Catching Up

Wow, 2 weeks since I posted here!  Well, I've been busy. 

1.  My lettuce trays on the deck "bolted" in the August heat.  Time to replant.  I have a large shallow plastic tub I use for mixing potting soil for Spring plantings.  Fine for dumping the soil in the trays and mixing it around to add new slow-release fertilizer, too.  

I did that on the deck.  No rain forecast for 2 days, so time to let it dry a bit for easier mixing.  Naturally, it rained.  And then more forecast for the next day, so I covered it wit a piece of plywood that almost reached the edges so I added a a big trask bag to reached over the sides.

The rain got in there anyway!  So I tilted it and siphoned the water out.  Muddy water doesn't siphon well, so I had to keep fussing with the tube.  I got most of it out.  And realized I had a dry tray inside, so I added that to soak up the rest.

That's not exactly rocket science, but it does take time.  I covered it better today.  The remnants of Hurricane Ida are coming straight through here Wed and maybe dropping 2-3 inches of rain on us.  The last thing I need for the trays is mud.  It compacts as it dries and I want to replant soon.  I miss my bright red leaf lettuce in my salads!

2.  I bought a battery-powered mower in 2018.  It's pathetic.  I went by Amazon ratings (no offence to Amazon) but I sometimes forget that their ratings only apply to customer ratings about things Amazon sells.  So if they sell average stuff, the best ratings are still about average stuff.

The Greenworks mower I bought has batteries difficult to remove (I devised twine loops to pull them out),  the batteries die after 10 minutes, the power is so weak that the mower cringes at 4" grass being cut down to 3", and it is entirely push/pull.  I've hated it for 3 years!

So I went to Consumer Reports magazine website (I have a subscription) and went looking for the best self-propelled models.  Wow, what a difference!  The one I bought in 2018 was rated poor.  

The best Top 3 ones at CR were about the same.  I bought a Ryobi "40V HP Brushless 21 in. Cordless Battery Walk Behind Self-Propelled Lawn Mower with (2) 6.0 Ah Batteries and Charger", model RY401014US (if you are curious).

I used it yesterday and it worked great.  Powerful, long-lasting. cut down 16" high weeds in an old bed for renovation (with a bit of care).  I had let a tall-growing weed grow there to smother the others.  I love the self-propelled rear drive wheels.  I WAS disappointed to realize that it didn't self-propel in reverse, but apparently none of them do.  My DR brush-mower does and I made an assumption that forward also allowed back.

But I use it in tight spaces and around trees where the riding mower can't go.  It's the forward self-propel that helps the most.

3.  And speaking of the DR brush mower (brutal thing that can cut down weedy shrubs and wild saplings 1.5" thick, turns blackberry canes into mulch, and is self-propelled forwards and back), I left it with gas in the tank 2 years ago (well, I expected to use it again soon but didn't).  Won't start now.  Have to inject the fuel line with "starter fluid".  Sounds like an old boy scout joke about smoke shifters, sky hooks, and 50' of shoreline, but it is real.  

If that doesn't work, back to the repair shop and and they both slow and expensive.  One thing I hate repairing is gasoline engines.  I can fix a lot of things, but those aren't one that comes easily.  

A neighbor once climbed up on the fence and asked if I was good at repairing things.  I said "yeah, as long as it isn't a 2-stroke gasoline engine".  You should have seen the look on his face; that was exactly what he needed help with, LOL!

I am switching to almost all-battery stuff these days.  They just keep working,

4.  Time for my first car maintenance visit.  13 months and I've driven 600 miles!  Laugh if you want to; I just don't drive much.  But I'm going to have to drive 120 mile round trip sometime in September to adopt my female Tonkinese cat, so I need to make sure the car is ready for a trip.

5.  The garden is producing a meal's worth of flat italian Romano beans every other day.  Not bad for a 5' long 1' wide trellis".  My 3 cherry tomatoes have fruits and I expect to strt picking ripe one in 2 weeks.  The regular-size tomatoes were planted late and are just beginning to open blossoms.  It will be a contest between warm-weather growing and the first frost on late October.  I expect a month's worth at least.  Maybe 6 weeks.

6.  The deck Mums are starting to bloom.  Yellow, orange, and red.  That will be nice.

7.  The Black-Eyed Susans are blooming nicely.

Actually, they are very numerous and spreading.  Well, they are native here. so no threat.  I encourage them.  They bloom for a few months.  My plan is to transplant the Susans in the garden paths to the meadow bed and add purple coneflower transplants (from places I don't want them).  Yellow and purple together look good to me.

Lighting

 I've always had a problem with my kitchen ceiling 4' fluorescent light.  It is attached to the ceiling.  Every Summer when the temps get up to 90F, it doesn't want to light.  It flickers, but won't light up fully.

I had an electrician here for other work some years ago and asked him about it.  I assumed he would replace the ballast.  Well, I can hook up wires because the logic is ppretty obvious.  But I'm no electrician. I barely udersrtand what a ballast is and I sure would try to replace one.

He asked if I had new tubes.  I did and changed them.  The light came right on.  I have no idea why he didn't want to get some money for replacing the ballast, but maybe he thought it wouldn't help.

So every July, I replace the tubes.  Until this year, that worked.  It's the heat from the attic.  If it wasn't, why else would the light fail in Summer?  But this year, I replaced the tubes and they only lasted 3 days!

I had to consider separating the light from the ceiling or replacing it entirely.   Either way, a suspended fixture to free it from the attic heat.  I considered an attic fan, but those can be noisy...

And then we had a cooler week and the light worked again.  Clear proof it is heat-related...

So I decided to replace the fluorescent tube fixture with a 5-LED light suspended fixture I found.  I could hook that up.  Its just a couple of obvious wires and a few screws in the ceiling to hang it 4" below.  Or I could detach the existing fixture and suspend IT.  Either would probably work, but I'm not thrilled about messing with electricity these days myself.

Like, I was working on replacing a ceiling fixture in the basement and I felt "pulses".  Well, if I hadn't been sitting on a wooden ladder, I might have electrocuted myself!  So I favor hiring someone these days. Everyone has skills; electricity is "iffy" for me.

So I did some research about fluorescent vs LED fixtures!

Both are efficient.  Both are better than incandescent bulbs.  Both last a long time.

But what matters is "lumens" and "color temperature/light spectrum".  Watts are electric demands, lumens are brightness, color is the visible light.  Just saying it in case you don't know, it can get confusing...  

I assumed that LED bulbs were not only more energy-efficient than fluorescents, but provided more lumens.  I was wrong!

As I stood in the DIY store light aisle, I compared wattage to lumens.  And a watt is a watt.  You pay by the watts.  Well, to my surprise, fluorescents provided more lumens per watt than LEDS!  Check it if you want to...

Two 40 watt fluorescent tubes provided more lumens (brightness) at equal color temperatures than 40 watt LED bulbs did!  

I love that LEDs can be turned on and off without damage to their life-span.  I love that they fit into any standard incandescent socket.  I love that they last 10 years.  I have them almost everywhere these days.

But for my kitchen light to provide the brightness I like, fluorescents are better.  I think I will take a shot at lowering the existing kitchen ceiling light to escape it from the attic heat.

Bean

I mentioned I grow Italian flat pole beans.   I didn't show how large they get.

And they are tender and tasty even at that size!  It doesn't take many to make a good side dish.  And unlike bush beans, once they start producing, they never stop until the first hard freeze!  Cut them up into 1" pieces, simmer in chicken broth or some garlic for extra flavor.  Sometimes I add mushroom bits.

Quite aside from that, I set out mosquito traps starting in April when the local mosquito eggs hatch from over-wintering.  The female mosquitos always need to find a water source for the eggs to hatch in so I give them some.  With Bt dunks in them (sized to the container - half sized for the small pond, smaller for the water jugs).  BWA-HA-HA...  The Bt is a bacteria that only attacks mosquito larva.  The eggs go into tempting water jugs and adult mosquitos never come out!  They are cheap too.  Find them in any DIY box store or online.

Bt is safe for people, pets, fish, and almost anything else.

I have about a dozen wide-mouth jars baited around the yard.  And I add some to any planter trays where water can collect.  There are other place that can be overlooked.  Rain gutters, downspouts, etc.  I make sure those drain well.

I even found an old turtle shell upside down (poor turtle) with water in it, so I turned that over to drain.  I'm sure there are some small water-sources that elude me.  I DO get bitten sometimes (aloe works well, but 1% Hydroxine works better - either is better than nothing).

I have been using Repel Lemon Oil Eucalyptus rather that Deet the past 2 years.  Both got equal ratings from Consumer Reports, but I read that Deet is slightly bothersome to cats.

Dead Trees

Last year was hard on trees here.  Very dry.  And I only say that about MY local conditions.  It has been horribly drier in other places.  But I'm here and not there.  So I have my only experience "here".

Many years ago, I planted Golden Rain trees on either side of the driveway near the street.  I like "specimen" trees, small and interesting.  Golden Rain produces ping-pong-ball-sized seed packets in July that turn deep yellow as they mature.  The seeds never seem to grow, so I assume they are sterile hybrids.  And that is good; I don't want invasive plants.  But they ARE interesting in the middle of Summer (I have some other trees and shrubs for Spring and Fall color).

But, as I said, last year was harsh.  One is completely dead (it sent up one shoot from the trunk, but it didn't last long). 

 The other is half dead.  IT looks fine from the house, but dead from the street.  I'm not an arborist, but I have "enough" understanding of pruning small trees to remove the deadwood properly (undercut, then downward cut, then allow 1/2" "branch collar cut" for healing.

The surviving tree will look unbalanced for a few years, but the tree will send out new branches and I know how to direct them slightly if necessary.  

I also lost a beech tree.  I was slightly fooled at first, because there were vines growing on it and the vine leaves made it look like the tree was recovering.  When I pruned the vines at ground level, and THEY died, the sad truth was obvious.  

The tree was here when I moved in 35 years ago.  If you look closely, you will see that the top was literally "trunkated" but new branches arose to create a new canopy.  The tree can't very well have died of last year's drought; it is just a few feet from a drainage easement and there is "some" water flowing from the neighborhood above year-round.  That itself is actually amazing.  No matter how dry it gets, water flows...  I have no idea how old the beech tree was.  Maybe it just lived its full life.  But it sure had access to water!

Ground conditions can be strange.  When I first moved here, the lawn would get so dry that the soil would crack open.  I used to water the lawn, not realizing that it was natural for the grasses in my area to go dormant and grown in the hot days of July and August.  I've stopped doing that (waste of water and fertilizer to force the lawn to grow).

Instead, I started leaving the grass-clippings on the lawn and laid down corn gluten just twice a year (both a natural fertilizer and a weed suppressant).  I also bought a soil aerator I could drag behind the riding mower.  It brought up plugs of soil to the surface, allowed air and decaying grass in, and over the years, the soil greatly improved.  It hasn't cracked in a decade.  And the tall fescue grass stays green most Summers.  

A lawn-care company rep came by a few weeks ago.  I don't ever engage the services of "door-knockers", but I had time and was curious.  So we sat on the front step while he pointed out that I had a few weeds and a lot of clover in my lawn and his company could fix that.  I mentioned that I was an organic yardkeeper.  He said "we can improve your lawn".

My immediate thought was "welcome to my web, said the spider to the fly"...

So I asked him why my clover was so bad.  He said "it's not grass".  I pointed out that clover has deep roots and brings nutrients back up to the grassroot level, that it was pleasantly green, that it didn't need fertilizing, and that bees like clover blossoms.  

He got an annoyed look and decided he should move on to talk to other neighbors.  I LOVE doing stuff like that...

 

Garden Hose, Part 2

 I mentioned repairs to a 50' garden hose Aug 9th.  Sadly, it didn't last.  Oh the repair worked well enough, but the hose burst again in a different spot.  Apparently, the hose is just worn out.  So I disconnected it to remove the usable snap-on connections and male/female brass connections I had recently added (nothing wrong with THEM).

And as I curled up the old worn-out hose for recycling or trash (have to check on that), I realised that I had another 50' garden hose backing it up on the hose reel.

BTW, the hose reel is mounted on a turntable.  Anchored with 2 simple lift-out bolts, I can turn the reel freely to pull the hose out in any direction when I pull them.  It was a fun build.  Yes, it drove me crazy at first figuring out how to do it; that's why it was fun.  

And the backup hose was identical, so it was the same age and use.  Time to replace both.  

I looked at Amazon and Walmart.  User reviews are usually useful.  I pay more attention to negative reviews.  Happy users are happy and just say so; unhappy users give reasons.  Most involved moldy hose surfaces and kinks.  Some even said the hose left their hands blackened...  

Well, I couldn't judge much about that.  So, I went to Home Depot and just looked at the offerrings (not many, BTW).  One label claimed "superior strength and "drinkable water safe" and "nonkinkable" plus "mildew-reistant".  Not like any other hose label said they didn't, but I chose that one.  

It seems pretty good.  I stretched it out in the backyard.  It comes all curled up, but I twisted it opposite the curl until it was straight.  With tomorrow's warmth, it will be easy to attach to the hose reel and without twists. 

I'll see how much space is left on the hose reel.  If enough, I will add the 50' version of the same hose.  Well, it is better to have a hose too long than a hose too short...  And same age and type is convenient.

Tomorrow, I retrieve the connection from the 2 old hoses for reuse later.

Garden

The garden was started late, but is catching up with the warm weather and sunny days. 

The Black-Eyed Susans are spreading and thriving.  I encourage them, as they are native plants and adapted to the weather patterns here. 

The flat italian beans are growing well up the curved trellis.  I made the trellis curved so the beans would hang down in plain sight.  Easier to find.

I planted a Fall crop of snow peas on a short trellis of leftover concrete mesh wire.  The corks are there so I don't scratch myself on rusty wire.

The melons are slow to climb a trellis at first, but when they start, they climb fast.  I have mesh onion bags to hold the developing melons.  THere are cukes growing in another bed.  But they are self-supporting.

Two cherry tomato plants from a couple of weeks ago.  One now has a fruit ripening.  They are double the size now.  When they start producing, they don't stop until late October. Or maybe November if the frost holds off.  Climate change has SOME benefits if you are in the right place.

The tadpole tub.  It wasn't intentional, but I saw tadpoles in it one day and have been nurturing them since.  The stick is for the ones that survive to develop legs to get a way out.  I don't know if they are toads or frogs.  I hope they are toads.  Both eat some pesky insects, but toads are quiet.  A toad in the garden is better than a frog in a pond.

I sprinkle some fish-flakes on the surface every couple days.

This is the bean patch a week later.  I'm harvesting!

I like them better than regular green beans.  Earthier, nuttier flavor.  Plus, you won't find them in the grocery store.

Hose Repair

I took pictures, so I might as well use them...  :)

One problem with garden hoses is that, if you don't turn off the water, they tend to burst.  I had a 2nd episode of that recently (last one many years ago, so it isn't routine).

I looked out the window a week ago one morning to see water spraying from a broken hose.  I ran out to shut it off of course.  Totally my fault.  

But there are connections to fix such damage and I have a pot of various types.  The usual is a ribbed plastic piece 3" long you insert in the undamaged parts and tighten clamps to seal.

But hoses come in different sizes and I didn't have the right one.  So, maybe off to the DIY store...

Suppose I just considered the cut up hose as "2 hoses" in need of connections?  There are also connections that fix hose ends.  I had a male and a female connector of thge right size for the hose!

So, here is the busted section and the freshly-cut ends to be connected.

I attached the metal male connector just fine, but the female part would simply not push in the other open hose in spite of lubricants and pulling, yanking, and pushing.  

But I had a plastic female connector.  It worked!  

My broken hose now works just fine, 1' shorter.   

Motorcycle Man

I'm a fairly quiet person.   I prefer sweeping a floor to vacuuming it.  I prefer electric yard tools to gasoline ones (but love my gas-riding-mower for speed).   When I bring my portable stereo out to the garden to listen to music or a baseball game, I walk 50' away to make sure I can''t hear it from that far (so as not to bother the neighbors.

Not that they have the same concern, of course.  One plays music in their car so loud I can hear it indoors with all the windows shut.  Another neighbor 2 houses away plays loud music that does the same.  Another mows the lawn at 8AM every Saturday.  I get it, I'm SUPPOSED to enjoy hearing what they like (coff, coff).  

And it isn't that I'm getting older; I've always been that way.  I tend to think neighbors' rights end at the property line.  And it isn't that I have especially good hearing, it's average.  Noise intrusion here is better than when I lived in apartments.  There was always SOMEONE who needed 120 decibels to enjoy their music.  One time, I tracked down the source of loud noise and it was 3 stories above me.

So it "was" better than it used to be.

But then Motorcycle Man arrived somewhere down the street...  OK, let me say I'm not a great fan of motorcycle noise.  In fact, I understand that for some motorcyclists, part of the pleasure is the deep rumbling noise they make.  I worked in a department store auto-aftermarket section for a couple of years.  Guys would buy motorcycle exhaust pipes and return them because "they were too quiet".  Sure, who doesn't want insufficient and unnecessary noise?  😕

So Motorcycle Man drives back and forth on the street endlessly.  Over and over and over and over again (consider there be many more "over agains").  Almost all day with some brief breaks (meals, I assume).  All perfectly legal AFAIK.  But it is maddeningly repetitive.  He is like the neighbors' dog who barks and snarls endlessly every time I work in my garden.  Never-ending...

And recently, I noticed he was driving several different motorcycles.  I wonder if he has an unlicensed repair shop going?  I may just take a walk down the street when he is most active to see where he lives and see if he has set up a repair shop in the garage or something.  

I have a long history with motorcycle noise here.  For years, my next door neighbor would go to work on his motorcycle.  That's OK, of course.  But he would start it up in his driveway and spend 15 minutes doing stuff (cleaning and tuning?) before he drove off.  At 6 AM!

I asked him one time if he would do that IN his garage to reduce the noise slightly, and he did for a week.  But his wife complained about the increased noise, so he resumed doing it outside.  I fully understand that I ranked WAY below his wife.  Fortunately, he got divorced and moved a year later.

But apparently, every neighborhood needs a motorcyclist.  When my neighbor moved out, another 4 people moved in across the street and 2 of them were motorcyclists.  At least they just got their's going and drove away.

So, I've seen Motorcycle Man a lot.  He looks about college age.  If I am very lucky, he will be leaving soon.  If not, I am going to have to check County noise restrictions.  The noise is loud, but the repetitiveness is driving me nuts.  If he just WENT somewhere, it would be a normal part of neighborhood existence.  

If I could choose, I would prefer the snarling barking dog.  At least I have a fence between us.  And I escape that when I go inside...

Yard And Garden

 Some pictures from the yard and garden...

The daylilies are from a week ago.  They are fading now.  But lovely while they last.

The Black-Eyed Susans are blooming.  It hasn't been raining much and they wilted briefly, but they are native and used to it.  They recovered quickly after just a 1/4" of rain the other day.

The Queen Anne's Lace is also a native and blooms through droughts.  I'm moving to native plants more and more.  With some exceptions...

I mowed the Spring Bulb area and plan to cover it to smother the weeds that have crept in.  Which won't bother the Daffodils and Tulips as they like being dry in Summer and Fall.  The stuff growing at the bottom are the Daylillies but there are weeds among them that I need to pull.

I lost control over this area.  Time for hedge trimmer and lopper work!

Always "something".  I got behind last year, and then there was the ladder fall in January, so I stayed behind.  I'm catching up, though.

The good news is that the Black Eyed Susans are spreading and I can take up many as transplants in Fall (the ones growing in the garden paths) and get the meadow bed re-established with them and some other self-sowing flowers in a cleared area.

Cooking

 I love to prepare food and cook it.  I find it satisfying to do the knifework, plan the timing, handle the food, and then eat it (and preparing food and eating it are two different pleasures).  I don't know exactly when that started, but I remember being in the kitchen as a young teenager.  Mom listened to Broadway musicals and that probably lured me in to start.  But I've always enjoyed good food.  

So when I asked "can I help?" I got a few minor jobs.  Peel potatoes and carrots.  Mash the potatoes.  Watch the timer.  Eventually, I got to actually cut some veggies.  I got better at stuff.  

It's not like I liked it better than a lot of other activities (golfing, bowling, building simple wood stuff, HO trains, Marvel comic books, reading sci-fi), but it was one.  And both Mom and I enjoyed classical and Broadway music.

I had always been the primary dish-washer (being eldest child) and baby-sat the younger siblings (being eldest child).  But one of the pleasures of baby-sitting was that I was also trusted to make a simple dinner at 12 (Chung King Chicken Chow Mein in the old double cans was my favorite, being easy to manage).

I was a Boy Scout.  And I had this idea that a guy should be able to do anything it took to get by day-to-day.  I would have taken Home Economics in school, but that was reserved for girls (guys took wood-working shop) back then (mid 60s).

I came across a funny phrase back then; "If you like bacon, you have to get down in the mud and keep the hogs happy".  Meaning, if you want something, you have to be able to do it yourself.  I liked good food.

I've probably mentioned this before (you blog long enough and you can repeat yourself) but Mom was a very average cook and seldom met a vegetable that couldn't be boiled for too long.  When I discovered stir-frying and steaming later it really opened my eyes to food.

In college, I earned money and/or free meals by cooking sweet&sour pork for other guy's cheap dates in the dorm rec room.  

There's a slight story behind that.  Male dorms never had stovetops in the rec rooms.  Female dorms did.  In 1969, the Univ of MD arranged for a coed dorm by application and approval.  I was approved.  WOW, there was a stovetop (and a bathtub in the shower room BTW).  

Well, I had nothing to cook WITH, so I took a job selling cookware.  Great stuff.  Stainless steel inside and out with a layer of copper in between for heat diffusion.  But if you sold one set, you got to keep the sales kit.  I sold one set and quit and had a full set of cookware that was worth a year's tuition!

So I was able to cook meals at the new coed dorm.  I told the other guys in the dorm that I could cook sweet&sour pork.  The cost was either $5 above ingredient cost or I would buy enough to feed "them and a date and me too.  I had dropped out of the dining hall expense and bought a mini-fridge (good for beer and cheap steaks).  Fed myself better than the dining hall did, and cheaper too.

A business major on my floor of the dorm arranged to sell cheesesteak subs for 2 hours each night for his major.  I cooked a LOT of those.  He offerred better than minimum wage and 1 free sub each night.  So, I love to cook.

Anyway, here was dinner last night.  Cubed smoked pork with smothered onions, broccoli, bicolor corn-on-the-cob, and a nice tossed salad.  With zinfandel wine and leftover cocktail.  I love variety in a meal.  

A bit of pan-frying adds taste and appearance to corn...  Well, there was oil in the pan, so why not use it?

And it makes a salad better when you have variety to choose from.

Dessert was assorted cut-up fresh fruit.