bay and sank the family boat (a complete loss). Then there was Hurricane Floyd in 1999. That one dropped so much rain so fast that my street was flooded, half my front yard was flooded, and I stayed up all night wet-vacuuming water from the basement. It is the only time I've ever seen the 2 storm drains next to my yard actually completely covered with standing water!

So then we had Irene. Fortunately, the ground was very dry and basically absorbed all the rainfall and there wasn't even standing water afterwards on my low front lawn. Still, 7" fell here, and it was the strongest wind I have experienced in my 25 years at this location.

Tropical Storm Lee was actually worse. First, it came over Maryland and just sat there for 4 days raining almost constantly! Not as hard as Irene, but for over twice as long. Second, the rain bands were heading directly north the last 2 days. The strongest ones kept going directly through my county. It was depressing, as if the rain bands were following the highway through town! I had to empty my good rain gauge twice! The total for Lee here was 10.5"! The airport 15 miles west only got 5.5" and to the east they got only 7". That made 17.5" of rain in 13 days... Third, the ground was completely saturated from Irene, so the rainfall had nowhere to go but across the surface seeking low spots.

One of those low spots was my patio! The entire yard slopes gradually from the far back to the street front. Part of the patio has cinder block walls to hold the slope. The non-cinder block entrance is at ground level. The patio was never built properly. The house builder didn't properly slope it slightly toward the lawn to prevent water collecting there. And over the years, the lawn has risen slightly, enough so that prolonged rain can lap against the sliding glass basement doors and seep in. I have occasionally had a slight problem with that.

Well, after the 3rd day of rain, it finally started seeping in again. I tried the wet-vac, but it was too prolonged a rain to stop seeping in. I finally had to go out in the pouring rain at Midnight and dig a 6" deep and wide ditch 10' to a more downslope spot at the fence gate. Happily, the water collected in the patio started rushing out! I was relieved. In only 10 minutes, the collected rainfall was a foot away from the doors and I knew I wouldn't have any further problems in the basement.

It finally stopped raining very early this morning...

One odd note about the storm. The County came by just before Hurricane Irene and cleaned the collected debris of several years from the primary storm drain. It worked fine for Irene. But Lee covered it back up again. That shows how much more forceful rainfall drainage there was from Lee. And not only tree debris; there are golfball size stones covering the woven tree debris covering the storm drain! AND, it appears that the brick storm drain has been broken by the force of the debris and stones. The back bricks appear all loose and tilted, and the metal grate at an angle. I will have to call the County about that. I'm sure they will be thrilled!

Can I please have a break from earthquakes and hurricanes for a while? Please?

Hurricane Irene

2011-08-28T16:14:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been an interesting week. First an earthquake, then a hurricane! Hurricanes aren't too rare here, but this was the most direct hit I've experienced as an adult (and the eye was still 80 miles east). But it was clear there was going to be major rain and wind.

So I was prepared the evening before. Aside from the usual emergency supplies (flashlights, crank radio, batteries, water, food, etc), I made sure to have a good supply of comfort foods...

Before I went to bed that evening, I noticed my 5" rain gauge was at 4.75", so I went out and emptied it. I took a quick look around the yard for any tree damage and found none. But the most intense part of the storm hadn't arrived yet. The lights dimmed a couple of times, but I never lost power. I'm very glad all the electric and cable lines are underground here!

This morning I found another 2.5" of rain in the gauge, for a total of 7.25".

There was some tree damage, but nothing serious. I haven't driven out yet, but I did hear a chain saw in the neighborhood, so someone had some larger damage.

I found some medium branches fallen.

And a few smaller ones, but those were from my favorite saucer magnolia tree.

I have some repair work to do in that tree! There are a couple of breaks like this.

Two of my tomato cages blew over in spite of being staked. One stake was bent over at ground level, the other was simply pushed over in the soaked garden soil. I was able to raise the cages without any apparent damage to the plants. I put 2 stakes on each cage for better protection.

So I came through the hurricane in good shape.

Earthquake

2011-08-23T17:03:00.000-04:00

Well, I have experienced my first earthquake. It was quite interesting. My first thought was that one of the 2 huge trees near the house was falling on it an breaking through the attic in stages. But I realized immediately that the shaking was too frequent and sudden. So I guess it was about 5 seconds before I knew it had to be an earthquake.

It was odd; the house felt like it was being pounded rather than shaken. There was no vertical movement sensation. I think I was being moved back and forth laterally about 6 inches. I kept on my feet, but after a few more seconds it became visually disorienting because the house and I were not moving in the same way. So I had to put a hand on the kitchen counter.

It felt as though it lasted about 15 seconds, but everyone on TV later agreed it was about 25 seconds. The center was about 90 miles away, in central VA, 5.8 magnitude. Apparently there was one major aftershock and several minor ones in the following hour, but I did not feel any of those here.

The range of detectable shaking was very large; from Atlanta GA to Ontario, to Ohio (as best I've heard). It was so widespread because the US east coast is old solid ground; few faults to absorb movement.

I went outside immediately when the shaking stopped, mainly in case one of those trees DID decide to fall. It was another minute before the first neighbor came out. It was hilarious. The first 3 neighbors to come out all asked "Did you feel that?". DUH! I assured them that everyone for many miles around had surely felt it. I said, "for all we know at the moment, New York is in ruins or the New Madrid fault opened up again" (none of my neighbors had heard of New Madrid).

I went back inside to look for any damage and check CNN for details and likelihood of aftershocks. All the cats were STILL poofed up after 10 minutes and now, 3 hours later are demanding more attention than usual (making it hard to type). The only consequences were some fishtank water had sloshed out (no fish), a framed photograph had shaken off a bookshelf, and one tippy samurai figurine had fallen over (undamaged).

It was interesting, but I won't mind if it doesn't happen again...

Free Mulch Again!

2011-08-14T16:31:00.000-04:00

For years, the County collected lawn and tree debris, shredded it, and aged it. Then gave it back to county residents for free. On Saturdays, they would even load it in trailers or pickups for free. It wasn't big pieces like commercial mulch, nor aged enough to be compost. I used to get 2 trailer loads each Spring. One to use for mulch and the other to set aside to compost further.

Then they stopped for 2 (3?) years. I kept checking their website only to see "No Mulch Available". I figured they were either using it for county maintenance, or lacked the funds to keep processing the raw debris.

So when I had a landfill load of trash, I asked about it. I was told the mulch had become available again all this year. I would swear the website said "No Mulch Available" just last month. But the imporatant thing was that the mulch was available again!

There used to be hour-long lines to get the Saturday free loading, but yesterday, I was the only customer. I drove up, put a tarp on the bottom of the trailer (it has gaps between the floorboards) and set the edge of a larger tarp in the front so the mulch would hold it in place. ONE big bucket load later, the trailer was filled to overflowing! I folded the top tarp back over the pile and attached it down with bungee cords.

I drove it into the back yard, where I will scoop it out onto this beat up old tarp where the last of the compost mulch was used up this Spring. Unfortunately, the top tarp did not reach all the way to the back end, and with 3" of rain falling on it, the exposed mulch got so heavy it tipped the trailer back.

Now there is too much weight against the removable back upright, I can't remove it. So I'll have to shovel a foot or so clear before I can slide the mulch out.

This is how tipped it is. I removed the top tarp, in hopes that the rain forecast for tonight will even out the weight and let it sit level again so that I can remove the back.

I shot this picture crooked so that it would LOOK level. LOL! That's 2.75 cubic yards of free mulch! I hate to think what it would cost to buy it by the bag!

As soon as I get this unloaded and spread around the flower/garden beds, I'll go back and get more to leave aside to compost, then whatever more I can get, I'll use to cover my daffodil and hosta beds!

Strange Rain

2011-08-12T16:20:00.001-04:00

I had the oddest experience today. Something that hasn't happened to me since I was about 11. Those many years ago, we kids were playing outside and realized that it was raining in our yard, but NOT across the street!

Well, it finally happened again! I was watching the rain suddenly pouring down in the front yard, so I went to the back to watch the rain gauge fill up. Nothing! It WASN"T raining in the back yard. Not a drop.

Convinced I was just not seeing it, I went out on the deck. Dry! I even went out in the yard because sometimes the trees absorb a lot of rain at first. Nothing! It was several minutes before rain finally started falling in the back.

Talk about being on the edge of a cloud!!! Has this ever happened to you?

Forced Shopping

2011-08-05T13:06:00.000-04:00

This is NOT an advertisement for Walmart, though it may seem like one. It's just that I had a massive shopping trip (for a reason).

For a week, there has been utility digging in the neighborhood. A large sign said the electricity would be off Aug 1 from 8 am to 1 pm. So I planned for it. I had left my car for a battery problem at the dealership last week and the Walmart is right across the street. I spent the scheduled service hour wandering through the store and found a number of things I could use, plus some things I didn't know Walmart carried (they have expanded their food area). I didn't want to buy anything then because I would have had to haul it all back to the car dealership.

But I planned yesterday carefully. The power was to go off at 8 am (and the temperature was forecast for the upper 90s). And I know that scheduled outages get extended sometimes. So I got up at 6 am and cranked the A/C down to 65, showered, got dressed, made breakfast. I took the car out of the garage (electric door). At 7:45, I checked the computer, shut it down, and turned off the backup battery, and unplugged the emergency outage lights.

The power went off at 8:15. As planned, I went outside to do some garden weeding and random yardwork in the "cool" of the morning (it was already 85). I came inside at 10 am and the house temp was up to 70 already and no air circulation. So I went on my planned shopping expedition.

First, to places that sold stuff Walmart doesn't (or has but is junk). I started at the Home Depot (Big Box DIY store). I have had several burst hoses lately (they are all getting old) so I wanted commercial-grade, and I needed a couple good new hose sprayers too. Plus I am trying to design a stand for attaching a nozzle to so that I don't have to stand around holding a nozzle all day when I water the gardens. I needed to just see what basic stuff I might use.

Got to the Home Depot and found 2 nice hose nozzles. Damn, I forgot to pace off the lengths of hoses I wanted to replace. I'll have to get those later. And I forgot to get 2 more quick-connect male connections. Later on those too. Any shopping list is guaranteed to be incomplete.

From there, I went to PetsMart. Petco has the higher-quality stuff, but where they both have the same product, PetsMart is cheaper. I wanted a 3rd cat carrier (3 cats - 3 carriers) and a collar for Iza (she lost another one). I found a nice new red collar for Iza (this one is even reflective). It was hard deciding on a new carrier (trying to judge the size from memory of the other ones at home). I already have a small one (fine for Ayla at 7 pounds) and a larger one (fine for Iza at 12 pounds). But I decided that Marley is probably going to get near 16 pounds at the rate he is growing, so I got an even larger one. AND it has a TOP opening door! It has a front one too. I never saw that before! I decided to pass on the customized pad at $12; I have lots of old towels.

To my surprise, PetsMart is now carrying Eukanuba kibble. I hadn't seen it there before. Cheaper than Petco by $3! Grabbed a bag. I have some already, but it will last.

So then it was on to Walmart. Some of their own brand stuff is well-rated by Consumer Reports magazine, and I go there for those anyway. But when they sell the same brand name product at 75% of the regular price as other places, I'd be a fool not to shop there.

I bought/guesstimate savings:

Kleenex 3 packs/25%
Tidy-Cat litter/40%
Toilet paper/30%
A single outstanding car mat/(not found elsewhere)
Low sodium V8 juice/33%
Tea (regular and decaffinated)/50%
Narrow spatula (sharp-edged and heat resistant/it was only 88 cents!
A pill splitter (for vitamins and cat pills)10%
Sodas/10%
Spices/20%
Nestle's Quick (no sugar added)/20%
Candy (I have a weakness for Hershey Hugs and Dove Raspberry Dark Chocolate)/20%
A hand-held fertilizer dispenser (for where the yard-type one can't go)/not found elsewhere
Pajama shorts/ impulse purchase
Thick work socks (my gardening shoes are just a little large)/just seemed a good deal

Picture of the loot...

And the new cat carrier. I hope whoever thought of putting a door ON THE TOP got a HUGE bonus for that idea!

Oh, about that car mat... I have had this flimsy car mat from the previous car and it keeps sagging and folding under the pedals. I have to straighten it out every time I drive. I was going to rubber-cement it to a piece of old chairmat to stiffen it. Partly because auto places only sell mats in 4-packs (2 front, 2 back) for about $30. This single one is all I need, it is thick and ribbed and it cost about $5!

Usually, I just go to Walmart for a few specific things. I'm usually there for the kitty litter (they sell the 35# bucket for less than the pet stores sell the 27# bucket) and the V8 juice. But when they sell brand name stuff at half-price, I gotta shop there...

I'll give an interesting example of how bulk changes prices. When I moved here 25 years ago, one of the first things I bought from a local hardware store was a benchtop table saw. 3 months later, the first Big Box DIY store opened and they had the exact model for half the price and it wasn't even "on sale". Just their regular price. I felt robbed!

Another thing... I had been looking on the net for a wall "clock" that gave date/day/time digitally in big letters. Couldn't find one. Walmart had one. And it gives the outside temperature, indoor temperature and indoor humidity. AND keeps the clock accurate by radio signal. For $20!

Another thing... I had been wanting a "touch-on" bedside lamp for years. I found one at Home Depot for $40. It broke in months. They didn't sell it anymore. Walmart had one, one time. Two per box actually. For $20. Working fine after several years.

But anyway, it was a great day shopping. It's not something I do often, so it was great fun! But it worked out perfectly. When I got home, the power was back on, and one clock I have counts the time from power-on. It was only 15 minutes. I pretty much timed it perfectly.

New Cat Tree

2011-08-03T16:46:00.000-04:00

We have a new cat tree in the house. Actually, I assembled it several weeks ago, but with one thing and another (mostly Ayla's surprise medical problems), there wasn't wasn't a good time for the cats to post it on their own blog. So I held off posting about it here until they could.

Here it is each step of the way:

Weeding The Flowerbed

2011-08-01T16:38:00.001-04:00

Between getting into a daytime sleep-cycle, the brutal heat of a couple weeks ago (but not much better now), and Ayla having medical complications all last week, the weeds took over! It sure doesn't take them long to grow and for me to get behind...

This is where I planted annuals this year. I had a large area where some evil runner grass had taken over last Fall. I dug it out carefully, but some came back this Spring.

I lifted the perennials out and searched through their roots for runners, then moved them elsewhere mostly to make larger patches of their same kind. My columbine patch is now double in size, for example.

Then I dug the runner grass out again using a spading fork to loosen the soil so that I could follow all the runners several inches underground and slide them out carefully . That worked very well. There is almost none left.

But all that digging brought a lot of other weed seeds to the surface and the planted annual bed exploded with them. As you can see here...

Here's a closeup of one part for reference.

This is the same spot after I spent over an hour of weeding. Remarkably better.

After the 1st effort I had plenty left to do...

And here is that same section after today's work!

An overview of the entire weeded area!

But that is just the annual area. As you can see, I have a few more days of work waiting for me. This spot won't be TOO bad. Most of that is actually non-weedy perennials that have already bloomed for the year and weeds in the garden path that will come up from the pea gravel easily.

This area will be harder. There are several kinds of weeds with thin roots that break off easily. That means digging.

This will be difficult, too. The close growing dianthus makes it hard to get at the wiregrass and mock strawberry embedded among them.

At least those areas are shaded after 4 pm. But did I mentioned my area is infested with Asian Tiger Mosquitoes? Deet works well enough on my arms and neck, but they still swarm around my face looking for a place to land!

And then I spent over an hour hand watering the weeded area and some parts that were most desperate. I'll water the rest of the flower and garden later when the shade arrives.

Well, I'll have more pictures when I make more progress...

Its Been A Hard Week

2011-07-29T18:20:00.001-04:00

Well, I should summarize the week...

Sunday - Ayla suddenly started extruding pus from her vulva. I spent the afternoon and night keeping her as clean as I could.

Monday - Brought Ayla to my regular vet first thing in the morning. He did some tests to eliminate urinary infections, then did x-rays to search for a reproductive tract problem. He scheduled surgery for Tuesday.

Tuesday - Ayla was opened for exploratory surgery first thing in the morning. At noon, the vet called to say that he had found the spayed uterus remnant was infected, which led him to discover her left ovary was intact. He removed both. Considering that the breeder's vet had done both a first and a followup spay operation, he was quite surprised! I was very angry towards the breeder's vet.

Ayla (and I) have gone through frequent and lengthy heat cycles for 3 years. Most times lasting for 10 days separated by 2 weeks of calm. Occasionally, there was a whole month between heat episodes. The news that my vet had found the cause was a matter of extreme joy. I was thrilled. The $800 was well worth all the trouble.

Tuesday night I picked Ayla up to give her the antibiotic, and I discovered she was dripping with red stuff all over the incision. I assumed it was blood and brought her to an emergency pet hospital. I was there for 2 hours. The ER vet put a pressure bandage on her, did some tests, and decided she should see my regular vet in the morning.

Wednesday - My vet was upset and distressed that I had had to go through all the ER stuff. He explained that scar tissue is difficult to seal and that sometimes there is seepage. But he apologized for not having advised my of that, and I am OK with the apology. It DID cost me $1,000 at the ER hospital to learn that Ayla COULD have just lain on a thick towel all night. The ER vet COULD have told me that, but he is running a business and I DID request service. It was still pretty shoddy, though.

Anyway, my vet kept her for observation and examination all day at no charge.

Thursday - Brought Ayla back to my vet for further observation. He found the incision healing, not seeping, and he removed the IV catheter. No charge, more apology, and lots of discussion. And he gave me his home phone number in case of night time problems.

I hate the cone she has to wear, so I went out and bought an inflatable collar (XS dog collar, if you want to find one for a small cat, S for a regular size cat). Ayla doesn't mind the inflatable collar, it even seems to make a decent pillow!

Friday - Ayla is alert and walking around, eating, and drinking. She seems fine now, healing well with no "sera" seepage.

I spent the morning giving her lots of attention and scritching the itchy incision area that she can't get at with the inflatable collar. She enjoyed that a LOT!

In the afternoon, I unwound by watering the veggie and flower gardens. I have a nice system. Stab a spading fork with a "D" handle in the ground, fit a hose nozzle in the handle (most will fit one way or another), and turn the water on for 5 full minutes at each spot. Move the spade and repeat. All afternoon! Sit in a chair in the shade and drink a beer while listening to classical music on a little boom box. Very relaxing and theraputive.

It was 100+ outside, but I was sitting in the shade and there was a slight breeze. There was water spraying, birds around, etc. I NEEDED that!

Speaking of the gardens, the reason I was watering was because we are so dry here in MD. There have been rains, but brief and hard and not much for several weeks. How dry has it been? The hosta bed still has dry crunchy leaves from last Fall. They won't decompose! Too dry.

More bad news! A sign at the entrance to my neighborhood advises that electricity will be turned off for 5 hours August 1st! Oh joy... The forecast for that day is over 100 again. I see that Verizon is digging up the neighborhood for some reason, so that must be the cause.

More bad news! Have you ever used a garden hose and forgotten to turn the water off? And the hose burst? And not gone out there for 2 days? That happened to me Tuesday. I don't know exactly when the hose burst. If I am lucky, it burst just before I went out and noticed. If I am unlucky, it happened shortly after I went inside and it spewed water for 2 days. And, of course, the water was not even spewing near any of my plants... I will find out on the next quarterly bill.

More bad news! Because of Ayla's apparently finally successful spay Tuesday, I contacted a radio vet show (The Animal House). I had been a guest in June of last year discussing unsuccessfully "Twice-Spayed Ayla, and they asked for followup. So I was scheduled for a taping Wed afternoon. Well, Wed morning I had been up all night and morning, so I had to call to cancel (because I needed to collapse in bed). They didn't want to reschedule for the next week, so they are just going to read the email I sent them. I sure wish I could have been on-air to talk to them. That would have been thrilling! I guess I missed my 15 minutes of fame...

It will be broadcast in August and I will give details for that later.

I think it is finally safe to have "too much to drink tonight"! And I plan to. I just haven't decided whether it will be my favorite cheap wine (Twisted vine Zinfandel) or my own Sling recipe (1/2 oz gin, 1/2 oz pomegranate liquer, a shot of real pomegranate juice, fill up the glass with ginger ale over ice, and drink through straw).

I HAVE had worse weeks, but not often, and this one ranks way up on the list. My baby sister died last Summer, Mom died last Fall, Skeeter died in Dec 2008, LC died in Jan 2010, I failed out of college in 1975 (I returned and graduated in 1993), and I got fired from a job because I couldn't roll tires off a truck fast enough. All considered, I think this week places 5th. Maybe 6th because I think at least Ayla IS finally spayed and that's good.

Door Visitors

2011-07-27T12:17:00.000-04:00

I had a strange visitor today. Someone selling garbage collection service. She asked how many bags of garbage I had per mnth. I said "one" She looked at me oddly and repeated the questin, emphasizing "month". I laughed and said "really, one per month". I don't think she believed me...

SO I asked if they would pick up one bag per month for $5. That's what it costs me at the landfill. She said weekly pickup was $42/month. I laughed.

Then she said they could do bulk pickup for $30 per ton. I pointed to my hauling trailer at the street. She said I was very weird and left. "Yes, yes I am" (a la Phineas and Ferb). And I love it...

LOL!

Planning To Move

2011-07-26T00:07:00.002-04:00

I would like to move. For many reasons. As I mentioned last time, it is getting hard to garden here, and that is a major hobby these days. But the neighborhood is going downhill (crazy drunk neighbors and gang fights becoming more common).

Parts of the yard have always been a problem. I live at the bottom of a long sloping neighborhood, the front yard has standing water for days after heavy rains. I'm across the street from a swamp (something no one pointed out when I bought the property) and the mosquitos are fierce. When the Asian Tiger mosquitoes moved into the area, it got worse. I get bitten just going out to get my mail! Some of the very old huge trees near the house are looking weaker, and I don't want to be here when one finally falls on it (and it would cost a fortune to have them removed). The house is 25 years old and will need serious maintenance in the next 10 years (roof, driveway, fence, deck).

I'm 61 years old and need to plan for my older years and I am getting tired of stairs. I want a flat house! Nothing big. Basically, a ranch house with an attached garage and a workshop. I have been finding some decent houseplans.

And, I have to admit, I did a lot of DIY stuff when I moved in here that I wasn't experienced at (and before I had decent equipment). I want to just escape all that and start fresh (I'll limit my future DIY to furniture and birdfeeders)! I chose this place because it HAD mature trees. I'll choose the next place because it DOESN'T. I'll hope to cover a new open roof with solar panels and put in a geothermal heat pump. A system that just blows in 50 degree air from the cool underground all Summer sounds very good to me.

I would LOVE to start landscaping again from scratch. I did everything piecemeal, and it never did quite come together. Its not UGLY, but a fresh start would be nice. I could stay and try to fix everything the way I want it, but some parts (like the shady neighbor trees) can't be fixed.

But the idea of moving is daunting! I have SO MUCH stuff accumulated. And the idea of moving all my heavy woodworking equipment seems difficult and expensive. Cabinet saw, floor drill press, joiner, planer, radial arm saw. Same with the yard equipment: Riding mower, push mower, chipper, tiller, snowblower, large slow-smoker; stuff a yard person accumulates in 25 years...

Then there is all the inside stuff. The major furniture is simple to move, and I don't have that much of it. No sofas, big chairs, beds, etc. A waterbed folds up into small parts. Its all the small stuff... I guess I could have several yard sales. But I have so many small things difficult to pack up.

The last time I moved, I was renting. I had to pack up a dozen boxes of books, kitchen plates and cookware, a few standard pieces of furniture, a few boxes of hand tools, and a simple bedroom. I have 10 times as much stuff now, at least! And I want to keep most of it. It's scary, but I am making plans...

Aquarium, Finished

2011-07-25T21:28:00.000-04:00

Having finally gotten the plant light stand finished, I went after the aquarium again. I tried sealing the leak in the old one twice, and failed. Evidently, a structural failure in the glass just resists sealing.

So I bought a replacement 30 gallon high tank and got it in place. It took a lot of pitchers of water to pill it 1/2 way. I added all the plastic plants in. I set a 12" long bubble aerator in place. Oddly, it works better than it used to. Bubbles all along the length instead on just in 2 spots. I have no idea why, but I'm glad of it.

It was also good to get the several stylers of fake plants arranged into groups. It looks a lot more natural now. "Natural" being a relative term in such an artificial environment. But I do what I can.

It is not a really fancy aquarium. I have 8 tiger barbs, a few old serpa tetra, a couple of some rasbora that got added to a bag once by a really incompetent Wal Mart employee, and one really old plecostomus plecostomus (hypostomus plecostomus?). That guy (gal?) is 8" long and my favorite indidual fish. I think it is about 10 years old. Possibly 15. I didn't record the date.

It is SO LARGE I can't get it in a net. To get it out of the old tank, I had to use a sieve. To get it out of the temp tank, I had to put a pitcher in the water and encourage it to "hide" in there while I covered the opening with a net. Fish are very strong. I grabbed the pleco once and, at 8 ounces, it was like handling an angry cat! And it had spines! Not easy to handle.

So it was a relief to discover I could offer it a lace to hide in a pitcher and then cover the pitcher up with a net and slide it into the new tank!!!

You know where the pleco likes to hide? Along the back of a piece of petrified wood! You know where that petrified wood came from? My dad brought it home one day in (guessing) 1957! I've had that ever since and it is precious to me. Cuz Dad gave it to me and I know about fossilized trees.

Hurray for the Pleco! And hurray for the new fish tank! I'm so glad it is finally up and running again.

The Aquarium

2011-07-24T23:16:00.000-04:00

I mentioned weeks ago I had a problem with the fresh water "30 gallon high" aquarium. It popped a fracture in the glass and leaked slowly. I spend a long afternoon dragging stuff out of a deep closet to finally get at an old "20 gallon long aquarium" (same base size as 30 gal high). I successfully moved all the fish to the 20 gallon long sitting on the floor (so I could siphon the water down).

I emptied the 30 gallon high of water, took out the plastic plants, and scooped out the gravel, and let it dry for days.   Then I bought a silicon aquarium sealer and applied it. I let it dry for several days. When I refilled it, it leaked again.

I drained it, let it dry, dried it mechanically with paper towels and left the vaccuum cleaner exhaust blowing on it for hours, waited a few days, and re-sealed it. It leaked again. So I gave up and bought a new 30 gal high aquarium. A 30 gallon high glass aquarium is not light. I struggled to get it into the car from Petco (they had the vastly better price for the same aquarium).

I spent an hour removing all the plants from the old aquarium and scooping the gravel out. Square food containers do a wonderful job of that! It took some lifting to get the old leaking aquarium off the stand and onto a chair. Then the new one in place. I spent several minutes making sure the new aquarium was positioned properly on the stand. That was after removing the background sheet from the old one and attaching it to the new tank. It's just a colored sheet, but it gives a sense of depth to the tank.

So I filled up the new tank slowly, watching for any leaks at each rise in water level. I didn't see any. Sand first with square food container. Then water, 2 qts at a time. Man that is tedious. A 2 qt pitcher takes 30 fills to get 1/2 way up!

But at least I could put the plastic plants back in at that point. At least it looked better this time than the last. I grouped the several styles better. But having arranged the plants in the gravel, I couldn't just randomly pour new water in from a pitcher. Water-force too strong that way. So I filled up a 5 gallon bucket on the top and siphoned the water in slowly. I filled the upper bucket continuously until it neared the top.

I had an 12" long air bubbler working on the bottom to recirculate the water while the chlorine got evaporated out. I remembered I had some powder that claimed to eliminate chlorine, chloromate/chloromine, and ammonia immediately, so I added some of that. But I will still wait til tomorrow to add the fish back. The old an new aquaria are both at room temperature right now so the fish won't suffer any temperature shock. But room temp is too low for them in the long term. As soon as the fish are transferred back to the new aquarium, I will raise the temp 1 degree per day to get the tank temp up to 76 where I think they do best. I know, some people say 78 degrees, but they live longer at slightly cooler temps.

It will be great to have the fishtank working again.

But I have to tell you something that made me laugh about getting the new tank home.

I found the fine print of the guarantee on a small sticker inside the tank, facing away from view...

1. They specified that the 5 year warranty only applied to their tanks on their own brand of stands.    What are the odds of that? My aquarium stand is 50 years old and as solid as rock. No new company builds them that solid anymore. But it invalidates the warranty.

2. They also demand that "the aquarium has not been lifted by the frame"... Um, do you know any other way to transport one from store to stand other than handling the frame? At some point, don't you HAVE to lift an aquarium onto a stand? But there goes the warranty. Who writes these things?

Idiots...   LOL!

Garden Harvest Starts

2011-07-23T06:55:00.000-04:00

I finally got some garden harvest a few days ago, Not much. 1 zucchini an 1 small tomato. But they were good steamed together with some red onion!

I HAVE started getting italian flat pole beans and a few small cucumbers, but I forgot to take pictures (I had dinner on my mind). My first main season heirloom tomatoes are getting large enough to start developing color soon. The corn is sad again. I JUST don't get enough sunlight for them. They are tasseling at 3' high with 4" ears. The celery is actually growing. I've never successfully grown celery before.

The flowerbed is doing OK. I've kept the weeds clear better than usual, and the annuals are finally flowering. They are in one large patch where I had some runner grass invade. I kept digging it out and got rid of most, but I decided to just plant annual flowers there this year and dig it all up in Fall to get and the last of the runners. I basically just used up all my annual seed packets, so there are marigolds, carnations, salvia, forget-me-not and wave petunias in small groups. It will do for one year.

I need more sunlight. Over the 25 years here, the neighbors' trees have grown huge and I get 6 hours sun at best. I'm amazed I can still grow decent tomatoes (and they are getting leggier each year).

Kitty Litter and Trash Bags

2011-07-19T10:28:00.000-04:00

I think I set a new personal record. 18 buckets of kitty litter, 5 bags of trash (and they didn't smell a bit), and various non-recyclable stuff. And a 30 gallon aquarium that refused to be re-sealed. Old tape drives, a single CD player that was broken, Old fluorescent bulbs... Took 6 months. About 300 pounds, $5 flat rate because it all fit in the SUV.

See those small trash bags? Each is a whole month here. I recycle or compost EVERYTHING possible. Some stuff ISN'T possible. I wish I could have NO trash bags. But I do my best.

But it was a good day at the landfill. I resent leaving the litter buckets, but I ran out of space to store them and I can't find a use. I have used all I can as growing containers.

Any suggestions?

Weird Neighbors

2011-07-13T10:04:00.000-04:00

I had the strangest experience with some neighbors last night! Basically, my side of the street are homeowners, the other side are renters. The house across the street was rented by some nice quiet guy for 5 years. Last year, two couples rented it. They have been nutso from day one.

Right off the bat, there was a screamng late night fight between a guy and gal involving the guy trying to drive away and the gal standing in front of the car pounding on the hood. Good start. They generally sit outside on the side steps smoking, so I guess they are forbidden from smoking in the house. They also seem to love having screaming yelling arguements.

Did I mention they also love to work on cars with outstandingly loud bass stereos? At night and early morning? Yes. Yes they do.

They went at it again last night. Screaming hateful arguements. It penetrates my double glass windows and is louder than my radio plays. I lost it.

I went out and yelled at them to keep the noise down or I would call the police. I knew that was an empty threat. The police have better things to do than worry about domestic noise complaints. But one of the guys threatened to come over an beat me. THAT was interesting!!! But I was more worried about the threat to the woman there, so I went inside and got my cordless phone, flashlight, and camera and came back out to sit quietly on the front steps putting my flashlight on them. They especially didn't like THAT, but quite frankly, I didn't care!

There ARE times I am willing to sit in quiet evidence. I expected violence. I told them they were better than most "reality TV shows and I had 911 on speed-dial". THAT got some attention.

The guy got mad and said he could destroy a car. He got in his and peeled into the street, then into the driveway. I thought he was going to ram the car there, but he changed his mind and peeled off down the street out of the area.

The woman went and knocked on the neighbor's door. Several times over many minutes. With no reply. I know that that neighbor and they seem close in some way. But with no reply, I went to the street and again asked her if she needed any help. I was prepared to call the police, but she said NO!

Here is where it gets strange....

I ended up talking to her for an hour. She is the mother of the guy she had the screaming arguement with. And the (she says) ex-wife of the neighbor who refused to answer the door she was pounding on. I regretted getting involved immediately, but she had ahold of my wrist and wasn't letting go.

And she was drunk as hell! I suspect they all were. I drink a bit myself (I do like wine with dinner), but good lord, nothing like THAT! On my worst day, I was better off then them on their best day. You know what I mean? As far as I can tell, they are all permanently drunk. Or high (there were "druggie" accusations flying). It seems that it takes all 4 (5?) of them to manage to work enough to pay the rent on a 1 bedroom ranch house that I think goes for $500 a month..

But as I said, I talked to her for an hour (wrist freed). Such a sad story poured out. Bad marriage, cheating, divorce, hateful (and hated?) children. She had a cat she loved SO much, but lost it (I can't IMAGINE why it left, ahem). Ex living next door...

I pointed to the house next to mine ) on the "owner" side of the street) and mentioned that the guy there had an affair with HIS neighbor and that when it was revealed, she killed herself and he has become an absentee owner. She didn't even blink.

I think I need to move.

I can hardly conceive such a life. And I didn't USED to live in the wrong part of town, but I've been here 25 years and things have been changing. There was the first gang war here 2 months ago 2 houses away. A dozen kids with baseball bats going at each other and several police cars. Adults screaming at the police who were trying to stop the fights. Several cars (2 abreast sometimes) screaming down our dead end street to try to escape the police. I sure never saw THAT before! I guess I didn't notice what was going on. My current home is no longer my sanctuary.

Groundhogs, and a Rant

2011-07-13T01:37:00.001-04:00

I have a long-standing relationship with groundhogs. Most people have never seen one. I've seen too many.

I may have mentioned some of this before, but it started when my Dad was teaching my younger brother and I how to hunt. We had been to "marksman classes" at a local shooting range and shown that we could handle guns safely and hit a target with some skill. Visiting my paternal grandparents in NH when I was 13 (14?) Dad brought us to a field where groundhogs lived. We sat around for a few hours waiting to see one to shoot at.

This was before I was old enough to stop killing animals for sport. We saw none. But just before we left, Dad whistled in a way he had learned to attract attention from groundhogs. And one stood up a long way away. I aimed carefully and shot my .22 rifle. It dropped. Dad said I missed it, But I insisted we go find out. I WAS a good shot. But Dad never thought I could do anything well, s he laughed and said I missed it.

To his complete surprise, I nailed the groundhog right between the eyes. To my comfort these days, it probably never knew what happened. But I remember it mostly because Dad never even said "good shot". I expect he assumed it was luck. And besides, he thought I would miss it, so he SHOULDN'T be wrong. Had to be luck, then. No children were ever "competent" in Dad's eyes. He always made it quite clear.

A sad metaphor for our relationship the rest of our lives. His message to me was always "you are not as good at anything as I am". I could defend his attitude as challenging me to be as good at everything as I could possibly be. But I won't. He was just a mean son of a bitch!

Golf was another problem. He made me play it. At 5'6", I am not a natural golfer. I lettered in golf twice and soccer once in high school through sheer force of will (barely). Soccer was more natural for me, but I got no support for that. I was good enough at golf. But I didn't have the same swing as Dad and he was always on me about it. He had a classic swing, and I had a baseball bat-grip swing. It worked for me. In high school, I broke 90 often. Not impressive, but good enough for the last slot on the team. Dad kept messing with my swing. When I went to college, I got down to 85.

Now, I have to say, Dad was a really good golfer. When I was young and only caddying, I admired the way his tee drives started out low and rose to land straight down the fairway. He had a handicap of "0" at one point. He what what he was doing! But I couldn't do that with my proper swing on the best day. So I developed my own.

It worked for me. A good swing is whatever works for you. I once got an "eagle" on the hardest hole on the army base course. And Dad started messing with my swing again. I should have ignored him, but, hey, he was my DAD!

I started driving up to NH to participate in the Member/Guest tourneys in the early 1980s. It had a quota system. Something about every score below your handicap per hole, you gained a point. We lost every year. Dad had me using nothing but 5 irons on every shot through some idea he had. It was horrible! His game was about consistency; mine was "go for broke".

It ended when I was facing a pond out in the fairway and pulled out my 4 iron. Dad said to use the driver because I couldn't possibly reach the edge of the pond. I stayed with the 4 iron. And landed in the pond on the fly. He gaped. The pond was 250 yards away. When I hit the ball right, it is awesome, and I knew that.

From that moment on, I ignored everything he told me. I was pissed! And guess what? We won. He played his exact usual good game precisely meeting his quota, but I obliterated my quota by like 10 strokes.

That was the last time I played golf with him and the last time I played golf period! I was so tired of all the demanding pressurring crap that I had no interest in the game afterwards. I proved my point. I could play the game NOT his way.

End of angry rant.

Time is Relative

2011-07-10T04:55:00.000-04:00

What do you do when you don't fit a 24 hour clock? I was an early bird as a child, a reluctant waker as a college student. I managed to keep a schedule that got me up at 5 a.m., home at 6 p.m. and to bed by 9 p.m. for 35 years in a successful career. But now that I am retired and have no requirements or obligations, I can't keep a 24 hour waking/sleeping schedule. I mentioned recently that I was on a 25 hour clock. I understated it. Its worse than that.

Its more like a 28 hour clock. I go to bed and can't sleep for hours, then finally sleep for 8 hours on and off. I end up in bed for 12 hours. And then I don't feel tired for at least 16 hours. That's just not normal!

I have, at times, engaged in computer games or discussion boards way too late at night. I used to think it was because I loved the games or discussion. But I am realizing that I just wasn't tired. And who can go to bed when they aren't tired? What's the point of going to bed when you aren't tired? You can't sleep. You just lay there aware and awake.

Its nice to have the cats there to scratch. They aren't keeping me awake, but they are nice to have something to give attention to while I lay in bed frustrated that I can't sleep.

So I finally get tired of layin in bed and get up at 4 p.m. one day and 8 p.m. the next and dress to get the mail and the newspaper. I check the email. I check the cat blogs. I would say "depression", but I don't feel depressed. I enjoy doing things in the yard/garden and playing with the cats. I enjoy preparing meals. I enjoy listening to political and news TV. I feel fine physically. I'm just OFF the clock and not sleeping well!

There is a reason I am writing this at 4:30 a.m. I'm fully awake and not tired. I can't blame the cats. Iza sleeps peacefully in the corner of the bed. Ayla sleeps quietly on the top of the shoe shelf or on a pillow on a chair. Marley doesn't even sleep in the room. He likes the computer chair or a platform on the kitty condo. My personal clock is just all wrong....

It is really messing things up. I am NOT going to try and then get stuck on sleeping pills. That is not a road I want to travel. Well, thanks for just letting me complain... My Mom always said that "getting old isn't for sissies" and maybe all this is normal. But all the old people in my life just got up EARLY each day. I don't know what is going on.

An Idea

2011-07-05T00:52:00.001-04:00

Hey, I'm over 60, living alone.. And it occurred to me that it would be a great idea to have some telephone or USB device that ya could just plug in and punch a button every day to say "I'm Still Alive" to some company who would visit if you didn't punch the button for 2 days..

I can't find one. Does anyone know of one?

Well, Sadly, NOT The Finale!

2011-07-05T00:03:00.000-04:00

It seems the groundhog wars are not over. I looked out in the yard today to see TWO mid-size groundhogs at my flowers. I'M INFESTED by them! Granted, my backyard is semi-wild and rather wildlife-friendly and organic, but I didn't expect an invasion of groundhogs as a result. And being surrounded by nice suburban expanses of lawns on 3 sides and a swamp on the other, I would have guessed any problem but groundhogs. Where are they coming from???

But it does mean war. And I won't feel bad when I kill them in the future. One small family of them errantly finding a place in my yard is "touching", but waves of them is TOO MUCH! Even with a dead groundhog on their doorstep, they won't leave! How stupid are they?

I will be calling a trapper tomorrow to see what they offer, but in truth, I am a person not inclined to ask another to do what I won't do myself. My only question is legality. I'll have to call the county animal control office to see what I am allowed to do. And decide which rules I will ignore. I'll be damned if I will pay someone $200 to do what I can do for free..

If I have to kill more of them, I won't be as sorry as I was before. I'M PISSED!!! This isn't like squirrels in the attic, the groundhogs are eating my food! It is time to fill the pond and mete out watery doom.

That doesn't mean I will enjoy it. I won't. I wish they would just find a better home in an empty field somewhere. But I will be rid of them, one way or another!

Groundhog Wars, Finale

2011-07-03T23:28:00.000-04:00

A tale of regret and sadness... And don't read this if you are squeamish. Groundhogs were killed.

Some of you may know that I have been fighting with a groundhog this year. It burrowed in under my shed last Fall. I saw it several times running back to the shed when I went out to the garden. I got pictures of it with my GameSpy camera a few ties.

I used to hunt. I was good enough at it to get a deer several years in a row with bow&arrow. I stopped when I had to field-dress a lactating doe I killed. Milk ran out of her. My heart wasn't in it after that. I have generally tried to live and let live. When deer ate all the leaves from the pole beans one year and some neighbors sicced a dog after my cat a week later, I built a 6' fence around the entire back yard. Prevention is better than cure.

If I see an occasional possum or raccoon on the deck or in the yard, I live with it. Just yesterday, some raccoon or snake ate all the baby robins in a nest I was watching daily. And I don't mind what the cats catch and kill the occasional bird or mouse. Nature is nature, and I can't stop it. That doesn't mean I have to participate in it. BTW, I eat meat, so I am aware of my part in killing animals for food. They are raised to be food, and I support systems that kill them as gently as possible.

But I raise some of my own vegetable food, and I am protective about it. Groundhogs are a problem here. In the past, I have trapped them and released them in unoccupied fields. I read that was illegal. So I had to resort to other means.

I had a pond and have a Have-A-Hart trap I have used before. A dip into the pond, a minute of confusion, a few bubbles, and they are dead. Short of a .22 to the head (which I cannot do in a suburban neighborhood nor safely from a few inches away because of blood-spray), it is the least-sufferring way I can thing of. They don't seem frightened, just confused, Then "blurp" and dead.

But the pond is dry from a leak I cannot find, and with all the heavy rocks on the liner, I just haven't replaced it. I regret that very much today... I very much wish I had had a pond to drop her into. It would have been very much easier on us both.

It started when I heard a noise behind the shed while I was weeding the garden. I ran over to find 3 groundhog pups in a pile. I had a garden fork in hand, and I used it to kill them. In spite of her fear, Mrs Groundhog came out of her den to yell at me. I used the garden fork to set one dead pup in the burrow hole and one in the side of the shed.

I did not enjoy it. It was far more than slapping a mosquito or stepping on a cockroach. It was almost like killing a fawn. They cried. And I cried. I did not do physically hard work, but I was sweating terribly afterwards. It was very upsetting.

I caught Mrs Groundhog in the Have-A-Hart trap after, and tried to release her outside the fence. I expected her to run straight away from the house, but she ran straight around the fence back towards her den.

I hoped she would leave for a safer den after that, but she didn't. I caught her eating my lettuce the other afternoon. So I set the trap back up, unbaited, right in her most-observed exit point. She was in it today.

I could have spread plastic sheeting and filled up the dry pond temorarily. I wish I had. But wasting that much water didn't seem good either. People are dying from lack of water in places. I finally decided to "shoot" her with arrows. A small animal ought to die quickly from that.

I held an arrow just above her and slammed down a piece of 2x4 on it as a wide hammer. It didn't even penetrate her body. All it did was break the nock off the back. It took several other tries to actually stab through her. I felt sick. But badly wounded, she could not be released to die of infection after days.

There are some things you start that you can't stop. When you injure an animal badly enough, you have to follow through and end it. My Father was good enough to teach me that. When you injure a deer fatally with an arrow, you are obligated to spend all the time needed to follow the blood trail and finish it off to stop the pain.

I was good at that. One drop of blood in ten feet of woodland leaves, I could find them. Because it was only fair. You injure it, you kill it as quickly as possible for their sake. You kill it, you claim it and end your hunting season. Even if it is found days later and the meat is wasted. Because it is the right thing to do IF you are going to hunt animals.

I am very sorry that Mrs Groundhog lived an hour after being stabbed with arrows. If I could have thought of some less inhumane way of eliminating her from my garden, I would have. I wish I had refilled the pond temporarily. And it occurs to me now that my bathtub is bigger and deeper than the trap. I could have drowned her quickly in there.

But I don't want to kill any more groundhogs. Its the shed that attracts them. So I have decided to spray herbicides all around the edges, dig up the soil after a few weeks, and install mesh wire all around it.

I don't want to have to hurt another poor wild animal for just trying to live as best it can. Life is hard enough. Tangling with humans shouldn't be part of that. I don't want to have to kill another Mrs Groundhog again.

I an feeling rather horrible tonight. I don't want to feel that way again ever...

Cavebear

Gardening Day

2011-06-26T06:08:00.001-04:00

I had a great day out yesterday! I finally got all those annuals planted. Yeah, kinda late, but better late than never, right? I had carnations, salvias, wave petunias, marigolds, forget-me-nots etc in cell packs I grew from seeds earlier. And I finally found those basil herbs I thought I had lost.

I had a large spot that needed soil improvement, so I decided to plant all the annuals there. That way I can improve the soil in the Fall after they die. I got SO used to the County providing mulch for years that it was getting hard NOT to get it the past few years. I guess it became too costly to run the loading equipment, So without mulch to dig into the soil (after aging it 2 years), the soil was rather hard.

First, I spent 2 hours digging it loose with the leverage fork. That's a great tool. A spading fork with a bar on the back for leverage. All steel! It can REALLY pull the soil up. It is the best thing to dig up all the grass weeds, too. I have that nasty grass that sends shoots underground about 12" before sending up another grass plant. I've been fighting it for several years and I think I finally have it beaten to extinction. But that's why I wanted to fill the space with annual plants this year. So I can do a final dig this next Fall after the annuals die.

And they will give great color this year. Its a good idea to always leave some space for annuals, season-long color is a good thing.

It was actually awful outside today. Not the temperature, the mosquitoes. They were there in desperate swarms. The child strength DEET works fine for a couple hours. But they were at my face and ears all the time. Thank goodness the stuff works! 2 hours out there in swarms and I only got 3 bites.

Here is the space before I started. I had some sadly planted Knautia there. An utterly unruly plant.

I moved then to an enclosed spot where they shouldn't cuse a problem. Then I double dug the whole space. It about killed me. I filled the area with annuals I grew from seeds. They dont looklike much nowm but they will grow fast. and produce good flowers.

And here is the space when I was done.

Not much to see there yet, but they will grow fast finally put in the ground and given some sun. With some regular weekly watering, they will grow gret. I should have got then planted a month ago, but that's life...

I bet they will be stars of the Garden Tour in late July! But we will have to wait to see.

The Plant Light Stand

2011-06-23T03:26:00.001-04:00

I finally finished it. The final steps were awful. The 2-bulb fixtures had a metal strip that fitted into the center to hold the wires off the lights. Fitting them back in place upside down drove me NUTS!!! They just DIDN'T want to go in upside down. They wanted gravity. Or its opposite, levity... There were slightly bent spots all along the strip and it made it nearly impossible to get them set back in place.

Getting the 1st one back in took 30 DAMNED minutes! I was screaming in frustration. Then I forced myself to calm down an examine the problem carefully. There were some bent spots from removing them previously. I have a parallel pliers, and used that to re-make the edges are straight as possible. Eventually, I got the wire-holding metal strip back in place.

The 2nd one took only 15 minutes. I was getting the trick of how it fit in. Ans I did that 4 times. The last time, I had to crawl onto the bottom shelf and stare 6" away from the fixture. I can't see anything 6 inches away even WITH glasses. I'm, farsighted. I had to do it by touch.

Basically, you have to install the wire hold-up strips by squeezing them slowly along the entire length a little bit at a time. I was pleased when I finally completed that task! Here is what the stand looks like now.

You can see it better from an angle.

This shows the difference between the double 2 light fixtures and the single 4-light fixtures.

I have good storage on the top, and good storage on the shelves during the non-growing seasons, which is most of the year.

It was a longer project than I expected, but it will be great for many years to come.

You wouldn't believe how much my basement has been cramped out of place because of all this. I'll sure be glad to get it back to order. But that is for tomorrow!

But if I had it to do over again, I would have just made the whole thing 5' wide of 1/2" plywood 16" deep. It would have been SO MUCH easier. But, you go down a path and you are stuck on it sometimes.

All in all, I am happy with it, and I am pretty sure it will outlast me. Can't ask better than that, I suppose. But I'll always think I could have done it both better and easier.

Cat Fence Enclosure Idea

2011-06-15T21:50:00.000-04:00

Well, Ayla getting over the fence is difficult enough. Today I saw Marley descending into the yard. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell if he had tried and failed or was returning to the yard. But it makes the requirement to keep them in the yard more urgent.

I've seen systems of nets attached to fences at angles, but the cost is high per foot and I have about 450 feet of 6' high backyard fence. And I have seen where smooth hard plastic sheeting is attached to the upper 2' of fencing (which I suspect works well). But that is also expensive.

So I have been pondering other, less expensive, designs. I think I have one and want opinions on it. It seems simple enough, but I haven't seen it on any "cat containment" sites. I know I can construct it (it is uncomplicated but tedious). My concerns are first, will it work, and second, is it safe.

I would provide a sketch, but my Mac doesn't seem to have a simple drawing program that can be saved in the formats demanded by Blogger. I can't figure out how to do something so simple in Photoshop, and I can't save in the required formats from Word Art, Excel Draw, or Google Layout. And Photoshop won't open those to change the format.

But it isn't complicated. There is a 6' high alternate board wood fence. I can buy vinyl coated wire mesh fence in 2'x50' rolls. I will cut the rolls into 8' lengths and bend them 90 degrees the long way. That gives an "L". One part of the "L" gets attached to the fence, the other part makes a 1' wide "ceiling". In case I'm describing it poorly, it would look something like this:

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I could bend the wire at 45 degrees upward if that improved anything. The vinyl coated wire mesh costs only $27 for 2'x50' roll, is easy for a person to bend, but pretty stiff to a cat. I've been using the stuff as plant supports and cages for years. The vinyl couating makes it quite weatherproof. I'm thinking 8' sections because that is the distance between fence posts, plus I have a couple of 8', 4"x4" posts I can use to bend it. I can attach it with a heavy duty electric staple gun.

So, I'm looking for errors, and PLEASE don't hold back. Tell me ANYTHING you think might cause a problem in construction, in safety for the cats, or safety of wildlife. Or anything else. I spent a career as a project manager where negative ideas where often the most important contributions from the team.

So, thoughts?

ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!

2011-06-14T01:20:00.001-04:00

I love playing board games. Last week, I stumbled across risk.com. I LOVE that game. I stayed up til dawn 3 nights last week playing it over and over. Thankfully it's free.

What I love about games is figuring out a winning strategy. Then I get bored and try something new. But I haven't gotten around the computer programs in this yet. So I need to keep trying.

The first few nights, I lost every game. The second few nights, I won a few. The last few night, I won half.

Off I go to try again... I DO enjoy it. But it would be nice to get a whole regular night's sleep!

Ayla Out

2011-06-09T02:54:00.001-04:00

I kept Ayla inside for a year. It got so difficult that I decided to experiment letting her out as long as she wanted to be out. It wasn't an easy decision. The first time, she stayed out 3 nights. But the next two times, she stayed out 2 nights. Then one night. After that, she came in the same day she was let out for several days. I consider that a good arrangement.

She stays near the fence and has no desire to wander further to the street.

But Iza complicates things. Iza and Ayla and Marley all cuddle up indoors. They eat together, They play together. Iza likes Ayla indoors.

But outdoors, Iza considers Ayla an introoder. I cannot understand this.

This afternoon, when I called Ayla inside, she came running happily. But when I opened the door for her to come inside, Iza sprang out and attacked her. As a stranger and in apparent anger. Ayla fled over the fence.

Iza does not do this with Marley when he is out.

Iza only reacts badly to Ayla when she is outside. And just as she goes outside. Something about Iza says that Ayla is an introoder when outside. It baffles me.

Iza is a bully, but only when Ayla is outside, and not when Marley is outside or Ayla is inside.

Driving me NUTS!!! What is it about Iza that she reacts badly only when Ayla is OUTSIDE? It cant be outside smells. Iza has them, Marley has them. Iza loves Marley inside and outside. But Iza hates Ayla outside.

ARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Groundhog Wars

2011-06-07T02:24:00.000-04:00

If you are sqeamish, don't read further. I don't mean that I am showing bad pictures (there are none). But I am fighting with groundhogs that damage my garden. I mean, they destroy my food.

Today, while I was weeding the garden, I heard an odd thrashing noise nearby the fence and old toolshed where a groundhog had taken up residence. I had let Ayla out and feared she had tangled with the groundhog. She is, in some ways, stupidly fearless.The only tool I had on the way was a gardening spade. I grabbed it and ran toward the noise.

I may also be stupidly fearless.

When I got to the fence, I saw the groundhog run into the burrow under the old toolshed. I have GOT to make that space inaccessible! But I also sawsomethng else. 3 groundhog pups huddled together 20' away from the burrow.

2nd Warning: Violence ahead...

There I was with a garden spade, expecting to protect my cat from an adult groundhog. What I found was future garden-destroying varmint pups. I had the garden fork in hand. They had no flight instincts. I dispatched them as quickly as possible. I didn't like it, but I did it. Nothing needs be said further about that.

I did not enjoy it. But I thought it was necessary. Every year when a groundhog lives under the toolshed, my crops are ruined. That is my food. Last year, they ate all my cukes and most of my bean plants. I am determined to drive the adult away.

I scooped up one dead pup and put it in the entrance burrow. I moved a barrier board out of the way enough to place a second dead pup in there. If that doesn't make Mom Groundhog leave the property, I will take further measures. I am growing crops for ME, not her.

If I had a 10 acre farm and lost 100 sq ft to a groundhog, I wouldn't worry too much. But last year, I lost every cuke and bean. Between my organic safe food and the groundhogs, they are going to lose every time. I have been tolerant for years, but the tolerance has ended.

Mrs. Groundhog will die next! And I will bury mesh wire 18" deep all around the shed to prevent any new ones coming back in the future!

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When I was 14, my dad took my brother and I out to a huge field to "hunt" groundhogs. He had a whistle that made them stand up to look around for danger. Toward twilight, he whistled at them again. One stood up a long distance away.

I laid down for a careful shot. Dad laughed and said I couldn't aim that well. I pulled the trigger and the groundhog vanished. He said I scared him with the shot. I said I got him. I was insistent enough to make him walk with me to the spot.

There was the dead groundhog. I nailed him right between the eyes. He brought the dead ground hog home an made a stew of it. Trust me, it doesn't taste like chicken. He did it because he was being mean. I made him look wrong.

I hate groundhogs...

Some Days Are Just Good

2011-06-05T00:27:00.000-04:00

I love productive days! It doesn't matter much what I am productive at. Some days it is gardening, and it might be planting seeds, transplanting seedlings, or weeding large areas. Some days it is building stuff indoors. Some days it is cleaning the house. Some days it is organizing things. Some days it is as basic as cleaning out the fish tanks. Or other stuff.

It matters that I keep busy in retirement. It is easy to waste time. "Tomorrow" is fine... I don't work that way. I have less time left than I did when I was 20. I don't mean to say that bothers me all that much, I stayed busy when I was 20, too. But I don't want to sit around thinking I will do things tomorrow".

I could go into great detail (and I probably will in future posts), but lately I've weeded 500 square feet of flowerbed, planted small crops (carrots, radishes, kohlrabi, leeks, etc etc), trapped a threatening groundhog and a rabbit with a taste for cucumber seedlings, cleaned out and rehabilitated an aluminum bass boat with floors, created a new plant light stand for seedlings, destructed the old light stand, drained the hot water heater of mineral sludge, cleaned the washer/dryer/dishwasher/oven, rewired several basement outlets to code, and about finished the new plant light stand (which was a real piece of work)

And then there are the cats. I love them all dearly. At least Iza and Marley come in when called. Ayla doesn't. She likes to stay out a night first before returning. So I had the idea of letting her out as long as she wanted til she was bored and preferred the food inside. Its opposite feral adoption, in a way.

After Ayla escaped out a couple weeks ago and stayed out three nights, I have let her out regularly. She stays near the fence, just won't come back in when called. The idea is that I let her out enough so that she gets bored and decides the house is good at least at night. I don't know for sure that this will work

But she stayed out 3 nights at first, 2 nights the next 2 times, and not at night today. It MAY be that enough outside time equals more inside time. She sure loves my attention! When se comes in she crawls all over we seeking my scritches and neck rubs. So it may be that, let out enough, se will b more willing to come inside again.

I HAD TO relent. She had gotten so frantic to get outside after a year confinement that she would hide behind the drapes near the deck door, stalk behind me, etc. She just couldn't be kept inside anymore. As strong as my desire was to keep her in, her desire to get out exceeded that.

Yard Wildlife

2011-06-03T15:49:00.000-04:00

I bought a wildlife camera (GameSpy) in April and got some pictures, but forgot to post them as promised. Since Iza ran into the groundhog (which was caught in a live trap) recently, I remembered the GameSpy pictures.

There is more wildlife living under my toolshed than I thought! The shed is a foot above ground level, so there is lots of room underneath.

Some of the pictures don't come out very well. I need to read about the autoflash feature more carefully. This is a rabbit.

Here is the groundhog that I knew I had there, emerging from the entrance.

Here is the best picture I got of it.

Seeing a possum emerge from the same hole surprised me!

The groundhog emerged again soon after.

I'm sure they don't share the same burrow, but they do share the access hole to below the shed floor. The possum probably just sleeps in a corner under the shed. I have most of the rest of the shed access blocked by boards. But apparently the groundhog also tunneled through the compost bin. I surprised it once and it dove in there and vanished.

Odd Remembrance

2011-06-01T21:51:00.002-04:00

I was watching TV this evening, and saw a gas commercial. One part involved putting a gas nozzle in the inlet part. And I had a flashback to my first car.

My parents gave me a 1966 Pontiac Bonneville convertible for my 20th birthday (1970). It was a complete surprise! As a freshman in college, I wasn't allowed to park a car on campus (weird old rules), so there was little point in my having a car before. And I was never a "car guy". I just borrowed the family station wagon if I REALLY had to drive somewhere. Although I did get to drive the Lincoln for special dates.

But anyway, I was presented with a card with a car key in it when I turned 20. It was one of those shiny red or green duplicate keys from the hardware store. I assumed it was for the station wagon. I hemmed and hawed about what to say, because it didn't seem like much. I mean, I could use the car when I needed to already.

But then they pointed out the living room window to a different car. The Bonneville... I almost fell over. I was speechless. It was a great gift!

Here's the funny part that the commercial reminded me of...

After a week, I needed gas. I drove into a filling station (as we called them back then) and the attendant came around to fill it up (yes there used to be such people who actually filled your car with gas while you just sat in it).

He asked where the gas cap was. Think about that for a moment. He couldn't find the gas cap. I had just automatically driven to the pump on the side of the station wagon gas cap. I got out and looked. There wasn't a gas cap on either side of the car!

Don't laugh, but we actually looked under the hood for a gas cap. I'm serious. The attendant finally brought his boss out to solve the problem. He looked, laughed, and tilted the license plate down to reveal the gas cap!

It had a 26 gallon gas tank, too. Good thing, it only got 13 mpg! On the other hand, gas was only 29.9 cents per gallon then. I learned the gas tank size when I ran out of gas once and coasted downhill to a gas station and filled it up!

Who on EARTH thought to hide the gas cap behind the license plate holder? Apparently, the idea didn't catch on. On the other hand, I was always able to drive up to any side of the gas pumps available. But I'll just say that was one of the funniest/odder things that ever happened to me.

Just wanted to share a great old memory...

Memorial Day 2011

2011-05-30T14:42:00.000-04:00

Seedling Light Stand, Part 3

2011-05-28T02:34:00.000-04:00

OK, so I have the new light stand about half assembled. The 2 bulb fixtures were 1/2" longer than the shelves. I was thinking "4' light fixtures, 4' shelves with the supports on the outside, should fit". I should have checked more carefully. But it wasn't as if I was going to buy more light fixtures, so it didn't really matter. I had to attach them a little lower than planned. The fixtures have attachment holes in them, but I had to partially take them apart to get at them and drill though-holes so as not to drill the insulation off the wires inside.

The 4 bulb fixtures were easier in one way. The wires were channeled around the attachment holes. On the other hand, they were designed to hang from hooks on chain. So I needed to drill a hole through the fixture anyway. I ruined a drill bit trying to drill through what I thought was aluminum. It was steel. I should have checked with a magnet! That was a bit from my REALLY GOOD set of bits. I'll have to replace it. I partially disassembled THOSE fixtures... You may notice I keep having to do a lot of extra steps to make this project work. I was not thrilled, but having started down this path, I have to continue.

So I got out my metal step-bit and the drilling went fine. I reassembled the fixture and dropped in the bolts through the plywood. Did I mention the plywood? The rack comes with 3/8' pressboard shelves. Strong enough for shelving or plant trays, but not much to drive a screw up into from below or countersink a bolt from above to support the light fixtures. So I added 1/2" plywood below to hold the fixtures and counter-sunk the pressboard from below to cover the bolts. It works great. The resulting upper surface is nice and flat for the plant trays. Looks good too.

Here is the first 4-bulb fixture attached to the bottom of the 3rd shelf. The top shelf will be identical.

Except... You may notice a shelf support missing on the photo above (right side). That's because one was 2" too short! The box came with an information sheet asking that I call the manufacturer before returning the product to the retail store. My interpretation of that is "we make a lot of mistakes, please don't tell the store. Well, gee, it is about all constructed. It would be a lot of work to take it apart and the box it came in is all ripped apart. I emailed them about the problem.

The emailed back that a replacement shelf support is being shipped for delivery in 7 days. That's reasonable. I would have preferred a UPS overnight shipment on principle, but all my seedlings are outside now and the light stand is for next year.

Here is a photo of the plywood base I used and the fancy cover shelf. The are the same size, though the angle makes it look different.

It's been an minor adventure - more than building a box and less than building a shed. I seldom get to build anything to specifications. I end up having to craft things by trial and error. Drives me nuts. I have the genes of an engineer and the talent of an art major!

Which reminds me, I need to replace the roof on the shed. I didn't know about roofing paper 20 years ago, and now it leaks. Time to redo it right. That's on the list. The really really long list of major "to do"...

The lesson here is that I should have built the light stand as I originally intended. 3/4' plywood, 6' high and 5' shelves with the fixtures simply screwed right up into the shelf bottoms! Don't get me wrong, the new light stand will be great for decades. But the original plan would have been easier and worked as well.

Live and learn...

Seedling Light Stand, Part 2

2011-05-26T02:09:00.000-04:00

Well, at least I have some pictures to add for the assembly! And I have to admit, the assembly IS well designed and simple to do. The upright posts have "keyholes". Think of a hole with a narrower slot below. The horizontal side pieces have mushroom heads that fit through the hole and the "stem" of the mushroom heads fits the slots below tightly. The connections are indeed "rigid". You tap them firmly in place with a hammer (gently - I used a 2x4 and a deadblow hammer). So far, so good.

This is the old plant light stand. I am taking it apart as I transfer the lights to the new one. The old shelves had a 2 bulb fixture. The new ones have TWO 2 bulb fixtures per shelf.

Here are the old light shelves being disassembled. I really over-engineered the previous light shelf. I am learning to back off on the over-engineering.

Note the plywood shelf. I made those. It's tricky. The plywood shelf supports the light fixtures below. But since the supporting bolts stick up over the plywood, I needed to countersink the provided fancy shelfs from below. In other words, the top cover shelf has a hole in the bottom where the fixture bolts stick up. Does that make sense?

This is the new light shelf. There are now 2 light fixtures per shelf (4 bulbs). The fancy shelf sits on the light fixture supporting plywood

In this picture, you see two shelves assembled. The green box is a support of the light fixture so I can feed the support bolts from above.

Each of the rigid steel horizontal bars have a double curve to them. A lower curve is for strength, the upper curve has a flat surface that supports the shelving (a 2'x4'x3/8" engineered material). I initially thought it was a sort of rubber/resin, but it is pressboard. The instructions said it would support 800 poubds per shelf. It also said not to stand on it. Huh? I only weigh 160 pounds. They must have loaded the shelves VERY carefully to support 800 lbs if I cant stand on it. Well, I didn't buy it for the weight capacity. Plants aren't all THAT heavy!

Next. I complete (almost) the whole shelf rack...

Seedling Light Stand, Part 1

2011-05-24T02:41:00.000-04:00

A while back, I mentioned I planned to build a better seedling light stand. The current one has only a 2 fluorescent bulb fixture per shelf, and even with good daylight bulbs, I find the plants get leggy. I found 4 bulb fixtures at a decent price and bought a couple, thinking I could put two 2 bulb fixtures on the other shelves. I planned to make it entirely of 1/2" plywood, 18 or 16" deep and 5 feet long to easily accommodate the 4' fluorescent fixtures. I planned to attach cleats to the sides to hold the shelves. The light fixtures would be screwed right up into the plywood shelves. The shelves would be spaced at increasing distances so that growing plants could be moved to shelves further from the lights as they grew. Simple basic construction.

It was a good plan. I wish I had followed it...

But I saw an ad for rigid steel frame shelving at a really great price. It was 4' wide, 2' deep and 6' tall. Sounded great. The shelf supports were adjustable in 1" increments and the shelves themselves were 1/2" recycled material that could support 800 lbs per shelf. I measured the 4 bulb fixtures carefully and measured the floor display model. It seemed they would fit right under the shelves perfectly! It promised "easy assembly" (which, for its original purpose, was true). I bought it.

It weighed a ton! Well, not literally "a ton" but I couldn't even pull the box off the stack due to the weight and friction. I had to get a store person to help. The top box was broken open (probably items missing). The 2nd was fine. We got it on a flatbed cart. He assured me that there were outside people to help me get it in the car. I planned to take the box apart from in the car at home.

Needless to say, no outside person ever became available. In fairness, they were there, but backed up helping other people. I finally did manage to wrestle the box into the car. I'm not weak, but I'm not a weight-lifter either. Fortunately, I do know some simple mechanical principles...

But I should have known I was off to a bad start!

Next, assembling the stand...

Aquarium Leak

2011-05-22T13:45:00.003-04:00

It is almost funny. I was sitting watching TV an heard a little "Pop". I assuned the cats had whapped a pen off a desk.

But when I went to feed the fish, I saw a small puddle of water; only a couple of spoonfuls. Tracking it up from the base with a paper towel, I found the spot. There was a tiny fracture in a corner.

This is going to sound weird. To get at an old 20 gallon tank, I had to empty out an understairs closet I have not investigated in years. It was so old, I found a manual typewriter and an old 8 track player in there!

But the 20 gallon long was still waterproof, so I got the fish in there. I will try to seal the 30 gallon high with the silicone sealant I bought today. I'll give it 2 days to set, then add some water to see if the leak is fixed.

Seedlings, Yay!

2011-05-19T20:04:00.000-04:00

Well, I have seedlings of my large-seed crops up now! You may recall I had pre-soaked them a few hours and drained the water out of the individual containers to let the initial seedroots develop before planting them. It works really well! It is guaranteed germination. You have to handle the seeds gently so as not to damage the 1/4" root, but it is well worth it.

Of the 10 cukes I planted, 9 are up and there is time for the 10th.

2 of the three cantaloupes are up in each of the 2 places I planted them, as are 2 of 3 of the watermelon seeds and honeydew seeds in their single spots. In any case, it looks like I will have a good initial growth of those this year. We will see later if there is enough sun for the melons to ripen. I mention that because I have not had success with melons previously. But 2 years ago, I had a couple of trees removed that I think provides 2 more hours on sun on the garden. Last year was just bad all around, so that doesn't count.

The flat italian beans are emerging; only 2 so far, but I expect all of the 10 to emerge. I expected the beans to come up first because they are robust seedlings, but they ARE planted deeper, so I guess it balances out.

The heirloom tomato seedlings are thriving. They got 4 daylight fluorescent bulb treatment this year (2-bulb lights make them leggy) AND I waited a week longer to set them in the ground (til the soil temp was over 60F at the coolest). That seems to have helped. They are greener and stockier than in past years and the stems are noticably thicker after 1 week. I am looking forward to a superb harvest this year.

In case you are wondering why there are 2 cages, it is because something ate 1 of the seedling's top off and I had to replace it. The small green cage is to discourage the groundhog or rabbit (I have at least 1 of each in the fenced yard). I didn't know any mammals ate tomato plants! Well, that's why I grow extras...

I have 2 Brandywine, 2 Cherokee Purple, and 1 each Prudens Purple, Aunt Gertie's Gold, and Tennessee Britches. Everyone has their favorites and while Brandywine generally wins contests (and I love it too), here in MY yard with MY conditions and habits, Cherokee Purple is the winner. The taste is more complex, it is more productive, and it is more disease resistant.

I also have a hybrid Stupice as an early tomato, and a Sweet Million in a hanging pot for snacking in the garden.

I am not using the permeable red plastic groundcover this year (supposed to reflect the best light frequencies back up to the leaves). It may or may not work, but I noticed last year that water was not penetrating it. Maybe the pores get clogged after a few years. I don't want to have to buy it new every year!

I planted bi-color corn, too. It is just a 2'x3' block of 6 (its just me and I only eat one a day at best). But I will plant a 2nd 2x3 block next weekend and another 2 weeks after that for succession. I know how to maximize pollination in small plantings. In case you are wondering about that, you snip off a tassel each day and rub it around the silks for a week. If it is a really calm day, you can tap the stalks to make pollen fall straight down. If you REALLY want to maximize pollination, you can put a plastic bag over the stalks and THEN tap them. Here, 1 ear per stalk is good. This is NOT "corn country".

I don't know why I bother to grow corn. At harvest time, bi-color corn is available cheap. I should grow something more expensive like red lettuce That stuff is ALWAYS $2 a pound. Bi-color corn is sometimes 25 cents an ear. But its the challenge, I suppose. I stopped growing green bell peppers when they were 10/$1. But just once, I want to grow really good corn. Straight from the garden to boiling water in 1 minute!

The flowerbeds are doing great. I probably have them in better shape than in the past 10 years. I got them pruned of old stems early, got the beds weeded early, fertilized them with organic slow release 6-10-6 early (a blend I make from 2 sources), and (for once) I got cages around the large sprawling ones early! I let the cats show off the flowers in their Garden Tour Thursday posts. You can see that HERE.

OK, no plant in its perfect conditions should need cages. But I get less sun than they would like, so several are a bit leggy. The cages help that. With the slightly increased sun and good fertilizer, the troillus are standing on their own, the coneflowers are stockier and other larger patches of flowers are standing up aganst the weeklong heavy rains. OK, only 2", but it comes in heavy downfalls. In past years, they would all be bent over.

So things are looking promising here.

Catching Up On The Yard Activities, Part 2

2011-05-18T13:32:00.002-04:00

I have had the darndest time with the soil in the small crop bed. The soil is unusually clumpy. Not wet-clumpy, dry clumps. And they are hard. That is unusual. I can usually just crush them by hand easily. I even added compost this year. Maybe I dug the clumps up from deeper in the bed this year. I need fine soil for planting carrots and lettuce, etc. Fortunately, it has rained for 2 days so I think I can crunch up the hard clumps in a couple days. And maybe I better add a couple inchs of leaf-gro to turn in!

I cleaned out the small 5' pre-formed pond last week and siphoned it dry.

Then I repotted all the waterlilies and sweet flag, refilled it, and waited a week.

I added some mosquito dunk and was surprised to find ( a week later) that there were larvae all through it. I took a full dunk and crumbled it up all over. I am glad to see there are no larvae to be seen now!

So I added 4 small orange fantail goldfish to the pond. They like to sit under water plant leaves, so they are hard to spot, but I stood by the pond for a while and finally noticed them moving around. They stick together. I may put some netting over the pond to keep the goldfish safe. I had 3 that lived there for 4 years then all disappeared in a week. I suspect a raccoon.

I pre-soaked some other crop seeds several days ago. It gets the initial root started so you know which seeds are viable. Flat Italian beans, corn, cukes, cantelope, honeydew, and watermelon. I got those all planted just before the rains came Saturday.

So I'm waiting for the first seeds to come up. I'll bet on the beans to show first.

Catching Up On The Yard Activities, Part 1

2011-05-17T13:20:00.000-04:00

I should have been posting a few times the past week, but I get distracted by other things (cooking, cleaning, yardwork, cats, MSNBC, etc). So I will try to catch up a bit now.

I've spent the most time in the yard. Last week was wonderful outside. Temps around 70F, low humidity, mostly sunny. I was greatly encouraged to spend time outside.

First, I introduced Marley ( my new cat from January) outside for the first time. I got a harness he couldn't get out of. It was a trial to get him into it. Took tries on 3 days before I succeeded. But he was stunned to be outside and didn't fight the harness (much). It wasn't that he tried to get out of the harness, but tried to walk around things that would entangle the leash.

He couldn't figure out why he couldn't walk under the deck, or around poles, or through tomato cages lying on their sides. But he was happy to be outside so he didn't complain (too much) about being "guided" away from those places. He had a grand time outside until I brought him in (30 minutes the first day, an hour - twice - the second day).

Since he showed no signs of running or trying to escape the tall fence, I let him out free the 3rd day for an hour while I was out with him (close to him all the time). The 4th day he liked to just sit on the grass in the shade and wander around a bit. I feel free to let him out when I am out and Iza is out. Iza is protective of the yard and if a stray cat came in, she would be right at it before Marley had to defend himself (he IS still only 8 months old. Reminder: Get him microchipped next week! Just in case...

The Spring weather has been fluctuating so badly (highs of 50F one day, 80F a few days later) that I have not been sure when to plant the tomatoes. Tomatoes can be permanently stunted at 50F. It finally settled out last week and I got them all planted. I only like the heirloom tomatoes these days. I grow them from seeds. There are 2 Brandywine, 2 Cherokee Purple, 1 Aunt Gerty's Gold, 1 Prudens Purple, 1 Tennessee Britches. There is also 1 Stupice. It is a hybrid that matures fast. It hasn't worked well the past 2 years and this is its last chance here. And I better get the hanging pot with the cherry tomato set up soon!

The space to the right will be for bell peppers and basil.

Mothers Day

2011-05-08T01:05:00.005-04:00

I feel a bit odd today. This is the first year I don't send a Mothers Day card...

She died last Fall of "natural causes" at age 83. Her death was not unexpected. I've already not sent one birthday card. But somehow Mothers Day seems more specific. It shouldn't. She had her own birthday, and every mother shares Mothers Day. Maybe that's the problem. So many children got to send a Mothers Day card this year and, for the first time, I didn't.

I don't feel forlorn or lost or abandoned or anything. I'm too old and sensible for that. I miss her, of course, but it's that I had been making or sending cards to her for, oh, 55 years and it feels odd to stop.

Happy Mothers Day, Mom...

Lysimachia vs English Ivy

2011-05-05T15:08:00.034-04:00

OK. so I have about 20 sod chunks of the invasive Lysimachia 'Firecracker'. I also have a raised area in the center of the backyard that has become covered with english ivy (well, if you have a wild area, ivy isn't bad looking). The raised area is too rough to mow and I have considered at times hiring someone to level it, or turning it into a wildflower area.

I can mow entirely around the area, so nothing can actually escape.

That middle area as been a problem for 25 years. When I moved here, it was covered with thorny locust scrub. It took 5 years to finally cut them all down. Then it took another 5 years to actually kill all of them. Thorny locust is TOUGH. I read stories of farmers using the cut trunks for fenceposts, and the trunks would ROOT and start growing again.

So, anyway, now it is basically a area where english ivy has taken over, poison ivy keeps trying to get established, and tree saplings keep trying to get growing. And brambles love it. I can keep the saplings and brambles chopped down.

I'm going to plant the Lysimachia chunks every 5' throughout the english ivy and see who wins!

I know from several years experience that the Lysimachia grows so tall and thick that there are never any weeds in the patch. That's one thing I like about it. And it does have a nice flower and the purple foliage is impressive!

So I am going to see what happens for a few years. Which invasive plant do you think will win?

Corralling The Lysimachia 'Firecracker'

2011-05-04T17:57:00.082-04:00

I recently wrote about what I thought was Coreopsis 'Golden Gain' invading the neighboring plants. I discovered it was actually Lysimachia "Firecracker' (thank you Gardenweb Forum), which is a VERY invasive plant. It seems to be a type of Loosestrife, which is a real invasive family.

It had suddenly spread into some stokesia on one side and into some asters in the back. It had totally smothered a patch of Coreopsis 'Moonbeam'. It has fibrous matted roots that are impossible to disentangle from other plants.

It was sold to me as the Coreopsis 'Golden Gain' and since it had a golden flower, I didn't realize I had been sent a mislabelled plant. Fortunately, the vendor is making it as right as they can by sending replacements.

Still, I had to do a lot of hard work to correct the situation. As it actually IS a rather good looking perennial, I wanted to keep what I could. If I had a sunny spot surrounded by paved surfaces to fence it in (like driveway/sidewalk/house) I would have dug it up and moved it there. But I don't.

So my solution was to dig up the plants in the invaded area, install edging barrier around it, and replant the lost stokesia and asters. Looking back, I am thinking I should have just used Roundup! But all's well that ends well...

First, I dug up a foot around the area I wanted to keep, a nice 8' diameter circle. It was just like digging up turf sod and about as much fun. I am saving the dug up sod because I have an idea what to do with it!

Here is one side cleared out. Digging around the soaker hoses was not fun, but pulling them up through the existing plants and trying to nestle them back down afterwards seemed worse.

Here is a picture of them invading the asters in the back of the garden. They seem to spread the roots out 2' in Fall, then the new stems emerge suddenly in Spring. You don't get much warning. Last year, I thought they were self-sowing, so I snipped the flowerheads. Alas, that wasn't the problem...

After I dug them all out leaving the 8' circle, I dug a trench around them. Since they haven't spread under the path edging, I think more edging will contain them. It took a spade to cut through the matted roots, a mattock to dredge the trench, and a trowel to scoop out the soil. Loads of fun...

I threaded some old edging under the hoses through the trench...

And backfilled on both sides. The edging looks high, but that's because I removed a lot of soil with the dug pieces. I will have to add more soil to return it to level. The edging should be sticking about 1/2" above ground. Mulch will cover that.

You can just see the space for the 3 replacement stokesia to go.

Any Lysimachia that try to escape the edging will get a vinegar spray first, and a Roundup spray if absolutely required. And if the edging really won't stop it, I will make a cardboard circle around it and give the whole patch the Roundup! I'm taking a chance even giving these plants a second chance. But if they will stay in bounds, they'll have long happy lives.

Now what am I going to do with the parts I dug up? Future post!

Mowing Again!

2011-05-03T12:53:00.008-04:00

A few days old, but I didn't want to leave the subject of the mower repair hanging...

Yay! I got my mower back Saturday. I was about to haul out the old push mower, but the repair guy called Friday and said the riding one was fixed. The grass was getting a BIT high. Here are some pictures of the first swaths I cut...

The grass was 10" high! And I keep the blade 3" high for good grass health and weed suppression.

Another view of the tall grass.

And another. I would have felt embarrassed, but my neighbor's grass was the same height and HIS mower is working.

It took an hour with the old push mower to get all these corners and edges mowed clean. I sure am glad to have it back working!

My next big yard project is to reduce the amount of lawn I have...

Finished The Pond

2011-05-02T18:45:00.000-04:00

Not much to show. My hands got too muddy to take many pictures!

Basically, I had a dozen pots that were fallen over in the pond with the Sweet Flag leaves growing curved toward the light. I had a large pot of mixed clay and pea gravel to refill smaller pots, broken terra cotta and golf ball sized stones for weight in the bottoms, and a new bag of pea gravel to cover the soil on the tops.

I found the corner of the sunken patio a convenient height to do messy work...

Here is a stage in the procedure. The 2 pots on the right have had the stones put in the bottom, some clay/gravel soil added, then rooted portion from the original pots. I am about to add new pea gravel on top and move them to the pond.

This is the small pond with Sweet Flag around the ledge. There are 5 hardy waterlilies in the deeper center portion and several on the outer ledge. The lilies on the ledge (and half of the Sweet Flag) will be moved to the larger pond as soon as I replace the damaged lining.

I have a small water pump for the small pond. After it has circulated the water and filtered out the silt for a few days, I will add a few small goldfish.

At least I know now that I simply MUST lift all the pots each Spring and cut back the roots. And next year I will cover it with plastic window screen instead of clear plastic sheet so the pond can breathe but the Spring Peepers can't mate!

A Great Day To Be Out Yesterday!

2011-05-01T12:04:00.002-04:00

What is so rare as a day in Spring? Well in MD, they really are rare! The average temp this time of year is 70F, but that usually means days of 55 intermixed with days of 80. Finally, yesterday was actually in the upper 60s, which is MY kind of weather.

I spent almost the entire day outside. The major project was to clean out the small pond. I have a larger pond, but that project is for another day.

I have to mention first that I covered the pond with clear plastic because the Spring Peepers drive me crazy at night. If there was 1,000 it would be OK because the noise would average out. But I get just a few and there is a loud crok every minute or so. Its like the Chinese water torture! So, for sleepfulness, I cover the pond when they are mating.

The first thing I do in a major outdoors project is set up a rest station. Hey, I'm 60 years old! Chair, radio, beer. In the shade...

Here is the pond when I uncovered it. Live plants...

But purple sludge! My first thought was "red algae bloom" (toxic). I washed my hands frequently. I made a hole in the muck to get a hose siphon started.

It's easy. I just laid out one hose downhill and attached another from the spigot to it. Fill the first with water, disconnect, and get it in the "hole" in the pond fast. Here is the downhill end of the siphon hose.

It took an hour to siphon (hence the need for radio and beer), but it was finally done. Look at the mess I saw!

Meanwhile, as the siphoning was going on, I weeded the garden. I dug up quite a bit on some invasive grass. Nasty stuff that spreads by long underground runners. I used to know the name of it, but it escapes me now. Suggestions welcome.

When the pond was drained, I mucked out the bottom silt, Its great stuff for the compost pile! A pond skimmer net is good for getting that stuff out.

Because of the red algae(?), I sprayed it with chlorinated water. I don't know if that will kill it, but it sure won't help them any (search for WC Fields and moths). I scooped the remaining water out with an old pitcher and poured the rich silt-water on the neighboring flowers.

When I had the pond about as clean as I could get it , I refilled the pond center about 4" deep. That's so I can set the surviving plants back in some water tomorrow when the chlorine has mostly evaporated out.

They all need repotting. I tried that last year and failed badly. Some pots floated and some just fell over. THIS time, I have gravel to mix with the soil and bits of broken flagstone for the bottoms of the pots to weight them down.

The repotting was necessary because, 3 years ago, I discovered that the entire pond was a mass of roots. Stupid me, I didn't know that they grew roots out of the pots!!! And it had been 5 years since I planted them. I spent hours cutting the various pots apart (the roots were all intertwined). And that was in the cold March water (I still shudder from the cold water)...

But this year, it is going better. I have the stuff to repot them properly (read up on it at pond plant website). And I am going to put a waterpump in there this year to keep the water circulating. Does anyone know if those U/V filters really work? I might try one.

Getting The Garden Ready

2011-04-30T17:53:00.000-04:00

In between the near-daily rain last week, I got the garden beds prepped for the season. I had some free County-supplied mulch in a pile for 2 years, and it composted nicely. The stuff was like fine leaf-mould. So I added 3" to each of my beds

I took pictures of doing one of my 6 raised beds. Here is the composted mulch on top...

I added slow-release organic fertilizer. I blend it from 2 sources, but it is about 10-10-10. Then I turned the soil, twice, with a spading fork.

Then leveled it with a rake and tamped it lightly.

Consider it repeated 5 times for the other beds. I love the rake I found a few years ago. Its not a "bow" rake. This is a "leveling" rake. It is exactly 24" wide (useful for measuring) and has a straight bar on the back to make everything smooth and even.

As soon as the weather is right (about another week), I am ready for the tomatoes, peppers, melons, etc! Meanwhile, I am hardening off the seedlings. One hour the first day, 2 hours the next, etc til 8 good sun hours. I can hardly wait...

Marks (Murphy's) Law

2011-04-21T00:28:00.001-04:00

I love my riding lawn mower. But it seems to develop a new problem every Spring. This year the choke knob broke off in my hand.

I'm one of those people who NEVER have normal problems.

My "Top 30" plant provider sent me the wrong plant 5 years ago and it turned out to be "wickedly invasive".

My twice-spayed cat STILL goes into heat.

Any repair problem is "Wow, I've never seen THAT happen before.

My "Murphy's Law" event is what "Can't happen", does.

So, naturally, the choke knob problem was "that doesn't happen". Well, it did. I pulled the choke out as usual a few days ago and the shaft snapped right off. I could feel it. And it just came out loose when pulled. You can't start an mower that needs the choke adjusted when you can't adjust it... I felt around inside the engine compartment to see how it was attached, but couldn't see a clue to how to get at it. It turns out later that the entire gas tank has to be removed. "Not something I want to mess with".

So I called a guy who will come and fix mowers on site. I've used him before. He does good work and is honest and his deal is "fix on site". But to be honest, he usually has to take the mower away. But at least he will do that. He did something neat that I will have to remember. He bypassed the choke by spraying carburater cleaner down the removed air filter! That primed the starter! Hey, I didn't know. Maybe you did. LOL! I'm a gardener and woodworker. When it comes to engines, I'm lost. I have 2 gas chainsaws in the basement and I can't make them stay running. That's why I have an electric one. It always works!

So he started it right up (Starting the mower was not the problem when the choke lever worked) and drove it onto his truck. If I had known that trick before he came, I would have mowed the lawn first. It is already 4" high and growing. When I get the mower back in a week, it will be 6-8" high. This time of year, you CAN actually watch the grass grow!

Mis-Labeled Plants

2011-04-18T08:00:00.000-04:00

I ordered Coreopsis Golden Gain and got THESE.

Any idea what they are?

Busy Time

2011-04-18T00:00:00.001-04:00

My apologies, I am a bit busy these days. At day, it is garden time, so I am either working hard or recovering from it. And at night I watch MSNBC or videos. And have I got a great video... I saw bits of it when it was on Cable, but I have the whole DVD set now.

I'm obsessed with HackDotSign right now.

In the series, there is an interactive world-wide internet game called "The World". Sort of a Sword and Sorcery world, but much more involved inter-personally than that. The trick here is that there is one character who cannot logout and isn't sure what "the real world" is. And he is a real jerk to most people. Not in the mean or cruel sense but because he has no real-world connections and can't relate.

I think he may be in a real-world psychiatric ward or involved in an accident (in the show).

And he has problems, a mystery he is trying to solve, and some mysterious friends no one else can see. And some he can who are trying to help him but he can't understand that. I watch a couple hours of that each night, but I think there are at least a couple of week's worth.

So I am kind of preoccupied for a while. Sorry... I'll visit when I can.

The cats are happy, they get to sit on my lap for hours.

If you ever saw the series, let me know that you liked or didn't like it. OK either way. And for whatever it means, I sure would like to be like the character "Bear".

And I don't know how it ends, so please don't mention anything about that.

Mark

A Bit Of A Report

2011-04-15T23:17:00.001-04:00

Sorry I haven't been posting here regularly. I get more involved in the Mark's Mews blog about the cats. Their pictures are more interesting. And I haven't been very active with home projects lately. Weeding the gardens is not very exciting, and everytime I want to go to the local project store to get wood, it starts to rain. So (for example), my plans to build new plant light shelves is still on hold...

And my gardening work tends to end up on the cats' blog. I'll have to find a way to balance that. "They" get to show off the results, so I will have to start posting more about the weeding and digging here. Fortunately, I have a few dozen new plants on order, so I will have some new things to show soon.

One major effort is too enlarge the areas of successful plants. When I started flowerbeds, I ordered "6 of this" and "9 of that". The results were a bit chaotic. I am moving more toward larger areas of the ones that have done best. And bringing several small plantings of one plant together. For example, I have 18 astilbes in 3 places and I think it would look better to have them all in the one place where they seem happiest. The two other places, they just struggle to survive. One place is too sunny and the other is too shady.

The back of the flowerbeds has always been unsatisfying. I originally planted 5 butterfly bushes, interspersed with 2 euonymus shrubs, 2 spring flowering almonds, and some nandina. And the butterfly bushes are so old that the yearly prune-back has made them weak. Even perennials don't thrive forever. The euonymus shrubs are twice the claimed size and are shading everything. Plus they send up shoots everywhere. It is time for a clean sweep of the background shrubs. That is going to be a job removing them all, but it will be worth it. And I may be able to use some of them in other parts of the yard.

I plan to plant new smaller red butterfly bushes, put nandina in between for winter color, and move the euonymus along front creek for privacy and erosion control. They can grow full size there. I haven't thought of a good place for the spring flowering almond shrubs, but they are only interesting for a couple of weeks each year so they may not be much of a loss.

Meanwhile, I did do a lot of weeding the past week. Every location has their own annoying weeds, but mine are purple deadnettle, some creeping grass that spreads through runners, and some damn little plant with tiny white flowers on it (and the seeds jump away when the plant is touched. The good news is that I think I got at them this year before they could go to seed. There are others like thistle and dandelion, but they never get to seed here, they just grow from windblown seeds in other yards and I can't stop that.

I don't have many weed problems, usually. This was a great year for the purple deadnettles though.

They are all OVER the front lawn. I'm never seen this before. They apparently love sunlight because they only grew beyond the shadow of the house. Well, they only live a few weeks, so it could be worse.

They do annoy me though, because I maintain the yard organically and it mostly works. I apply corn gluten each Spring and Fall, and that stuff supresses initial root development, and mowing at 3" usually shades out most weeds. Here's an example:

This is a view down my property line. My yard is on the left. My neighbor uses synthetic weed killer and major fertilizer stuff and mows his lawn down like a pool table. I mow my yard to 3" and use organic stuff. Biggify the picture to see where all the dandelions and crabgrasses are... And my grass IS greener without anything added but the 9-2-2 corn gluten.

Yes, he doesn't have the purple deadnettle. I have to think about that one... But I bet if I took a core sample of his lawn and mine that the soil is richer many inches down in mine and almost dead in his.

And here's something else. I have honeybees in MY yard. I don't think they live IN my yard, but they sure come here to feed.

In fact, it was becoming hazardous to walk around the yard before I mowed the lawn deadnettles down. Don't worry, they still have plenty to feed from, there are large unmowed areas. But I have difficult childhood stinging issues and the memories remain... So where I walk, it is mowed.

Oops, I Completely Forgot...

2011-03-24T19:14:00.001-04:00

...to post about the storage/cat room. I KNOW I wrote about it, so I must have deleted it somehow... Or I transported to an almost-identical alternate universe AGAIN and in THIS one I didnt post about it (This seems to happen a few times a year - LOL!). ;)

Anyway, at least I intended to (see here at Feb 16th Item 4), and I DID do the project on March 9th. So here is the missing post...

When my parents stopped traveling, I sold the guest room furniture to make it a storage room. But when I got my 3rd cat (Marley), I decided they all needed a playroom. So I decided to combine the two ideas. The long sold wall of the room would become storage and the rest a cat play room (The "Mewsroom").

I checked for the depth I needed for boxes, vacuum cleaners, the carpet cleaner, etc; located the wall studs that would accept those things. Naturally, the nearest stud was 2" too narrow, so I had to move out to the next one. That was more space than I really needed to store stuff, but I will probably appreciate it in the future (if I'm IN this dimension in the future).

So, the concept was to take about 2' of the room and hang drapes to make a storage space and make the rest of it a cat playroom. I tried to find drapery rods that could bear the weight (I have some old but nice drapes), but rods are not designed to float 2' out from the walls and I didn't want to go into the stipple ceiling for vertical support. I checked out a few other ideas at home stores. But what I ended up with was a 1" iron pipe.

Now, the iron pipe comes in 10' length and the walls were 10' 3" apart. Pipe couplings only add 1/2". So I thought about that. The 2 ideas I came up with were"

1. Attach 1.5" boards to the walls (1.5 plus 1.5 makes up the 3"), or
2. Hang the pipe from 3" corner braces

If I had used the boards, I would have have to fancy them up. Plane them to size, sand them, chamfer corners, stain and finish them, etc. I just didn't feel like doing all that. Maybe I will next year. I went with just hanging the pipe on corner braces. Hey, I had other things to do, and the gardening projects can't be delayed at this time of year!

So, there I was deciding to hang drapes from a 1" pipe. I decided that wouldn't work. Drapery hooks don't slide over pipes. But shower curtain rings do! Which gave me a further idea. Why not get some nice light outer shower curtains?

I attached the corner braces to the stud. The board was there to hold the other end of the pipe. I couldn't be at both ends.

When I maneuvered the pipe onto both braces, there was enough movement for the pipe to slip off one.

So I added wood blocks on both to keep the pipe from moving. I'll screw the wood in place one of these days...

Here is a clear picture of the shower curtain pattern. Not to plain, not too busy, not too cute.

And the closet is looking better.

The lamp will be hung up soon.

Games I love, using some freed-up space!

Here are a few pictures of what I wanted to hide behind the curtains...

Here are some of what it looked like afterwards...

That cats loved the changes...

Isn't that a nice curtain to hide stuff behind?

Plans

2011-03-20T21:42:00.000-04:00

I have my tomato seedlings started. Plus peppers, celery, lettuces, and a bunch of flowers. More to come fast on the schedule!

But it bothers me that my plant stand only has 2 bulbs over each shelf. I use daylight and/or plant light bulbs in them, but it seems my seedlings are always "leggy" (long and thin). So I decided to change to 4-bulb fixtures to increase the light the seedlings get.

The stand for the seedlings is an awkward size. Prebuilt shelf systems are 4' long. But the fixtures are a couple inches longer. So I have to build one to suit the fixtures. The important considerations were strength, cost, and ease of construction. I'm fine with general carpentry, so I sketched and priced several designs...

1. All plywood - I can make it all 1/2" or 3/4" plywood with a good sanded outside surface. The "pro" is that it is all same size solid pieces. Stainable. Three easy 16" wide sides, top, bottom, and shelves per sheet. And plywood is stable. Cons: Would need 1"x3" board attached to the shelves to resist bending under weight. And lots of ugly (to a woodworker) plywood edges.

2. 1" board - 1" board frame and shelves. Pro - Easy wood to handle and cut. Stainable. Easy to make dado cuts for solid shelves. Cons - Have to join two 8" boards to get the 16" depth I need for the 4-bulb fixture on all pieces (sides, top, bottom and shelves). I can do that and it would be strong, but that's a lot of extra work. And dado cuts into 1" nominal boards have to be shallow. Boards more likely to be "unperfectly straight" in all dimensions.

3. 2" board - 2" board frame and shelves. Larger "glue and screw" edges. More solid in appearance and actuality. Little support needed. No concern about shelves bending under weight. Dadoes can be deeper, so more solid. 2" Boards are usually straight. Cons - Heavier and inelegant. Wider dadoes needed. Bulky-looking.

I considered combinations of 1", 2", and plywood cases and shelves, but didn't see any advantage, and the imagined results were practical but ugly. The cost of all the above ideas turned out to be from $105 to $128 so the cost is not a concern.

I have decided to go with a solid 2" frame and shelf design. True, I will have to join 8" boards at the edges, but I have a joiner edger machine and biscuits to attach them flush. Not as easy as plywood or 1" boards, but stronger. And something I will be happiest with in the long range. Those 2" boards will never sag under the weight of the 4 fluorescent bulb fixtures! I built a plant shelf once; I don't want to have to build another!

The shelves will be of graduated heights. Shelf #1 is 3" below the lights, shelf #2 is 7", shelf #3 is 10", shelf #4 is 13", and shelf #5 is 16". That lets me move the seedlings to only a couple inches away from the lamps as they grow. And with 4 bulbs, much sturdier seedlings anyway!

Oh, and the existing 2 bulb fixture plant stand? I bought 2 new 4 bulb fixtures. That will take care of 2 shelves. The 2 bulb fixtures on the old stand will be removed and doubled under the other shelves so there are 4 bulbs under each one.

The old stand is destined to be moved to the Mews Room to become a cat exploration area with cat-sized holed cut out randomly in the shelves...

Pictures to follow as I build the new plant shelves this week!

Eyeglass Fun, Part 3

2011-03-11T13:08:00.001-05:00

Writing yesterday's post reminded me that I had had 2 pairs of the previous prescription and ruined one. The frames had a tendency toward loose screws. I brought the previous back to For Eyes several times for that (after searching the office carpet for lost screws at least twice). They simply re-installed screws (Duh, I can do that).

I finally decided to epoxy the lenses to the frame and end the problem. Now, I'm a reasonably "ept" repair person. But I sure chose the wrong way to do it! With my slightly shaky hands, attempting to apply epoxy inside the frame rims and then getting the lenses back in while also trying to tighten the frame scres, I botched it big time! I had epoxy smears all over the lenses...

I contemplated the disaster. It wasn't the frame, it was the simple little screw. On the OTHER pair of glasses, I dabbed the tiniest bit of epoxy into the screw hole with a toothpick, tightened the screw and the problem was solved forever!

Man, I can be stupid sometimes!!!

I will do that with the new frames as a pre-emptive measure...

Eyeglass Fun, Part 2

2011-03-09T14:39:00.002-05:00

Well, better news about the new eyeglasses today! Previously, I mentioned how I had 3 botched appointments with the Dr at For Eyes. I had exams there before and they were excellent. But they seemed to have lost the ability to manage the appointment schedule (an estimated minimum 1.5 hour extra wait each time), so I went right around the corner ta another place.

THAT exam went just fine, but their frame selection was AWFUL! All the frames were expensive designer types at ridiculous prices ($200+ for one frame, and I wanted two) And being "designer frames", they were the size of postage stamps. Sorry, I don't want to even SEE the frames when I wear them.

And I told them that when I went in for the exam. It's why I didn't go there first to begin with! So I got done with the exam, paid for it, and they wanted to say "bye-bye". Wait, I need the prescription!

"Oh gosh, the Dr is with another patient now and you'll have to wait.. Um, wasn't it obvious I would want the prescription? Probably, but they wouldn't get paid for that.

Revenge time: I spent 10 minutes pacing rapidly around the waiting room. That disturbed them. Finally, a clerk came over and said they would have the prescription faxed to where ever I wanted. Good!

So I went back to For Eyes, with the great selection, walked in, and said I want your 2-for-1 deal on these (showing them my current frame). They had them at 2 for $109, great. They got the prescription faxed, I paid and left.

I picked up the new glasses today. They fitted them perfectly in 5 minutes and I was out of there! They work great; I can read small print again, and the newspaper and computer are easy to see.

Too bad the good appointment scheduler at one place didn't work at the place with the good frame selection. They'd all be rich.

But all's well that ends well (to coin a phrase, LOL) and I can now laugh about it. Until next time...

Seedstarting Fun

2011-03-07T15:03:00.002-05:00

Is there a rule in life that nothing can ever just go smoothly? I ask because I went to start my garden seedlings a couple of days ago and it was harder than it should have been.

Now, maybe I am fussy about my seed-starting, but I have 40 years experience at it and I know what works best. You start seeds indoors, and you want sterile, unfertilized non-crusting soil. That means something called "seed starting soil". It is finely sifted, loose, and no fertilizer that encourages fungal growth to kill the seeds.

It was time to start my tomatoes, peppers, etc. The home stores did not have seed-starting soil available! What???

They said the demand wasn't high at this time of year. But THIS is the time to start seeds! The garden-department guy just looked at me weirdly, like maybe I was a communist. After visiting 2 other home stores, I went home defeated.

But I checked my supplies. Seed-starting soil is milled moss, vermiculite (or perlite), and sand. I had the first two, but no sand. And I found a bag of potting soil with almost no fertilizer (0.07%). I made my own!

The potting soil and the sphagnum moss had chunks of stuff in it. I tried using a kitchen sieve, but it was too fine. The kitty litter scoop on the other hand worked GREAT (cleaned and dried). 3 parts sifted potting soil, 1 part sifted sphagnum moss, and 1 part vermiculite, well stirred, and I was in business!

The sifted-out stuff will go in the regular potting mix for houseplants and outdoors containers. They won't mind the extra material at all.

So I have my heirloom tomatoes, hybrid bell peppers, broccoli, and various annual flowers going just fine now. The tomatoes, etc are upstairs where it is warm to germinate best. The flowers are in the basement where THEY germinate best, and the petunias (that need light to germinate are under artificial "daylight" lights.

At least the new season is started!

I guess that, in the future, I will have to buy my seed-starting soil later this year for next year! Glad I have a storage shed...

Eyeglass Fun

2011-03-03T16:03:00.000-05:00

Well, the old eyeglasses have gotten weaker and scratched, so it was time to get replacements. It started last Fall. I went to the place that gave good service previously and arranged an exam appointment. When I arrived, the Dr was three (30 minute) appointments behind. So I cancelled and went home. I'm not one to sit and wait.

In January, I made another appointment. The Dr was again behind by three appointments.

Last week, I made an appointment for the first appointment of the day. He can't be behind schedule then, right? Wrong! Some twit in the office made earlier appointments KNOWING he would be behind schedule from the start!

I walked out, went to the nearest other eye Dr and scheduled a new first appointment on condition that there COULD NOT BE earlier ones. I was assured there would be no earlier ones.

And there weren't! I had a thorough exam and even was shown pictures of my retina and blood vessels on a computer. Mine are (fortunately) GREAT/PERFECT/YOUNG-LOOKING.

I should mention I am farsighted and need only reading glasses for the computer and newspaper. To those of you who need glasses all day, I AM truly grateful for my otherwise good vision. Not like it is something I accomplished myself; I have to say I had good parental genes.

The Dr said I had no serious eye problems, but I AM getting older and "chit happens"...

I looked at the frame selection and was seriously disappointed. All were small frames (the new fashion?) and ridiculously expensive celebrity-name brands costing $200 and up. PFFT! I told them I would have to take the prescription elsewhere. So they knew that.

So it came time to pay. No problem there, except they gave me a receipt for the eye exam and said, "well that's it". Um, prescription please? Stunned silence at the desk. "You need a prescription? Well the Dr is with a patient and it will be about 30 minutes". Man, once they had all the money they were GOING to get from me, I ceased to exist. After pacing around the small shop for 20 minutes, though, I guess I got annoying. a clerk offerred that they could fax the prescription to where ever I choose a frame. How kind of them...

5 minutes later, I was back at the original place, showed them my current eyeglasses (large enough so that I can't see the annoying frame), found the identical ones (two for $99), and told them to get a faxed prescription. They did and I was out of there in 10 minutes. The glasses won't be ready for a week, but that's is OK.

So one eyeglass place cant manage a schedule in three attempts but has great frame selection and is good about taking a prescription order, and the other is good about managing a scheduled appointment but has limited and expensive frames.

A pox on all their houses! Or maybe they should merge.

Various Stuff...

2011-02-28T23:51:00.000-05:00

I help the cats blog so much I start to lose track of my own stuff at times. So it is time to catch up a bit.

It is time to start my garden veggie seeds. The basement is, quite frankly, a mess! All Winter long, I just kept "doing things" and never mind the clutter. There was always time to arrange things for the early seed plantings. LOL, guess what time passed? Yeah, it is time to plant seeds and I am SO unready for it.

Grandiose plans for better seed/light planting shelves are now forgotten and I have to make do with the old structures. I have almost no southern light to help the plants, so I depend on fluorescent bulbs. Even the best ones are inherently weaker than real sunlight. I had thought to widen the shelves to increase the 2 bulbs to 4. I had thought I might add mirrors behind the shelves and in front to increase the reflected light. But I didn't.

So, what I did today was the best I could. I cleaned and reorganized enough space in the basement to collect all my gardening seed-starting materials into one place. I was actually leased with the results, though it is not worth a picture. If you want to picture it, just imagine a workbench with 10 sq ft empty space where there was none yesterday. :)

Well, at least I have THAT! And I sorted through my various bags of soil amendments to see what I had for a good seed starter blend. The local garden centers don't even have sterile soil-less mixes available yet. I am thrilled to see that I do have vermiculite, milled peat moss, fine sand, and some sterilized loam left over from last year. At least that will get me started!

On other news, Marley the cat is getting used to the new home. He is the fastest adapter I have had in decades. The others hid for several days, but Marley was ready to come out and find his place in the house after the first day.

He plays with Iza mostly. Iza outweighs him 12 lbs to 6 pounds, but he is fearless. It was a shock to Iza at first because she was "Top Cat" mostly by virtue of weight. Marley pounces from anywhere! At first, Iza was quite upset and poofed her tail and whapped him hard, but lately it has become more cooperative play with them taking turns chasing and then curling up together.

Ayla is the "odd cat out". As a small cat (yet the oldest) she never has been one for aggressive play. I think she is getting used to it though. She isn't doing the "chase and wrassle" that Iza and Marley do, but she does a certain kind of "you can't catch me" game with Marley. She hisses mildly, then provocatively hops OVER him several times then runs off. I think she is showing him that he really can't pounce her because she is just SO much more agile than he is.

That doesn't stop him from trying, of course. He's only 6 months old and braver than he is experienced. Marley chasing Ayla is like Marley chasing a shadow. When when she lets him get close, suddenly she is up on the top of the closet door and he is looking around for her on the floor.

The crocuses are starting to bloom! Yay! Spring is coming.

I made a hamburger yesterday. That may seem bland. But I ground up the meat (short ribs) myself. I sauteed mushrooms, red and green bell peppers, and some onion. Then I made a mayo/mustard mix with some minced garlic. What a great topping! I've had worse (good) steaks!

Tomorrow, it is back to cleaning the basement. There is so much more to do!

Some Mid-Winter Garden Clean Up

2011-02-24T14:55:00.002-05:00

There were a few days of warm weather here recently, and I took advantage of it to do some garden cleanup! Most of the perennial flower stems get left up deliberately, as the finches really love getting at the seeds. But most of those have been all eaten or broken off and on the ground. And I keep a nyjer seed feeder filled for them all year, so they are fine.

The other stuff (old tomato, pepper, asparagus, and corn) could have been cleaned up at any time, but I was too slow for the first hard freeze. So when I realized the ground had thawed enough to pull them, I did so.

"BEFORE" PICTURES:

Peppers...

Asparagus...

Tomatoes...

Monarda...

Herbs...

"AFTER" PICTURES:

Peppers...

Asparagus...

Tomatoes...

Monarda...

Herbs. Well, I only had to take the dead parsley plant out. Actually, I think I will plant something else in that spot. I hardly ever use parsley. The others are perennial (sage, thyme, oregano, chives)...

There are still other parts to clean up, but it was getting dark and the ground will be frozen again for at least a week. The sedum and baptisia need cutting razing, and I'll need to cut the butterfly bushes back soon.

But I may replace the butterfly bushes. They are 15 years old and seem to grow weakly the past 2 years. Thinner branches come from the trunks. I think there are better varieties available recently. More compact, but with steadier repeat blooms. And as my selection of other plants has changed over the years, the purple butterfly bush flowers don't stand out as well as they used to. I think red would be better!

Also, you can see in some of the pictures that the soil level has dropped as organic amendments have been used up and some washout has occurred. Fortunately, I have a good pile of mulch that have been composting for 2 years and is now friable "soil". Time to add all that into the beds.

It's not that I haven't added good organic fertilizer to the beds the past years, but bulk counts too. And nothing beats good compost for THAT!

Busy, Busy

2011-02-16T23:58:00.000-05:00

I'm glad to see the weather getting a bit better and the days longer. I am finally becoming more active again! The warmer weather is a bit of an anomaly (will have gotten above 60 three days this week if the forecast is accurate); the normal is 45 and we have been below that all month! I can't wait for daylight savings time to start in under 4 weeks. I don't schedule my day by sunlight, I schedule it by TV. Hey, I LIKE late-night TV, so it staying lighter by the clock helps me get more done.

I've gotten more done this week so far than most whole weeks in darker Winter. I can't really say "Seasonally Affected Disorder" because I have never sought a medical diagnosis, but I know the symptoms and they fit me. I just assume I have a moderate case of it.

So, it is Wed night. What did I accomplish the past 3 days? (This isn't a competition, just a personal list)

1. 5 loads of laundry.
2. Make a quart of spaghetti sauce from scratch. Well, OK, I didn't grow the vegetables. If you really want to say "from scratch", you have to start with "1. Created The Universe". You know what I mean.
3. Found 3 bags of unused Spring Bulbs (crocus, daffodil, and tulips) and potted them up. I used all the pots of various soils leftover from last Fall. They are stashed outside covered against squirrel attack. There aren't enough "chill days" left this Winter, so I will have to make room in the basement refrigerator in late March to make up for the delay in planting.
4. Bought hardware to hang drapes across the Mews Room wall to hide vacuum cleaners, carpet cleaner, boxes of surplus linens, cases of cat food, boxes of old magazines I want to keep, my telescope-on-tripod, and "other stuff". That doesn't mean just attaching a curtain rod. I'll explain that when I actually install it in a few days.
5. Cleaned up part of the basement. Much more to go, but I made a good dent in it.
6. Collected boxes to bring to the recycle center.
7. Tied up 5 bundles of newspapers to bring to the recycle center.
8. Read a week's worth of newspapers (I get behind sometimes).
9. Stacked 15 tubs of used kitty litter behind the car so that I can load it Thursday to bring to the landfill. That's not as bad as it seems. The kitty litter is tied in plastic bags in the tubs the new litter came in. In the cold garage, in the tightly-lidded tubs, there is no smell at all.
10. Took, uploaded, processed, cropped and resized about 300 cat pictures.
11. Reorganized all my garden seeds in my "numbered vial system" to add the new ones and get all the scatterred types together. Now all my tomatoes are together, my lettuces together, etc. Retyped the entire list and printed it out in triplicate so there cannot be any confusion.
12. Spent AT LEAST 1 full hour each night with 1 or more cats napping on my lap. Equal amount of time tossing cat toys around and playing with the cats too.
13. Wrote a long letter to Dad.
14. Contacted 14 catalog companies to arrange for them to stop killing trees in order to send me paper catalogs I don't want.
15. Visited home store to get prices and available materials for several projects:
- A. Computer paper storage rack. I have letter paper, copy paper, card stock, photo stock, color paper, small paper, lamination sheets, etc. Currently all just in one big stack.
- B. Pressure-treated plywood for making new sides for the hauling trailer. It has an open metal frame, but to haul topsoil, mulch, etc, it needs solid sides and bottom. I used exterior plywood 5 years ago, but it is about rotted.
- C. Hardboard/masonite for topping my workbench and radial saw top.
- D. PVC for making a cat hammock frame.

I'm Still Here!

2011-02-07T02:00:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted here very much lately! Many causes...

1. I've been focussing on the cat blog most days trying to post every day AND visiting all my cat blogging friends. That has become important to me; I really like seeing what other people's cats are doing. And I have learned that MOST cat bloggers are really clever and creative writers.

2. I just tend to stop doing anything interesting in Winter. The temp outside is 30 and I just think "I don't wanna go OUT there. That's kind of shameful; I grew up in Massachusetts and (as kids), we used to make tunnels UNDER the snow! I have become a WIMP...

3. You would think that Winter would be the perfect time for wood-working activities. But the basement is 58. I just try to avoid it in Winter. Besides, who wants to wear a coat and gloves while building stuff?

4. Daylight matters, too. Doing projects is easier during the daytime. But in Winter, I tend to stay up late at night and get up at Noon. By the time I feed the cats, make lunch, and read the newspaper, it is 4 pm and getting dark.

5. I have discovered MSNBC! Progressive talk TV to counter Glenn Beck, Hannity, and Fox Channel in general! On weekdays (they don't have the talk shows on weekends), I am locked to the TV from 6pm to 10 pm. I DO some stuff because I listen more than I watch (and as a consequence, the house is actually cleaner than it used to be and I prepare food better).

6. And I like to watch both Daily and Colbert on The Comedy Channel. I have a deep and abiding love of intelligent sarcasm. Its the Johnny Carson opening monologue on steroids!

7. I have a good list of projects for this year once the weather improves. Nesting end tables, sturdy TV trays, a dictionary stand, enclosing the patio below the deck with 2"x3" mesh fencing so the cats can go out without danger, replacing the 4x4 posts under the deck with 6x6 posts, relining the pond and regrading it so the rain flows around it rather that into it, and building a boat shelter so the damn boat doesn't fill up with rain and falling leaves.