Ticked Off

My backyard is not mostly lawn.  2/3s of it was wooded and under-brushy when I moved in and I have gradually removed most of the trees.  Its not that I dont like trees (I do) but the neighbors let trees grow so tall all around my property lines that I was desperate for some sunlight for my flowerbeds and veggie garden.  So there are actually MORE trees in the general area.

But one consequence is that the open formerly wooded area is growing all sorts of junk; briars, spurge, burdock, mock strawberries, vines, and tall grasses.  Ticks love that stuff.  I have to thoroughly check the cats when they come in.  I check myself too, but I'm pretty sensitive to anything moving on me.


(Warning, possible TMI alert - You may want to stop reading)


But some places are less sensitive than others.  Like the (ahem) "base of the spine".  I idly scratched there a couple of times the other day before realizing that there was a tick.  Upon divesting myself of some clothing I realized I must have chased it around a bit.  I had 4 bite-bumps in just 4 sq inches! I pulled it off before it drew any blood and put it on the counter where I put a drop of rubbing alcohol on it.  That always kills them.  Not to be gross, but I then scratched all the bumps  a bit raw and put Neosporin on them.  The Lone Star ticks don't carry the worst tick diseases, but I like to be careful. even though the literature says it takes 12 hours before they can transmit any disease.

I did some research tonight, and it seems my yard has Lone Star Ticks (aka Seed Ticks).  They are fast little suckers!  Deet is supposed to repel them, but it doesn't according to some videos I watched.  On the other hand, they seem to get me where I don't use Deet.  I should mention that we have Asian Tiger Mosquitos here in MD (the only kind that I can't detect when they are on me) so I use a 7% Deet spray on my arms outdoors (which is generally sufficient) and I wear long tan twill pants even in Summer.  So when I find a tick on me it is usually behind my knees or on my back.  Hmmm, maybe the Deet DOES work.  I think I will start spraying it on my pants legs and socks.

I rarely find a tick on the cats (although Iza famously had one right on her butt once).  And I found a dead shell of one in Marley's earfolds once.  He is touchy about me exploring there, so I tend to avoid it.

Well, anyway, the tick-bite-bumps have gone away now, I don't see any reaction, and the tick was too flat to have started to get any blood yet.

But watch out for those things.  Most ticks move slowly but the Lone Star ticks run like ants!  I wear the tan twill pants when working outside partly because it is easy to spot them.  But these ones can get over your socks and on your legs before you check.

The backyard, other than the gardens is mostly a wasteland of scrub growth.  I used to rather like the wildness of it.  I keep the gardens organic, but I am not so fussy about the non-edible areas.  I'm going to spray Roundup around a lot of the area.  And trap the voles which seem to be the tick vectors here.

I'm sure you will forgive me for not taking pictures of the tick-bites, LOL!

Don't Shop For Colors On A Rainy Day!

OK, I'm a guy, I can remember about 16 colors in my head when I shop (but interestingly, I know 64 compass directions).  But at least when I'm looking at them in a store, I can tell slight differences.  So there I was deciding to get a new bath towel to (sort of) fit with the  shower curtain with bright colors and the green floor mat.  I thought a generally olive color would look OK.  I selected one a computer color chart says is "dark moss green".  I got it home and hung it on the towel rack.  It looks gray with a hint of blue!  I can't even FIND that on the computer color chart (well computer monitors are limited).

I also wanted some deep green casual button shirts and found one that was definitely green but pretty dark, but I thought it would do.  At home?  It looks charcoal!  Maybe it will look OK outside in sunlight...

One of my first post-college jobs was as Manager of a department store shoe department.  One aisle was of ladies fashion shoes.  I ALWAYS used to insist that they bring the shoes they chose to the front of the store to see the real color in daylight.  I would have done that myself today, except the Menswear Dept of the Target store is about 1/4 mile away from the front of the store, and it was raining anyway. 

I should know better.  Men buy things one at a time and hope they match.  A mat here, a curtain there, when some item needs to be replaced, etc.  Women buy "outfits" or "rooms".  Someday, I will learn to do that. 

But for now, I am cursed with bluish-gray towels that SHOULD look moss green.  Well, the cats don't mind.  Maybe I will buy real-daylight bulbs to put all over the house.

Well, That Was Fun, But A Surprise!

Last night around 10:30 pm, I lost access to one of my 3 email accounts.

I spent the better part of 12 hours trying to get it working again and only managed to lose access to ALL 3 accounts.  I boiled, I steamed (taking an hour off  at 6 am to rip the grass away from the front yard trees and prune a few wayward branches in frustration management).  I had tried to find a way to reach Verizon but could only get a dumb computer assistant that was worthless.  Verizon does NOT want you to reach an actual human being...

I was so angry I was QUIVERING.  I wanted a HUMAN on line to solve this problem!  I am sorry to say that I wouldn't let any of the Mews up on the computer desk.  I couldn't handle the distraction.

About 9:30 am I finally remembered that I had old paper bills from Verizon and THOSE had a customer service telephone number.  AHA!  I had a telephone number, and it got me right through to a human (probably few people have that number now)!

It took HIM (matter of chance) an HOUR to fix the problem after I let him take over my computer (and I have to say that almost every serious computer problem I've ever had has been solved SMOOTHLY that way).  I had to keep entering a password (must be Verizon policy since he could see what it was) but it did make me feel involved and gave me the illusion of privacy.

Watching the onscreen typing from the Verizon rep was a hoot.  He types as badly as I do.  He kept deleting keystrokes, LOL!  But he fixed it and that's all I really cared about.  My emails accounts are working again.

But you won't guess the sweet part of the frustrating hours on line...

Iza put her precious purple softy-mouse at my feet while I struggled.

When she comes in from the deck sunpuddle, I will start a DVD nature show and give her as much laptime as she wants...  And she is getting extra treats tonight.

RSS Readers and Cable TV Nonsense Rant

The Old Reader makes me log in every time I want to check it, doesn't store my name/email/blogname for wordpress sites, and seems to dredge up multiple posts from blogs that aren't active. 

Feedly lists all posts from all blogs individually so there seem to be 100s if I miss a day of visiting, and their icons are odd.  Why a "check mark" should mean "its been read" is beyond me.  Why not just have the button say "mark as read"?

Too many apps try to be too hip/cute/clever.  We dont need that.  We need simple functionality.

I don't really like either site.  I am desperately hoping that some site will simply host Google Reader (with any name they like) so I can get back to visiting our friends easily an understand what I am seeing on the reader site.

It reminds me of the time I was on vacation and visited a restaurant that only had 2 different flowers identifying men an women bathrooms.  I had to wait until a lady opened one door and asked inside "Is this the right room"?  Then I used the other.  Men/Women is functional, Buoys/Gulls is cute at a marina, 2 flowers is just stupid.

My TV is gonna go whacko in a few days.  The Verizon FiOS folks just told me about an "improvement".   Instead of the TV just coming on to the last channel watched, I will have a "helpful" screen full of choices.  Like the temperature/weather outside at the time, advertisements of services I already know about from weekly junk mail I dont want and "channels" in the onscreen TV Guide that offer pay-to-view movies, and a description of the channel I last watched. 

Gee, I can guess the current weather by looking out the window and I have a thermometer.  I know all the services they offer.  I find the idea that I need to be told the basic concept of the last channel I watched rather insulting.  Who dreams up these ideas?

They brag that I can see the last channel I watched by just clicking "exit" on the remote.  But I had that before without having to do the extra click.  Some "improvement"...

I suspect that most businesses have a department dedicated to "what can we think of to change today to justify our existence".  The only real change I want from my cable TV service is a la carte channel subscription.  I want my cable service to divide up the exact current monthly bill by channel and let me choose the ones I will pay for.  I'd even let them add 10%.  I really only watch 12 channels.

The current system is ridiculous.  It's as if you bought a blanket at Walmart and it was bundled with a blender, a bag of potting soil, 6 mismatched spoons, a kids shirt, and 2 videotapes from the clearance rack!

End of rant...

Trailer Rebuild, Part 2

So there I was, back to the original framework (except for having some holes drilled through the metal - I tell you those step-bits for drilling metal are great)!

It was time to put on the new stuff.  I had decided to raise the sides from 18" to 24".  Most of the material I want to haul these days is fairly light - mulch and compost and tree debris.  And if its heavy (like sand) I'll just keep the load below the metal framework.

First, I bought all new stainless steel bolts, nuts, washers, split-washers, etc.  And a special purchase I will mention later.

Then I started with a solid floorbed.  No more tarps of the bottom to damage when I shovel material out of the trailer.  The side there is merely clamped down to hold the bottom sheet in place and to see how it would look.

One single 4x8' sheet and then custom fit strips off a 2nd sheet because (surprise!) the trailer is off square by 1/4" and I didn't want any gaps.  I got that strip so accurate I had to stomp it into place!  And then I couldn't push a fingernail in anywhere along the length.  Given a long history of bad circular saw cuts, that may be a personal "best".  It helped that I used a neat clampable straightedge tool (and measured 3 times before cutting).

Here is the clamping straight edge.  It comes in two 4' lengths that can be connected to 8'.  Very nice for cutting plywood!  Mark the cut line and then 1 1/2" more (for MY circular saw - other brands may vary) and it's hard to go wrong.

So, with the bottom in place, I could attach the sides...

Since the sides stick up higher than the metal framework, they need some support.  And the back is designed to be supported by 2x4s sticking into those small frames you can barely see on the back.  They work, but they don't quite fit 2x4s; you have to plane or cut them at th corners.  but I want better support at the top of the back anyway.  And I don't like the exposed edges of the P-T plywood.

So I will show part 3 when I figure out the details.  I know WHAT I want to do, but the measurement tolerances are tight so I may think about it a couple days.  But if what I have in mind works, you'll like it.

Trailer Rebuild, Part 1

I love my 5x8' hauling trailer.  It transports mowers, hauls sand/mulch/compost home, hauls tree debris/recyclables/trash to the county landfill, and I bet it would carry a dozen neighborhood kids on a joy ride for a dollar each (just kidding).

The thing has an open metal frame, so I had to built plywood sides when I bought it.  Ten years+ later, the sides are rotting away.  And the base is boards with spaces between them, so I've always had to put a tarp on the bottom to keep small stuff like sand and compost from falling out (and a tarp above to keep it from blowing away).

So it was time to rebuild!  This time, I wanted rot-resistant (and higher) sides, a solid bottom, and more attached (but still removable) back.  When the trailer is off the car, the front sits on a cinderblock so it tilts back (no worry about rain collecting inside). 

So after sketching out various trailer side and bottom dimensions, I took the trailer to Home Depot (I needed it to haul new plywood home).  I went for 1/2 pressure-treated (P-T) plywood 4x8' sheets.  Home Depot changed a "no-cutting" policy on P-T wood last year or so to allowing it.  They have a great sheet plywood cutting machine, but it's one free cut per sheet.  I had fun figuring out the cuts (no seriously, I had FUN figuring out the cuts - I was good at geometry in school and I do some slight wood-working).  I figured out a satisfactory way to do the whole thing with 3 sheets of plywood and only 1 Home Depot cut on 2 sheets.  I would have had them do a cut on the 3rd sheet, but I needed to custom fit that cut.

Here are the BEFORE pictures...

You can see the sides were falling apart.

So I unloaded the new pieces.

And set about removing the old...

Easier said than done!  Some of those zinc-coated bolts and nuts were locked in place.  Considering that some of them just loosened and fell out over the years, that was a surprise.  (And for those of you in the know, I used lock washers and double nuts on all the bolts)

Thank goodness for Liquid Wrench!

I soaked all the nuts with that.  They still fought, but they DID all come loose with "persuasion".

And eventually, I had all the old sides removed.

Next time, I put on the new bottom and sides...

Replacement To Google Reader

Well, I finally did some research on a replacement to Google Reader, since it it planned to be shut off July 1st.  I figured it would be a good idea to try out a few for the last month.

I considered functionality, simplicity, familiarity, and ease of transition most important.  My needs are simple.  I only use RSS feeders for blogs on a single desktop computer.  Anything else, I have a bookmark for.

I went to a few discussion sites that compared the features of cloud RSSs versus web-based RSSs, and I'm not comfortable with The Cloud.  I like applications ON my computer.  OK, I'm OLD...  LOL!

But seriously, if its on my computer, it can't disappear overnight since I have daily external backup right here.

The one I found most interesting was The Old Reader <http://theoldreader.com/>  It seems to be very similar to Google Reader, and is relatively easy to import the Google Reader list.

You can sign in with various accounts, but I chose to create a new one separate from Google (just in case).  I like to distribute my services around to frustrate the aggregators. 

You export the Google Reader file in Google Reader to a zip file.  Then you just create an account with The Old Reader (love the name) and it offers you to browse a file to open.  On my Mac, opening a zip file automatically unzips it, I don't remember on a PC.  You might have to unzip it first.

But with the Google file unzipped in Import, The Old Reader just loads it.  It does take a few minutes.  I got an email message saying the import was complete, so look for that.

When the Google Reader subscriptions are all imported, they will all show 10 or 20 unread per subscription.  I suggest visiting all your subscriptions down to zero so that you can just mark ALL read after the import.  I didn't think of that and I regret it.

And this point, your Old Reader should look generally like Google Reader, but there are some differences.

1.  You don't click on the blog title to access it.  Below the blog title, there are "site" and "feed" buttons.  "Site" brings you to the home page of the blog; "feed" brings you to only the newest post.

2.  To show only the updated blogs, you have to go to your name in the upper right corner.  There is a drop down menu.

At "feed display mode", choose "show unread only, and at "Post Order" check "Show only those folders/feeds that have unread items".

And you are good to go!  It sounds more complicated than it is.  It only took me 15 minutes, and I'm a bit slow and cautious at this stuff.

Anyone have a RSS they like better?  My ears are open...

The Return Of The Mowers

I love Angie's List!  I have had nothing but superb service and value from every contractor and medical service I have selected since I joined.  Consumers Union for the local community...

Angie's List gives letter grades for quality, price, responsiveness, punctuality, and professionalism.  I focus on price and quality.  Price and quality together = value.  You can search for service providers many ways, but I only look at the ones with straight A ratings.  If the only ones were too far away, I would accept a couple of B ratings but price and quality HAVE to be A rating.  So far, that has not been a problem. 

And also so far,  I found dad a geriatric doctor when he first arrived, a dentist specializing in elderly patients, a vinyl siding replacement company, a roof replacement company, a tree removal company, and most recently a mower repair company.  Every single experience has been outstanding!

Today I got my riding mower and regular walk-behind mower back.  The regular mower wouldn't start this year, and when it did last year (with great pulling of cords and bad words) the deadman lever didn't work and I had to stop the engine by shorting the spark plug against the engine block.  They took apart and cleaned the carburetor, emptied and cleaned the gas tank, replaced a broken deadman lever cable, added about the same amount of new gas back, and sharpened the blades. 

The riding mower was running well enough, but developed a sudden banging/rattling sound under the deck just as I finished mowing last week.  Fearing a loose drive shaft or blade, I stopped immediately.  And even more suspiciously, there was no bad sounds with the blades disengaged while just driving the riding mower to the trailer to bring it to them.  They removed and replaced the drive belts, and found what they initially thought was a bent part of the blade undercarriage.  It was dried grass clippings, but so hard after sitting all Winter that the blade was actually bouncing off it.  They said they had to use a regular chisel to remove it and then they cleaned off the dried grass from the rest of the undercarriage.

That was embarrassing.  I ought to know enough to scrape the packed grass clippings from the undercarriage by now.  But I haven't done that for 3 years; its awkward to get a riding mower up off the ground for access to the underside, so I always think "well, maybe next time".  But at least it's done now and I should think about a way to get easy access to the bottom in the future.

When I was a teenager, the house had a sunken basement with cinder block walls and concrete steps steps leading up the the lawn level.  It just so happened to be exactly the width of my car tires, so I had a wonderful spot to change the oil and do the very simple car stuff I knew about.  I need something like that for the riding mower.

But the point of all this is that this place (Tool Solutions, Inc) did great work, nothing more than needed, and the cost for both mowers was...  $98!  My guess was $200 at best.

And so I will go over to Angie's List and give them a straight A rating.  I used both mowers today and they both worked better than ever, the price was great, they did the work quickly, discussed the needed work without exaggerating anything,  and were very (but quietly) professional about the whole repair.  And they are 3 youngish guys, only in business for 4 years.  I will be glad to go back to them for anything.

They don't know I am writing this...

Good Yardwork Day Yesterday, 2

And by "yesterday", I mean Monday, since this is part 2...

After clearing out tree saplings and forsythia, I went after the running grass in the annual flowerbed.  The running grass is some evil grass that spreads by underground runners.  I don't know the variety of this one, but it is upright, single at first but will send up several stalks later, the runner roots are white, and they send up a new shoot about every 8-12".  Each one has to be dug up deeply individually, but you also have to dig up the soil between shoots to get the runners.  You can't even pull them up in soft soil.  The roots are brittle and snap of when pulled, and if you leave any part of the runners in the ground, they grow from that.  They probably arrived here in a coneflower or stella d'oro lily perennial I bought and planted at the sides and back edge.

Thank goodness for my leverage fork! 

I think it is one cool tool.  Oh of course, there are standard great tools like shovels and rakes and hoes.  But in the "unusual" category, I have to rank that up with the scuffle hoe and the pointed stainless steel trowel!  This thing is solid steel, when you put your foot under the curved part you have great pressure, and when it is in deep you just bend it back and the U-bar leverages the tines to push up the soil.  If you can step the tines IN the soil, the bar will pull the soil up and loose.  And it is great for chopping up big clods of hard soil too.

So I set to work on the runner grass with the leverage fork.  Push it in, bend it back, move it 4" and repeat.  Forever.  But the point is that it goes deep enough to get below the grass runners and the grass comes out roots and all.  If you soil is hard (as I hope it is not in any garden) you can pound the soil clumps on the U-bar to break up the soil and take out the grass runners.

I'm not saying the leverage fork makes it "easy", just "possible".  It still took an hour this time (my 3rd attack on the grass in 2 weeks).  THIS attack was on the difficult edges and around the perennials, so I had to work more carefully.  In fact, I soaked the target areas with a hose the day before to soften the soil.  When I used a roto-tiller to establish the bedding area many years ago, the edges were hard to get at properly, so the grass is harder to get at there.

I know from sad experience that I can never get ALL the below-ground runner roots.  But I bet I set them back 4-5 years this time.  Here is the de-grassed area...

Annuals will be going the bare spots next.  I like to have red salvias and blue forget-me-knots, but I had poor germination and growth of my annual seeds this year.  I even only got 75% of the marigolds to grow.  Well, the seeds were several years old.  I may have to buy some seedlings at the garden store.  Or maybe I'll plant a few various veggies.  I have some extra seedlings left over from the veggie beds.  Still, I'd rather have annual flowers there.  They bloom their little heads of all season.

Good Yardwork Day Yesterday

Yesterday was cool, dry, and overcast; a superb day for yardwork!

I had in mind planting a few veggies and flowers, but a neglected back corner of the yard caught my attention because a long-forgotten weigela shrub (1 of 3 originally planted) was struggling to bloom among the shady underbrush of unwanted tree saplings, vines, briars, and a single will-not-die asparagus plant from my original 20' row planting 25 years ago.  So I got out the loppers and waded in (carefully, as I also spotted a few small poison ivy plants).

The first thing was to cut down all the saplings.  Trickier than you might think, because that corner seems to be the last refuge of the nasty thorny locust trees that originally covered half the backyard.  They have thorns all along the trunk and branches like 3/4" needles, and they will grow back from being cut down 4" in a year.  They are very hard to handle, and harder to kill.  I once read that the original colonists used cut trunks as fenceposts (the wood is rot-resistant and the trunks grow straight) only to discover that the cut trunks would re-root when stuck in the ground!

It took me 10 years to finally kill them off.  These probably came from seeds of neighbors' trees since there weren't any in that corner when I planted the weigela some 10 years ago.  Because of a peculiarity of lot shapes and drainage easements there is a triangle of space just off my back yard that all 3 neighbors ignore.  It is utterly wild and filled with poison ivy, wild grape vines, mock strawberry, and (apparently) a few mature thorny locusts; all nasty invasive stuff!

Anyway, it took a while, but I managed to clear the surface of all the bad stuff, and I discovered a 2nd weigala barely surviving at a foot high.  With the additional light and less competition for nurients, it should recover.  There was no sign of the 3rd weigela.  I'll have to take a few stem cuttings and get them rooted in pots.

After that, and being in a clearing mood, I decided to tackle the forsythia growing into my flowerbed border from another neighbor.  Those forsythia, though outside my fence, are entirely my fault.  My street was built brand new in 1986.  I was only the 3rd house built on my street and my neighbor was the 4th.  She was elderly, friendly, and sneaky.  There were not borders then and the property lines were uncertain.  She noticed that I would mow any part between us that she didn't, and she gradually left more and more.  So I planted a row of forsythias to mark the assumed property line.  When I decided to build a fence (to keep the large off-leash dogs out, for cat-safety) I discovered pipes marking the corners of the property.  From the plat measurements and compass directions, I figured out the property lines.

On my father's advice, I inset the fence 18" to allow myself legal access to the outside of the fence for repairs.  That was the dumbest advice I ever followed, but more about that later!  Anyway, I asked the neighbor lady if she wanted me to leave the forsythia and she said yes.  I have regretted that ever since.  Each year, forsythias pop up on my side and some years I am too busy to get them out.  Well, when I planted them I didn't know they spread.

I usually just keep cutting them off at ground level, but this year I decided to get in there and dig them out.  I used my "poacher's shovel" (on right).

Its called that because it is only half the width of a regular shovel, is more curved so it makes a smaller hole, its lighter to carry, and gives a smaller soil ball.  So plant poachers loved it.  Its like a super trowel on a short shovel handle.  I like it because the small blade lets me get at problem roots in cramped spaces among plants you don't want to disturb.  Three digs, and you have a nice 6" circle cut around a plant.

So I first pruned most of the forsythia canes away so I could see the rooted stems and dug them out carefully one-by-one.  It took 2 hours!  At least I have most of them out by the roots.  The remaining ones are growing up through the roots of 2 shrubs I have disliked for years and plan to remove later. 

The pile of removed forsythias does not look like much, LOL!  But each one was an effort.  I had to stand awkwardly to avoid stepping on wanted plants, the shovel handle would hit the fence, there were forsythia roots among the butterfly bush roots, etc...

Those 2 shrubs I plan to remove later are nice enough, yellow and green evergreen leaves, but way bigger than advertised and they keep sending up shoots from the spreading roots (golden euonymus 'you-on-i-mus').

I'm going to try to kill the forsythias.  As the canes grow through the fence, I will cut the cane and put a dab of undiluted Roundup on the cut end.  It worked for the thorny locusts...

I got a lot more done, but this is long enough and I'll finish tomorrow.

Memorial Day