Forge Of Empires

'Forge Of Empires'.  The commercial was good, so I tried it.  Its free to play.  On the other hand, it is slow to develop playing free.  You can buy Diamonds (the real coin of the game), but that is sort of like paying every time you put on a pair of shoes.  The obvious commercial strategy of the developers is to sell Diamonds.

OK, let's say you are cheap (like me) and just want to build a village for free.  You can, but you are in a limited space for days (been at this 2 days on and off).  You can.  It doesn't seem to get you anywhere though.

The site offers 50 diamonds for your email address.  I think that says it all.  Can't get much anywhere in the game without them, and you can't earn then (at least at the start).  I can earn gold by the tn, but can't figure out how to spend it.

One neat positive thing is that  you can look at every building and know how long it takes for it to "produce" in real time.  Wealth weapons, culture, whatever.  I did like that part.


They want you to buy diamonds.  That's about it from their POV.

Tried 'Call To Arms'.  Same trick to sell you game-bennies.

I better get my old Windows 98 computer fixed so I can play Civilization II.  You pay for the game, but no add-on sales.  Better game too.. 

OK, I deleted Forge Of Empires...  Suckers game...

Rain

Oh damn it's raining again
I dont know when it will stop raining again.
 It just never stops raining again.

I think we're all gonna drown!

Oh my god, its raining again,
There's just no end the rain again.
How;s it possible its raining again?

I think we're all gonna drown!

"Jennifer with your orange hair
Jennifer with your green eyes
Jennifer in your dress of deepest purple
Jennifer, where are you tonight?

Underneath the water
Underneath the water
Underneath the water"

Oh man, its raining again 

Will it ever stop again?

All next week forecasts rain again.

I think we're all gonna drown!

Tadpoles

I am sometimes a bit harsh with varmints that move into my yard.  The squirrels got at my tomatoes and beans.  The groundhog eats my flowers.  The deer eat the hostas and Caladiums in the front yard.  They are NOT my loved wild animals.

There is a whole wetland and swamp and running water area across the street.  There are oak trees and stuff wild animals like to eat.  They don't need to bother me.

What they don't NEED to eat are my plants.  So I fight back a bit.  I built an entire enclose around my garden beds.  I built a tall fence 30 years ago.  The deer don't jump it.  But that doesn't stop the rabbits and groundhogs. 

The Mews take care of the rabbits.  But they can't handle a groundhog (aka woodchuck or whistle-pig).  But I can. Those normally eat lawn clover, but they sometimes decide to eat all the flowers. 

That's their end.  A hav-a-hart live cage trap is great with melon slices.  They love melons. 

I have a large tub of water that the cage fits into.   One "blub" and they go to "groundhog beyond".  If I knew a faster way, I would use it.  I hate them.  I once caught a new brood outside the den and pitchforked them!  Mom groundhog hissed at me, but I got her later.

So here is the tub.

I'm also growing aquarium plants in it.  But a frog decided to lay eggs.

Most tadpoles will not survive.  Well, think of it.  If they did, my yard would be ankle deep in frogs!  So I was curious about whether my aquarium fish would eat them (free food of high quality).

They attacked like piranha!  That was enlightening...  So I also put several into my 2 Betta tanks (one betta per tank).  One ate them and the other ignored them.  Nature is weird...

The ones in the tank where that betta didn't et them grew fast.  Betta food aggrees with them.  Today, I cleaned the tanks (monthly requirement as they have to pee in the water they live in in small tanks). 

So I netted the large tadpole in the one tank and returned them to the outdoor tub.  You wnt to know how Nature works?  They will eat their smaller siblings.  So I netted out a lot of the smaller ones.  No great favor to them.  They will be aquarium fish food.

 I watch Nature shows a lot.  Everything is eaten by something else without mercy.  Usually alive, and often ripped apart into pieces.  So I don't feel bad about feeding tadpoles to my aquarium fish or tossing a few lucky large-grown tadpoles to eat their siblings.  That's how all animals survive. 

I will have to bury the drowned groundhog though.  Otherwise the vultures find it and that IS rather gruesome.  But I bury them near specimen trees and that feeds THEM, so that is good. 

The circle of life goes on...

BTW "baby fish", once a tiny pair of eyes in the aquarium hiding in the live plants, the only survivor of a platy, is full size now.  It is my favorite for having survived all the others that wanted to eat it like a tadpole.  Some get lucky...

Random Thoughts

"EVIL":

1.  Moles and Voles are evil.
2.  Weeds are evil (poison ivy, english ivy, wild grapes, wild blackberries, invasive perennial flowers, mock strawberries, bindweed, thistles, those large plants with purple berries that stain your fingers [obviously I forget the name], and the horrid invasive vine that a previous neighbor planted and I can't find the name of either).
3.  Groundhogs are evil.
5.  Deer are evil too, but at least they are afraid to jump the backyard fence.  They just eat my front yard plants.
6.  The neighbor in the ugly McMansion across the street who mows his lawn a 7 am when I am trying to sleep is evil (even if he is a really cool guy otherwise).
7.  Both next-door neighbors are evil.  One set has a fallen over tree in the front yard and it has been sitting there for 3 years.  The other set tried to burn dry dead branches right under small dry trees and next to my wood fence.  And they didn't even have a garden hose in case things went bad (I told them to stop or I would call the fire department).  And I caught the husband using a weed whacker around my trees and shrubs 10' on my side of the property line.  "Death by weed-whacker" is an actual problem.
8.  The neighbor across the street and next to the McMansion is evil.  He and his girlfriend used to have screaming arguments at 3 am on weekends.  They moved out some years ago, but now they are back!  Who moves back to a rental place?
9.  Ryobi Tools - Its a string trimmer that won't handle grass or vines.  So I bought a replacement head with serrated plastic blades,  But I can't find the right size bolt to fit the drive shaft.  I've emailed Ryobi twice about the exact size and thread per inch, but they haven't responded.  They promised 48 hours.  Its been 5 days. As far as I can tell, it is either a 9/32nds or a 7mm reverse-threaded bolt and no one locally sells either.
10.  Neighbors 4 houses away who think that everyone within 1/2 mile wants to hear their outdoors music.

"GOOD":

1.  I have a Fall garden.  Beans, cukes, tomatoes, corn, squash, coles (brocolli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi), carrots, beets, radishes, and flat italian pole beans.
2.  Dug up some black-eyed susans in the garden paths and moved them to the meadow bed.  If they survive, great, but they had to be removed from the paths anyway.
3.  This one is a bit odd.  I plant my tomatoes through a red plastic cover.  The red cover supposedly reflects sunlight that tomatoes absorb best AND deters insects.  But it is hard to water the plants.  So years ago, I bought some plastic tubes that attach to large soda bottles.  You cut the bottoms off the bottles, sick them in the soil and you fill them with water from the hose and it slowly drips into the root zone.  Got them cleaned and installed yesterday.  Some drained quickly, others didn't.  But all drained eventually.  I'll watch the leaves to make sure they aren't wilting.  A lot faster to water the tomatoes deeply that way.
4.  The cheap electric mower is great for trim work, but only lasts 10 minutes.  Still, its quiet, and light.
5.  The cheap small electric tiller works great.  If you cut the weeds down first and till shallowly at first pass.  Otherwise, the tines get roots wrapped around them and it takes work to unwrap them.  But it is great in close situations and shallow tilling.

"ODDS":

1.  My new Subaru Forester is too fancy.  I don't understand half of the displays.  Better sit down and study the manual.  I thought it was tricky, but one of the things I noticed in the old 2005 Toyota Highlander manual as I was cleaning it out was how many post-it notes I had to things that confused me then.  So I guess I'll learn about these things on the Forester.  I especially need to learn how to NOT have the Forester shut off when stopped at traffic lights.
2.  The deck gets too hot for the cats' tender paws.  The composite deck material gets to 120F.  So I bought 3 12'x2' strips of outdoor carpet.  Turns out the Home Depot store guy gave me "a couple extra inches" on each strip.  None of which are exactly the same width.  So I have to do some extra cutting.
3.  Related to the above, I think I will get a cover over half the deck.  I would get a retractable Sunsetter awning, but my deck-to-roof distance is too low.  I would cover the whole deck, but I have smoker/griller on one end and that needs free "up-space" for the heat and smoke.

That's almost enough, but I came across a funny thing all writers will understand...

STEPS FOR CURING WRITER'S BLOCK:

1.   

LOL!

Tree Pictures

OK, sometimes I don't post as many pictures here as I do at Mark's Mews.  Cats are more photogenic.  And sometimes trees are just "trees".   But pictures do liven up mere words, and when I mention particular trees, I should show them. 

Part of it is that I don't always have the camera with me outside when I SUDDENLY get it into my mind to do something.  And sometimes I am mostly done with a project and think "why didn't I take pictures?" and then it is too late.  And, given how badly I type (I do a LOT of editing), I should take advantage of the fact that you can't misspell a picture...  LOL!

So here are some tree pictures...

First "Helen's Holly".  It was hard to find an angle where the holly stood out any from the background trees.  This was the best.  The lowest leaves are 6' above ground, so it looks to be about 15" high now and about 20 years transplanted here from 3'.

This is a row of prunings from the holly and a few other trees.  I gather the prunings in  piles I can pick up easily later to load onto the trailer.  The trailer is full of one set of prunings, and there are more in the back yard.  Easily 3 trailer-loads.

This is the front yard Saucer Magnolia showing (as best I can) the twisted branches I am trying to establish.

Hope this helps...

Near Dead Trees and Shrubs

Last year was really hard on the trees and shrubs in the yard.  I have 2 Golden Rain Trees on either side of the front driveway, for example.  In spite of frequent drip watering (obviously insufficient), they both nearly perished.  But there are some branches still alive on both, and both are sending out shoots from the main trunk.  I'm not experienced enough to know if that is really good or not, but growth is surely better than dead.

The 3 Burning Bushes sufferred various degrees of stress.  The first one by the drainage easement is fine but is overgrown with some thorny vine.  That needs to be cut and pulled out.

The second seemed OK, but suddenly had dead branches this Spring.  And they stuck out far.  Mowing was always a threat of poking out an eye.  I finally attacked all the dead branches a couple days ago with a lopper and the "saws-all".  I gained 3' all around the shrub.  And there were some junk saplings growing up through it.  I got them cut to ground level.  I hope they die as a result.

The third one was in better shape.  I don't know why; I didn't water it any more than the second one.  But sometimes, you take good news and just accept it.  It needed minor pruning.

My 5"x8" utility trailer is filled with pruning debris.  Even after I tie it all down, i will barely be able to see out the back of the Forester.  Barely is sufficient.  And on a Saturday, I will be able to return from the yard-debris drop-off County site with a trailerful of loaded mulch.

I have enough prunings for 2 more trailerloads and mulch in return.  I can use all the mulch.  It is nearly compost.  Some of it will go onto the long brown paper strips (that shipping companies use for shock-absorbtion) that I will put down between my garden beds.  More will go onto places in my flowerbeds where only weeds are growing to smother them for next year's plantings.  And any extra will just get added to the compost bins.  They have too much rich kitchen "green" waste and not enough "brown" bulk.  I'll turn the kitchen waste into the second bin and layer it with mulch.

This will be the first expedition with the new Subaru Forester hauling anything.  The trailer hitch was a real adventure.  The factory-installed tow hitch insert is a 1 1/4" x 1 1/4".  It takes a 1/2" pin which they did not supply.  The 1st hitch pin I bought was too short.  The 2nd one was also too short, but I was able to drill the hole slightly larger and hammer it into place.  That thing is NEVER coming off again, LOL!

So great, I will be hauling back a 5'x8'x18" trailerload of mulch and sholveling it into buckets to carry to the garden in effectively 100F heat for a few days!

Well, I do 45 minutes outside and 45 minutes inside to rest.  I'm not gonna kill myself moving mulch!

Holly Trees

Holly trees seem common around my area.  Most are sharp-leaved.   A neighbor has a very old male one in the back yard.  I had a natural young female 3' one growing in the middle of my backyard (male, no berries; female, berries) when I first moved here 33 years ago.

The backyard was a wilderness of junk trees and vines and after a year, I set about clearing it.  I learned a few interesting things about my yard.  New places are SO fascinating.

First, there was a 10' wide clear path through the overgrowth and several of the junk trees on both sides had bits of barbed wire embedded in the bark.   The direction of the path was from a former farm above and seemed to lead to the swamp across the street.  I say "swamp" because it is mostly one, but there are pools of running water at the edges.  I think that was where a farmer led his cows to drink and graze decades ago.  And had strung barbed wire to keep them on the path to the water.

Second, when I started to dig in the backyard to plant crops, I discovered half was nearly pure sand and half was gravelly clay on one side, and loam on the other (where the trees and vines grew).  I concluded that my lot was once a stream overflow area.

Third, there was a gully (part of the old stream?) on one side of the yard, but it had been cut off when the county constructed a drainage easement along the new sub-divided lots on the new street I had the house built on.  I had the gully filled in with a truckload of "fill" soil (ironically from the former farm above, so the "fill" wasn't bad soil).

So back to the hollies.  It was such hard work cutting out the vines and junk saplings.  I used a chainsaw to cut into the roots in the soil.  Ruined a few blades, but it was worth it.  However, when what you are using is  chainsaw, everything looks like it needs to be cut down.  I managed to cut down my little female 3' holly tree!  All tree trunks look the same at ground level...

Amazingly, it survived.  There is a perverse law of trees that, if you want to kill them by cutting them to the ground, they regrow; and if you so much as "nick" a desired tree, it dies.  Well, this little holly chose a 3rd path.  It regrew with 4 trunks, giving it an odd look.  It is about 20' high today and I love it.

I have another holly in the front yard.  It was adopted rather like a cat coming to its Forever Home.  I had a friend who had an elderly neighbor (Helen) who wanted to renovate an area (she was elderly, but still active).  But she couldn't remove a fence partition panel that shaded the space.  My friend couldn't remove it either.

So he called me.  Ah the joy of "knowing how to do stuff"...

I found a large board in his basement and Helen had a piece of 4x4 sitting around, so I made a lever.  Soaked the area around the post holes.  We levered both posts up!  It wasn't like they just "came out"; we had to push hard.  But they did come up.

So one thing she didn't want was a small holly struggling to survive in the shade of the fence panel.  She wanted us to get rid of it.  Well, I'm a sucker for a struggler, so we dug it out with roots and soil to fit in a bucket my friend had and I planted it in the front yard.

It not only survived, it thrived.  And it has rewarded me with more red berries than any other holly tree I've ever seen.  But, like the Saucer Magnolia, it eventually had those drooping branches.  So I de-limbed it to 8' high.  And still there were drooping branches.  So I took my hedge trimmer, held it over my head and walked round under the tree until everything was 6' high.

It won't harm the tree.  Where I used to work, there was a row of holly trees on the south side.  The Building Manager had them all trimmed into positively unnatural perfect spheres each Spring and they never seemed to be bothered.

I have to mention something.  My friend tried some gardening when he moved in.  But let's just say his design tastes run to "simplicity".  After a few years, his yard looked like a doll house on a pool table.  I would say "sterile", he would say "clean".  But, in any case the friend's neighbor died 10 years ago.  The new residents agreed with my friend (former, BTW), and stripped out every living thing but lawn.

Helen's little 3' holly tree (now 15' high) is about all that is left of her long-time residence there.  I liked her.  She had the best clematis vine flowers I ever saw ("Bea's Knees" or something like that).  She (unlike my friend) liked to grow things.  So when I look at the front yard holly, I remember her by that.

I like remembrances...

Pruning Trees

After I finished the backyard Saucer Magnolia last week as high as I could reach with a stepladder, I decided to tackle the front yard Saucer Magnolia.  It needed it as it was more internally clutterred.  Well, I spend more time in the back and I don't landscape to impress the neighbors, so the front yard always comes last.

There were downward branches, crossing branches, and upright watershoots (sideshoots that grow straight up and produce few leaves - basically parasitic growth).  Took 3 hours of pruning.  First, I took out all the watershoots (I have NO idea why they are called that).  That part was easy because I knew I didn't want ANY of them.

Second were down-branches.  They had gotten so bad, I was brushing them aside just mowing the lawn.  No need for them either. 

The third group (cross-branches) was trickier and I had to choose among the competing branches.  I should mention that I planted the 2 Saucer Magnolias because I saw them in a small park next to where I worked once.  They had awesome Spring flowers.  But even more impressive was the way the City Arborists had pruned and shaped the trees into very open shapes with very twisty branches.  I've been trying to replicate that for years.

To try for that look, I clear out most of the internal growth, and prune the branches to take advantage of changes in direction.  The trees don't do that naturally.  Rather, Saucer Mangolias seem accepting of cutting off a growing tip of a branch and encouraging a side shoot to grow at a 90 degree angle for a few feet and then doing that again after a few years of growth. 

The trees I admired in the park are about a century old.  Obviously, I won't live long enough to manage that look.  But it is interesting to do what I can and I can hope that the person/people who move in when I am gone will have some idea about continuing that .  I plan on leaving a history of the house and landscaping, updated until I am too demented to continue.

Some thoughts about trees:

1.  An optimist is an elderly person who plants a sapling.
2.  The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.  The second-best time is today.
3.  If I had had the money when I bought this house, I would have had the lot cleared of all trees and scraped clean.  I would have magnificent specimen trees today (sourwoods, dogwoods, and golden rain trees), shading out all the invasive vines (english ivy, wild grape, poison ivy, wild blackberry, etc that I struggle with today.
4.  Planting trees is the batchelor's version of fathering children.

Pictures of twisty Saucer Magnolias are hard to find.  This is the best of what SEEMS to be some.  The one on the front left hints at the branch angles.


And this is not a Saucer Magnolia, but shows what the idea of deliberately angled branches looks like.


And that wasn't the end of the pruning.  I have 2 holly trees (they seem to grow wild in my neighborhood).  But more about that next time.  This is about Saucer Magnolias...

Doing Income Taxes

I finally got around to doing my income tax forms today.  I had started in early April, but the software kept refusing completion.  Try as I might, I could not figure out why.  But knowing there was an extension, I dropped the matter intending to get back at it "in a few weeks".

Of course I didn't!  I my career, I was a natural self-starter and never needed a supervisor to ask "How is the X Project going".  And around the yard and house, I normally do stuff when needed on my own (like who else is there to tell me to do anything?).

But set a deadline on something I don't really want to do, and I will use all the time available to do things I think more pressing.  So here it is July 12th and taxes are due in 3 days, so I sat down to figure out what had bedeviled me in April.

I opened the existing Federal form and went through it step by step.  Everything seemed accurate.  This time, the software said a review found nothing wrong.  Well, that's because the software believes what you tell it.  I got to the end and realized it said my gross income was about $19,000.  Whoa, way wrong.

I managed (somehow) to miss the part about my retirement annuity!  No wonder the software was unhappy in April.  Why it wasn't bothered this time is beyond me.  But after I got all that part in, the results looked right and normal, and the software allowed me to complete the Federal and State forms, and print them out.

I owe, I owe, so off to the checkbook I go...

I need to increase my withholding slightly for both, but at least it isn't so much that I owe an underpayment penalty, but I think it was close.  My goal is to make it a tiny refund on both just so I don't have to bother writing a check to both. 

But I just HAD to tell you about the really silly mistake I made the back in April.  If you can't laugh at yourself, you have no right to laugh at others for any reason!

BTW, I did discover one sad fact.  I donated my old car to a charity a few days ago.  It turns out that, with new tax rules, the standard deduction is way more than my charitable giving.  Like by $12,200 (standard deduction) to $3000 (charitable giving) and the fair market deduction for the old car ($2,000?) isn't going to get me above THAT!  So the maybe $1500 I could have sold the car for is lost money. 

Well, in a financial sense, so is the $3,000 I gave to other causes, and I will treat it the same way.  Good deeds...  In fact, I think I will give more this year. 

At least my taxes are done for another 9 months!  And I don't mind them.  They (mostly) go to good purposes.

I'll add an image in slight jest, though...



And as long as I'm here and typing, I'll mention George Carlin about class and taxes.  He had one routine where he "explained it all".  Basically, the Upper Class doesn't do any work and runs off with all the money and doesn't pay taxes. The Middle Class pays all the taxes and does all the work.   The Poor are there to scare the heck out of the Middle Class.

Funny stuff, though I will say he ignored the unpleasant and hard work of the Poor.  No analogy is perfect...

OK, time to play with The Mews before dinnertime.  I wonder how Laz will react to wand toys and the Red Dot!

Goodbye Old Car

I have had mostly good luck with cars, new and used.  I even got good service from a used Chevy Vega hatchback and a new stripped-to-the-bones Chevy Chevette Scooter (How stripped was it, you ask?  Tires were nearly an "option").  No used car lasted less than 4 years, and my last 4 new cars lasted 40 years.  The new cars following the Chevette Scooter were a Ford Taurus SW and then a loaded Eagle Vision (nearest thing to a sporty luxury car I ever bought).  The last, a beloved Toyota Highlander lasted 15 years.

But last year, the dealership advised me that the timing belt and other pulley belts needed to be replaced just due to age, the charging system was unrepairable and needed a full replacement, the tires were suffering age fatigue, and a lot of tune up and such.  Probably $5,000 total work.  And the dents and dings and paint scrapes made it nearly multi-colored. 

But it only had 30,000 miles on it, so I considered a full do-over.  But then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and according to Consumer Reports (CR) magazine, TV news reports and radio car expert spots, car dealerships became desperate to sell anything to anyone at nearly any price.  I decided it was a good time to replace it.

I like SUVs for the driver-view height, and I do have to tow a utility trailer for mulch, garden soil, and lumber sometimes.  And I've mentioned the negotiations for the new Subaru Forester previously.  I would have bought a Mazda CX-5 if there had been a dealership near me, but the 2 are about the same in the ways that matter to me.

I'm mentioning this because I donated the Eagle Vision to a charity named "Vehicles For Change".  As I understand such things, most charity sites immediately sell a donated vehicle to a mass-auction site for just a few $100s.  Not much benefit to them for that.  Vehicles For Change (VFC) has a program where the donated vehicle is repaired as training for ex-cons and others needing jobs and THEN the repaired vehicle is given to peole who need a car to get to a job, to transport kids to day-care, or just to be able to shop for groceries out of the urban desert.

I'm not pushing VFC and I get nothing from them, but they seem "different".  And it is sure easier than selling a car yourself.

And one thing I have learned from previous trade-ins for new cars is, that by the time the salesman plays with the costs enough, you actually don't get anything for a trade-in.  So, my previous car went to Vehicles For Change. 

Yesterday, the old Toyota Highlander took the same route.  I was assured by several VFC emails that it would be repaired as training for mechanics and body-repair trainees, and sent through State Inspection before being donated to a needing family.  And I get to write off the full fair market value from my taxes.  That's not why I do it, but it helps.

The Highlander only has 30,000 miles on it.  I hate driving and carpooled regularly.  They even emailed me about "is 30,000 miles accurate"?  I told them I had repair tickets showing the gradual mileage to prove it.  They were thrilled.  In the car biz, that's called a "cream puff".

So it was picked up yesterday.  The associated towing company called 30 minutes before and arrived right on time.  The towing guy was experienced and checked my VIN and my title transfer and gave me a detailed transfer of ownership. 

So going...

Going...

And gone.

I hope some mechanic and body work trainees get good experience from renovating it and that a deserving family gets a benefit that makes life easier.  Sometimes good things come from the top down (like tax breaks and social benefits for those who need it) and sometimes from the bottom up (like a donated working vehicle).

May my old loved car be of benefit to many...