Pansies

I like to plant Pansies in the Fall.  I replace the dead Tomatos and deck pot flowers with them most years.  Best deal I found was 12-packs of them for $12.98 at Lowe's Home Center.  $1 per plant isn't bad.  But I decided to wait a week (the tomatoes aren't dead yet).  So I looked online at their site in a week and saw there were 8-packs for $3.98.  That's 50 cents per plant!  And there were yellow, purple, blue, white and red (and red is hard to find).  

I mentioned previously that I found small pots of individual Mums for $1.24.  That seemed a great deal, but the blooms all died.  I snipped the deadheads off.  I see new ones developing, but they may not bloom for Halloween.  There are reasons some things are cheap.

The Pansies seem the real deal though.  Some in full bloom, some with spent flowers (so I know they can flower and I can usually tell which color they were).  I bought 12 8-packs of various colors.  I'm planning 4 per deck pot (I have 6) and the rest will be planted where and when the last tomato plant dies.

The price is crazy low.  And I'm happy to take advantage of that.  Pansies will provide color on the deck and in the tomato bed all Winter and Spring.  And, in fact, they will die back almost exactly when it is time to plant new tomato seedlings.

Speaking of tomatoes, it is tie to plant them in a different spot next year.  I grow heirloom tomatoes and they aren't very resistant to diseases.  Since those build up in the soil, it is a good idea to choose a new spot every couple of years.

I stretched it to a 3rd year this year, and they struggled.  I didn't get much from them.

But of course, as any gardener (or sports team) will say "next year will be better"!

Facebook And AOL Email

 Facebook and AOL email are driving me crazy!

I set up an account on Facebook about a year ago just to read something from a friend.  I have no use for it otherwise.  Last month Facebook advised me that I wasn't using them enough and they were cancelling my account.  OK, no prob.

Except they told me they were "giving" me 180 days to re-establish it.  OK.  But they send me reminders ("notifications") about that several times a day.  I first started sending them to my spam folder.  But I actually don't get much spam, so they were the only daily ones.  I hate having to manually delete spam every day.

It has become beyond annoying.  I tried to email them to stop.  They won't.  They say "just log in and adjust your preferences".  I can't.  I don't have an active account there any more.  And they want a smartphone number to send a text code to, to re-establish my password.  

I have a smartphone.  I don't use it except for GPS (and I can't navigate around in it anyway), but I could read a text message to see a code.

But I can't log in to Facebook without them sending me a security text code first.  And my "phone of record" on my Facebook account is an old landline cordless type which doesn't show text (yes, those things still exist).  

So I can't actually contact them to explain the problem.  Which leads me to AOL...

Years ago, Verizon dropped their email service and transferred users to AOL which kept the existing Verizon email addresses).  So I thought to create an email filter to send all Facebook notifications direct to the trash folder.  I used to set up email filters at the office and on my personal Verizon email.  Easy stuff.

I can't make the AOL filters work.  Tried everything...  The "from" line.  The "subject" line.  The content keyword ("notifications").  Once each and several at the same time later.  It doesn't work!

And this is going to go on for 6 months?

I may have to change my email provider.  That would be painful.  Changing email addresses is almost worse than changing your street address!!!

I'm old and have been around a lot of internet places.  Friends and family have my email in their contact lists.  I have very "occasional" contacts from old friends and odd sites.  My email addresses are often my user name in many places (well, that might still work).

But between Facebook and AOL, I am going slightly crazy...

Overseeding The Lawn

The guidelines for "overseeding the lawn say to cut the exiting grass down to 1".  I tried that.   The mower shimmied and shook!  It was actually a bit scary (seemed like the mower blade was coming loose or something).

I finally realized the blade area was just too filled with grass.  Apparrently, you can't cut grass that low in "mulching mode".   There was no where for all the cut grass to go!   So I raised it to 1.5".  Same thing.  2" was OK...

So now at least I have the grass cut low enough to cut it again (hopefully down to 1").  Why am I cutting it to 1" (you ask)?  Because newly-growing grass can actually be sucked up by a mower!  Weird but true!

But why am I doing this at all?  Grass spreads, right?  Not most.  The best grass for my part of the country is "turf-type tall fescue".  It clumps...   And insects and diseases kill some of them.  Which means new seeds every few years.  And I haven't done that for several years.

The good points about "turf-type tall fescue" are that it pretty tough grass and does well enough in full sun and partial shade (which pretty much defines my lawn), doesn't need much fertilizer, and is basically evergreen.

I mentioned "doesn't need much fertilizer".  Why not?  Well, what does a leafy plant need?  What it already has in itself, of course!  Grass has exactly what it wants most;  what it is already made up of.  Just leaving grass clippings on the lawn feeds the grass about 1/4 of what it needs to thrive.

It cracks me up to see neighbors carefully raking (or mower-bagging) thgeir grass-clippings.  And then putting them away in trash (or "yard-waste") bags.  And applying new (expensive and synthetic) fertilizer 3 times a year.  

And, BTW, they cut their grass too short.  Grass is sort of an equally "up and down" plant.  The taller the aboveground leaves, the deeper the roots.  So they are throwing away free "fertilizer", watering too often (and too shallowly all Summer), and buying "bad" fertilizer.

My lawn looks better and I hardly pay any attention to it.  The secret to some parts of the yard is knowing what you don't have to do...

Salad Trays Part 2

The first tiny lettuce seedlings are emerging.  Yay!  The carrots and pak choy will take a few more days.

Pilch 92 commented "You kept it going a long time. Our lettuce bolted when it got really hot over the summer."   Yeah, they lasted from Spring.  I'm pretty sure that's because I cut a whole head an 1" above ground level each time, so the whole plant grows back, and that delays bolting.  

"Cut&come again" is a really great way to keep harvesting loose-leaf lettuce.  Since the plant has an established root system, it regrows leaves very quickly.  And I use an organic slow-release fertilizer at initial planting so the roots stay fed for months.  I don't think that would work for iceberg lettuce, but I don't grow that.

With 2 trays of green lettuce and 1 of red, and 12 plants per tray, I always have enough for the base of a salad (I add plenty of other raw veggies to fill a bowl).  

It doesn't look like this again yet...

But it will in about a month!  At which time I will have to bring them inside for Winter (under lights).  And I have LED light fixtures to install, so it won't cost much.

BTW, lettuce seeds cost only about $3 per packet and if you keep them in the fridge, they last several years.  The 2' trays are cheap enough.  Not that I've ever tried to keep track carefully, my best guesstimate is that I pay about 15 cents per pound of fresh clean lettuce.  $2 per pound at the grocery store.

The celery and pak choy is harder to guess and the savings.  I just get leaves of both.  Which is all I want from them.  Celery leaves are tasty and a bit spicy.  Pak choy leaves are just for my shrimp rolls but the leafiest ones at the store are "baby" and cost $5 per pound.  

But mostly, I love just being able to walk out on the deck at dinnertime and harvest fresh stuff easy and cheap!

Halloween Decorations.

Not mine; the cross-street neighbors...  They really decorate for holidays.

 The picture isn't great.  My camera doesn't do well with little bright lights at night from a distance.  But you can get the general idea.  There are strings of small orange lights all around.  There are 2 large inflatable pumpkins upper left.  The bluish thing on the right is the head of a witch (otherwise draped in black).  The upper middle thing is a ghost.  The white light is just their sidewalk lamp.

I'm just going to put a regular pumpkin (carved with a cat face) on the front steps along with 4 small orange Mums I found cheap at Walmart.  I'm just doing that for neighborhood friendliness.  Kids don't do "trick or treating" anymore (around here at least).

I haven't had a knock at my door for almost 15 years.  Actually, I almost never see kids playing outside at all.  I know they exist here because when I am working in the front yard, I see the parents getting them into cars to take them hither and yon...  But they don't play outside.  I suppose outside (or "trick or treating") is just consider to dangerous these days.

I bet if you asked a kid about kickball or tag, they wouldn't even know what you were referring to.  But that's really a subject for a future post.

But anyway, I always have a box of Lindt truffles around for an occasional treat, so if some kid did knock on the door at Halloween, I can oblige...

Salad Trays

I keep trays of salad greens on sawhorses of the deck.  They are convenient there.  Most leaf lettuces, celery and pak choy are "cut&come again".  But they do wear out eventually.  I kept the previous planting going from Spring to a few weeks ago.

So it was time to start again.  I dumped all the tray into a large tub.  Very sturdy tub; I think it is used for automotive stuff like draining fluids, but I'm pretty good at seeing other uses for stuff.  Like the 10" wide plaster-smoother that I use to scrape the litter boxes clean.

So I had all the soil in the tub a couple weeks ago and a surprise rainstorm hit.  So I had a tub of mud!  That took a couple weeks to dry out.  And because there was more rain coming, I suspended a tarp over the tub allowing airflow so it could dry out without getting soaked again.

Finally yesterday, I had workable soil again.

I'm missing a few pictures that were so bad as to be unusable.  But they showed a tray in the tub and scooped soil filling it.  I used a small block of scrap wood as a leveler and to lightly press the soil flat.   Then I poked some slight depressions added a seed to each and pilled the holes.  You'll have to just imagine that part 6 times.  😖

But when I was done, I had my salad bed replanted...

 I have small round carrots, pak choy, red romaine lettuce, red leaf lettuce, and green leaf lettuce.  And it's not the stuff you see in the grocery store.  Red romaine lettuce is never seen.  The red leaf lettuce is bright red from top to bottom instead of just the tips.  The green leaf lettuce is lime green.  

The celery is still growing from before, but I don't get stalks; I grow it for the tastier (slightly bitter).  I grow the pak choy for the leaves (for wrapping the contents of shrimp rolls inside the dough wrappers to avoid punctures).

Most of those plants are moderately cold-hardy, but before it gets too cold, I will bring them inside under lights.  Fresh salad all Winter!

Odds And Ends

Random Stuff:

1.  Planted a Sourwood tree in the front yard (I have 2 in the back) .  The spot I wanted to plant it in was where a dead Beech tree was removed last Fall, and the spot was dense with old roots, so I planted it near the driveway.  

Which is probably a better spot anyway.  As I am rather inept at backing the car into the garage, I have to back it down the driveway.  I used to have 2 Golden Rain trees on either side next to the street as reference points.

But one died and the other blew over in a storm.  They aren't strong trees.  Well, OK, my car has a backup camera but it gives no depth perception.  So a new tree will help.

2.  Bought a new keyboard specifically designed for a Mac.  Most previous ones were Mac/Windows compatible.  This one has keys I'm not familiar with (in the sense they are named rather than symboled).    I don't immediately know the difference between "control, option, command" keys.  So, of course, the delete and backspace keys are only symbol.  

And if there is a "sleep" key, I have yet to find it.  Which matters.  The "sleep" function on the Mac screen menu sometimes takes a dozen tries.  The sleep button on my old keyboard seldom needed 3 tries.

The key touch feels great.  The ad said "backlit" which seemed great, but it isn't really.  Its more "reflective".  But that helps some...  It's Yivandi.

BTW, if you put one side of the keyboard "just" on your mousepad, the mousepad doesn't move around.  😀

3.  Walmart has small chrysanthemums on sale for $1.24.  I planted 4 of them into larger pots hoping for a good Halloween display on the front step by then.  A carved pumpkin would be more impressive though.  I have a good cat design I downloaded from a free site.  The question is whether I have the carving skills.  

I do have a really thin tomato slicer, and I am used to preparing a lot of veggies for dinner.  So I probably won't lose any fingers.

4.  Bought a non-slip cat food mat.  Marley really pushes his bowl around.  And if his bowl touches another cat's bowl, he considers both "his".

5.  Bought a new front door welcome mat.  I always like those fuzzy ones with cat images and that say "wipe your paws",  but they don't weather well.  This one is rubber (and says the same thing), so it should last longer...  Can't manage an image of it from Amazon...  

6.  Laz chased an intruder cat from the yard.  He ran at it weirdly. Legs spread out.  He looked like a flying squirrel at grass level...  Cats are funny about attacks sometimes.  LC used to bounce at intruders.   Marley used to do a bunny hop and a leap at the end.   I suppose that anything weird is scary to an intruder.

The Mews Picture List And Memories

I keep a list of pictures to use (and "usually" cross them off so I on't use them again soon).  My 1st column lists the cats involved. Sometimes, it is "all".  Sometimes it is just a few specific ones.  

Today I realized I was still writing L-L-M (Lori, Laz, Marley) as if Ayla was still here.  I changed L-L-M to "all".  Habits are hard to break sometimes and painful.  

Ayla is in a plastic bag in the basement freezer.  I need to build a new box for her.  I delayed because I could find a resin cat-figurine to match Skeeter, LC, and Iza's.  I had to choose a wood one.  I'll soak it in marine varnish, I suppose, to make it last outdoors.  

I was ready to make a new box for her burial site, but it was raining.  I need to remove weeds from the site and my little electric tiller doesn't deal with wet soil well.  And I need to move stuff around in the basement to build a new box.

So it will be a few days before she gets buried around the Memorial Pond with Skeeter/LC/Iza.  Well, at least this time, the soil won't be frozen.   Iza is between them now, but I can't find the picture...

Found it..

I need to take a box inside to copy it.  It will be a sad construction to build, but a good remembrance for all my remaining years.  Maybe I should make 4 and set the others aside so I don't have to do it again.  It hurts to make these Memorial Boxes...  Or maybe not.  Maybe that's the point of making them each time.  Each one is a specific object of love and missing one.

*sigh*

Declutterring

 I am recycling, trashing, and selling a lot of stuff.  And considering setting up a table in the front yard for "you want it, take it, its free".  I have saved "possibly useful", "didn't know what to do with", and old electronics for too long.  

Some of the stuff will go on Craigs's List.  I don't need the few dollars, but sometimes someone wants a cheap "something" and it beats paying to haul it to the landfill to get rid of it.  I'll nearly give those away just to save me some effort.

I have too much old computer junk.  Who needs an old joystick? And I have a 15 year old windows computer in the closet.  I'll remove the hard drive of course.    Same with an old  desktop Mac and 2 previous Mac Minis. 

If someone wants four 8'x3" cardboard shipping tubes, they are welcome to them.

And there are stupid things of no value but were gifts I didn't dare through away.  The gifters are all deceased now.  I can give them away.

A front yard "free" table should take care of most things.  Craig's list should take care of most moderately valuable items.  Recycling (or trash) will take of the rest.  

And I have clothes that don't fit but are in good condition (and I just washed them).  I hope Goodwill will accept them.  Got a half a closet back doing that.

I'm not a hoarder, but sometimes stuff accumulates.  I'm taking care of that.

Facebook

I received an email from Facebook a few days ago saying that they were cancelling my account.  Which is fine; I don't use Facebook.  I think I opened an account in order to follow a link a year ago.  But it gets weird...

Apparently I have 180 days to appeal their decision (which I'm not bothering to do).  Their reason is that I have not maintained community standards (which in my case seems to be "not participating").  Cancelling my account for "not participating" seems to be a toothless threat.  Since I'm not using Facebook, I don't really care if they cancel my account.  LOL!

But here's the annoying part.  They send me 2-3 emails per day counting down the days left in the 180 day appeal process. I have them sent to spam, but I sure don't want go through this spam deletion for 6 months!  Clicking on "unsubscribe" just brings me to a login page, and it is a no-reply email.  

As far as I can tell, they are trying to punish me for not using them.  

I suppose I will have to set up a filter sending their appeals notifications directly to trash...

Cap Lock

I really never use "Cap Lock" deliberarely.  But it bedevils me while typing.  I will suddenly see a whole paragraph in CAPS and have to undo it. 

So I pried the bastard key off!  It feels like a missing tooth.  But like a missing tooth, at least I don't have to deal with it any more.  😀