The Most Hated Man On My Block Could Become Me

My neighbors may be about to hate me and so too my family if we don't get a good day or three of soaking rain soon. I tend to think it will be that I wind up the most hated man on my block this spring since rain is not forecast until Tuesday. Even then, they promise only a 50% chance of it. I guess that means I will be watering the backyard frequently over the next few to several days and quite possibly will throw more lime on it as I did just a few minutes ago because man oh man does it smell like shit back there. We had a bag of chicken shit fertilizer out back and it was left out for a year or more. Well, today, when cleaning up some back there, I grabbed the bag and out tore and fell all of the chicken poop that had looked like small pellets or granules once upon a time. Today it was no more than a rotten, rancid, putrid, smelly, foul, odiferous pile of sludge - about 10 to 15 pounds of it.

Calling it "no more" than anything though is a gross under statement. It truly will wind up stinking all the way up to high heaven and that means there is a strong chance of it wafting through and odorizing all the yards, houses and noses anywhere in the near vicinity depending on which way the wind blows it. Right after it happened, I wondered: 'what can I do with that pile of malicious muck'. I figured I could dump it in a trash bag and leave it for the sanitation men. Then I thought better of that because I also figured out that they probably do not appreciate collecting sacks full of fetid feces along their route. Anyway,  I thought it might be a potential health hazard in that high of a concentration.

So, I did the best thing I could think of, I tossed shovels loads of it around my yard under several bushes. Then I hosed it down really well with lots and lots of water to spread it and to let it seep into the soil and dissipate. Then I threw some lime over the places where I had just piled and spread out the disgusting dung and then watered it well once again.

I am thinking that my method of 'stink-be-gone' will have worked within a couple to few days at most. So, I am hopeful that, none too soon, most of the aroma will have wafted itself away to nothingness and my yard will again be scented more like heaven than like hell. As for spreading it around in the yard, to dispose of it, what else should, or could, I have done with it? I mean, it is fertilizer, after all, isn't it! With any luck, I will not have fertilized my bushes to death.

All the best,
Glenn B

The Garden's Goodness

We only have a small lot on which our house sits, and we have what is just a tiny garden along the side that gets about the least sun during the day, but that is where our garden sits. In it we have planted tomatoes, butternut squash, peppers of a couple of varieties, cabbage, green leaf lettuce, red leaf lettuce, radishes, eggplant, broccoli, green beans and yellow wax beans. We also have some of the same in a few pots scattered around the rest of our backyard, and we have a potted strawberry bush/vine). This year has not been the best for our small crop, but it still has been fairly good in production. We treated the earth well, using lots of compost from our small compost pile, and the earth has rewarded us with a small bounty of delicious fruit and vegetables, and a good amount of earthworms for my Musk Turtle. Of course Linda also has a lot of nice potted flowers and a small flower garden too.

I think my favorite produce from the yard this year has been our yellow tomatoes. We have 2 varieties, a yellow plum tomato (not doing all that well, producing but the tomatoes do not ripen on the vine, so I ripen them inside a brown paper bag), and a Better-Boy yellow tomato that has produced medium to fairly large fruits for us. Those larger yellow tomatoes are just scrumptious as far as I am concerned, though they are not Linda's favorites. They are less acidic, an milder in taste than red tomatoes, but they have a fine flavor that is great straight, put on a sandwich mixed into a nice garden salad, or in a homemade salsa.

The butternut squash is just about ready for the harvest; and I almost cannot wait for it. Linda has a great recipe for baking this mashed and covered with butter and garlic. It is absolutely wonderful on the taste buds.

As for the flowers, I suppose some of my favorites are the Black Eyed Susan's (a variety of daisy). I think that is what they are called anyhow. Another favorite or I should say a favorite area is around the small patio out front where Linda has a nice variety of potted flowers. While the flowers still look great, it is getting obvious, by looking at the state of the plants in our vegetable garden that summer is winding down, and that autumn cannot be far behind. If only we had an apple tree, we'd be picking them soon too.

All the best,

Glenn B

Home Repairs - Nothing Is Easy When You Have My Luck

So I finally got the spare bedroom painted. Took about 4 weekends of my spare time. That is okay - no hurry here. It looks pretty good. I also took up the old carpet today, and when I saw the old floor underneath, I figured I'll have to sand it, then refinish it. That will not be the easiest thing to do, but not too hard.

Of course, with a house it is one thing after another. About a week or so ago, I tried to change the handle on the upstairs throne. As my luck and ineptness would have it, I broke the side of the toilet tank doing so. Luckily for me above the water line; but it is ruined. It needs replacing, but it is so old I cannot find a match. So after a week or week and a half of it being usable but broken, I took off the tank and tried to line up a new one. No go. So that left me with needing to replace the whole toilet and tank. Okay, I took off the old toilet too. Then there it was a major problem, at least for me who am no plumber. The brass flange to which the base of the throne attaches is cracked. It seems the knuckleheads who put in my new bathroom 14 years ago placed the tile floor atop the old tile floor. When they left the hole for the toilet, they made it too wide. Instead of the flange having floor under it to support it, they attached the flange to the drain pipe and left the edges of it in thin air. Well the toilet and floor must have settled causing the brass flange to crack. I imagine I could just put everything back atop it, but all the books I've read and advice I have been given is to have a new flange installed. While I am sure this would be a major job for me, I am hopeful it will be easy for the plumber I am calling on Monday. My guess though is it will be a major job for him just to remove the old one without cracking the drain pipe. I can only hope they get it done easily and inexpensively. Then I can put in the new toilet myself, or maybe may as well have them do it since that job will take all of a half hour more at most.

I have to say, it really sucks because all was going well, in fact better than I had expected, until I saw the crack. I had thought it would be tougher to do under normal circumstances, but replacing the loo would actually have been an easy job if there were no surprise problems like the cracked flange. Oh well, a house is, I suppose, a pit into which to throw money. I just wish I had the money. If it was not for my own personal black cloud following me around, maybe it would be less expensive. As it is though, I really am getting better at doing things around the homestead despite this most recent screwup.

I had other things to keep me busy today too, like moving the paving stones from under my oak tree. The tree is coming down next Wednesday. I was supposed to have it down weeks ago but the tree service guy never showed up. I got a new guy, at almost double the price, and he still is less than all the others I have called except for the bum guy who did not show. Then I did some spraying for ants/termites. Hopefully I don't have any in the house, but I sprayed all around it for a protective barrier. Those carpenter ants and termites can be nasty even in a brick house to what wood there is, especially the beams.

Now I am going to go out and do some gardening. The broccoli is coming in nicely, the lettuce has been unused and thus wasted by the wife, the cabbage looks good, and the tomato plants have been better in previous years. If I am lucky I'll find some ripe strawberries. Only had a few last year, but this year they are coming in strong. As for the pepper plants Mimi, the latest mutt in the house, dug em all up. I am learning, sprayed some hot pepper sauce in the garden and the digging sure has subsided. Next time though only on the soil as it really ruined some of the leaves on some of the plants.

Later for you.

All the best,
GB

The Joys of the Garden...

...are to be found anew throughout the growing season. As the evening was born tonight I walked among the growing things in the garden and saw the garden was a place of goodness. Then I got down to the labor of the evening, and I watered the lawn front and back. I put out the sprinklers and let the sprinklers work over the back and front yards, and I fed my tortoises and saw they were content. When the lawns were overflowing with wet goodness I turned the hose with a spray head onto the vegetable and flower beds, the potted flowers, the shrubs and trees. While amidst the weed plot that is my back lawn, I noticed that the Honeysuckle was starting to bloom; and that it pleased mine eye to behold that their was an abundance of flowers on the vine. The vine itself grows from out of a crack in a cement/cinder block wall that divides my property from one of my neighbor's. It took root some time back, and surprised us all when the floating fragrance of its flowers filled the late spring and summertime nights. Each year now for the past several years I await the heady perfume like fragrance of its blooms. Tonight was the first night that I was treated to the absolutely wonderful aromatic air that they throw forth as they bloom. In my garden, there is nothing better than to see those white flowers and the yellow flowers in bloom on the Honeysuckle vine and to have them whisper to me with their alluring Siren's song in fragrant form.

All the best,
Glenn B

I'm Not Much of a Gardener...

...but I do my bit in our flower and vegetable gardens each year; and that does seem to help things to grow better and make the place look nicer even though I don't know all that much about gardening. A perfect example though of me being less than a knowledgeable gardener is I have plants in my yard and I have no idea as to their names.

One of those plants, actually I have two of them, are bushes just along the back of my house. They have been there since long before we bought the place 12 years ago. In that time they went from looking great, to looking like they were about to die, back to looking fairly healthy again. The leaves still seem a bit pale to me, but over the past 3 years I have experimented with different fertilizers, arriving at the conclusion that these bushes like the soil more on the acidic side. I figure they like the soil like that because once I started feeding them azalea food (and they sort of look like an azalea bush but I really don't know) and they started blooming like you see them in the picture. They just started to open a few days ago, must buds are still closed, but there are a lot of buds yet to bloom. It is kind of nice to see that I do have a bit of a green thumb, or at least that these plants are hearty enough to withstand my bumbling in the garden.

I have never seen ones just like these at the garden shops, especially in this color or flower size. This year, I think I will take some cuttings and see if I can get them to root. I did that with some Forsythias last year, and now have a few small Forsythia bushes growing in pots. Once they get a bit bigger, I'll have to find a spot for them. Hopefully this mystery bush will root the same way when I take cuttings from it, because I would like to assure having these around for a long, long time.

By the way, can you believe it, the camera focused just about perfectly on these flowers; I guess there is a first time for everything. Now off to get ready for work for me, I am doing a 4x12 tonight.

All the best,

Glenn B

Another Saturday In The Garden...

...is beginning to show some signs of it looking as it is actually a garden again; and for a second Saturday in a row, my back is aching though not as much as it was last week. Today I began my day with a ride to Hicks Nursery, where 4 small potted herbs cost me just over $16.00; nothing made out of gold, just spearmint, cilantro (coriander), rosemary, and I can't remember the other one but just a regular herb. Then I went to Home Depot where I spent $57.00 and got 4 similar sized plants (3 pepper plants and an eggplant), 5 bags of top soil (40 lbs each), a box of fertilizer spikes for evergreens, a flat of Impatiens (32 plants), 6 potted geraniums in 4 inch pots, a well started tomato plant in a 6 inch pot, and some snazzy looking flowering perennial called Gaillardia Arizona Sun (the pic of the yellow and red flowers) that supposedly attracts butterflies. You tell me where I got the better deal. Despite the deals, I hate shopping at Home Depot because of the crowds. Then again, Hicks - a one store operation - was crowded too, just as bad as Home Depot for its size. So all in all shopping in both of them sucks as far as i am concerned, but Home Depot has better prices. One the way home, I took a few bucks I had saved by doing most of the shopping at Home Depot, and I stopped at TR's a local gin mill (yes named after Theodore Roosevelt) and I had one cold one - a Heineken. That was nice.

After the quick bottle of suds, it was back to home, to plant things. The first thing I did was to fill in a hole in a spot from where I had removed a stump several months back. It took four bags of the top soil and a good portion of compost and peat moss. I mixed it all nicely, and tamped it down. As soon as it was done, I dug a hole right in the middle of it, and I planted a tree on that spot; that is of course right after I asked she who must be obeyed if it was a good spot. I have no idea of what type is that tree, it is something that started to grow in my yard last year. I uprooted it, and put it into a pot, and that is where it stayed over the winter, the pot buried in my compost heap so it would not freeze. I have another one of them growing wild in the yard; and I used to think it was a bush so I trimmed it whenever I trimmed the other bushes that grew over my neighbor's fence. Then when I cleared a bit of the area, I realized "Hey, it has a trunk, its a tree". I stopped trimming it, and it started growing more like a tree than a bush, but somewhat worse for the trimmings I had given it. It is about 12-15 feet tall now, and okay by me. Now that I planted this new one today, I guess in a couple if years, I will get to see what one looks like that is not deformed because of a gardener gone berserk. Oh well...I did my thing for Arbor Day, just one day late. That tree, by the way, will keep company with an Oak, a couple of Dogwoods, a Japanese Maple, a Holly, and some assorted bushes, like the rhododendrons to the right/above.

Then I got to planting the veggies I had bought. I also planted some seeds for lettuce, spinach, cukes, turnips, beets (yech - but my wife loves em), and beans. I then cleaned up my mess, much to the approval of my wife. After that I loaded up the bird feeders, well at least I put out what seeds I had. A tube feeder with Niger seed, another a regular feeder with some other seeds; and a humming bird feeder with nectar. Then I remembered what I had forgotten at Home Depot - bird seed. I am all out of regular bird seed, so that means another trip this weekend to Home Depot - oh joy.


As for the wife, well my sweetheart was out there most of the time, if not longer than I was there. She planted a bunch of pretty flowers that we bought last weekend, and the ones I bought today. Once again we will have a nice small garden out front, and nice potted plants all around the house. We have a nice collection of Impatiens, Petunias, Geraniums, Black Eyed Susans, Rosie Cheeks Dianthus, Swan Yellow Columbine, Gaillardia Arizona Sun, Azaleas, and whatever else she has growing out there flower wise. We also have some that were here before we bought the place 12 or so years ago, including azaleas, rhododendrons (and 2 new ones I planted last fall),crocuses, and daffodils (these last two keep coming back year after year). It was also nice to see that my strawberry plants came to life again this year. Small lot that we have, it does have its share of nice flowers and trees.

So we got our gardening dome kind of separately, but together too, me on the tree and the veggies, and Linda on most of the flowers, and you have to admit she added a nice touch to the small front patio. It is kind of nice working together out in the garden, and then later seeing the result of our combined efforts. I only wish we could do as well with our front and back lawns as we do with all the other plants. I am just about ready to give up on grass. Anyone know a nice green lawn cover other than grass, or green concrete?


I guess now, all that is left is watering the garden and the lawn, oh yeah - the lawn! Well maybe, just maybe, I will tear out the grass in the front lawn for the third or fourth year in a row, turn the soil, add some lime and fertilizer, and reseed it again. It goes good for a while, then patches of it sort of die off before the fall. If it was up to me, river pebbles, and some nicely arranged flowers and shrubs would be the right thing to do; but of course the other half will not hear of it, so a grass lawn it will remain, even if it has almost no grass.

Enough of the garden stuff, I have other chores to get done. ater for the garden, and for you!


All the best,
Glenn B

Ouch...

...my neck and back just went snap, crackle, pop at the same time. Yeah, you guessed it, the first nice Saturday of April and I was at Home Depot earlier, then out in the yard the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. Linda and I got a bunch of yard work done. Although the little gardens in the few spots around the perimeter of our front and back yards don't look like much yet, my neck and back are stiff and aching.

Most of that soreness is from sifting the compost pile. I got a good amount of compost and used some of it to mix into the soil where I will plant some veggies. I also already used some of it in pots, one pot with cherry tomatoes, and another with strawberries. My wife also used some of it in her flower garden and flower pots. I am curious to see if this compost will work better than potting soil and fertilizer. Time and my yield will tell. I planted one other tomato plant and a couple of basil plants to start off the season. I still have a long way to go. I will be starting somethings from seed this year, like radishes, beets, lettuce, spinach, green beans, and one or two others. Hopefully it is not too late to start any of them in this area fro seed. In the past I would have planted earlier this month, but this one has been a cold one.

As for the flowers, Linda and I picked out some nice petunias, marigolds, columbine, and geraniums. Its a start, but I am pretty certain at least one or two more trips to the garden center will be forthcoming in the next 2 weeks.

All the best,
Glenn B

Plans For The Weekend...

...have been made and promise to keep me busy. Yesterday was my wedding anniversary, and being it was a Thursday, my wife and I decided to wait until tomorrow to go out for a little celebrating. Before our Saturday gets anywhere near to that stage though, there are other things to do. I have to work on getting my 2005 taxes straightened out; it seems the IRS thinks we owe them $4,000.00 which we do not; stupid mistake on their part but a bit of a pain to resolve. Then maybe a trip to COSTCO to pick up groceries and supplies. After that, I have to go out to Home Depot, or maybe a gardening center, to pick up plants for this year's gardening projects. That should be just loads of fun on Saturday in April, I figure it will be elbow to elbow in the gardening department. Truth is though I would like to get most of the planting done tomorrow, so who knows, maybe I will go tonight to pick up the plants. I am figuring on tomatoes, green peppers (bell and a variety of hot), strawberries, lettuce, cabbage (maybe too late already), spinach, herbs, maybe some radishes and carrots too. That is for our very small vegetable garden. We will also pick up a few flats of flowers for the wife's baskets and flower garden. Of course, i can't forget the bird seed. I keep em well fed so they don't have to eat my plants. besides that, they sing nicely and eat lots of bugs too.

Once I get that out of the way, it should be just about time for an early dinner with my darling bride. Maybe, if she is in the mood, we will even go out for a movie. We have not been out to a movie or any kind of show together in several months, I guess since December. It should make for a nice evening together, I am looking forward to it; I hope she is too!

As for tonight, I think once I get my butt into gear, I may stop by the range for a few hundred rounds of 9mm pistol shooting. That will put me into a bit less traffic for the ride home from Manhattan. It will probably also help me to relax quite a bit - not a bad thing after a day at work, and better than stopping off for a few high balls and then driving home. The booze can wait until dinner tomorrow night, then the wife can drive, or we can walk.

Yep, that sounds like a plan to me. I just happen to have thought about all of this before leaving the house this morning, so I have a range bag right next to me. Inside of it I have:

300 Rounds Federal 115 gr. 9mm JHP

50 rounds of GoldDot 124 gr. 9mm GDHP

100 rounds of Champion 22 Long Rifle solid point standard velocity

50 rounds of PMC 22LR Scoremaster 40 gr solid point standard velocity

Some other partial boxes of assorted .22LR ammunition

A Beretta 92SB 9mm pistol

Ears, eyes and anything else I need.

I also have my issued Gock 19 in its holster on my belt, and a Henry Survival rifle in my sport bag. I guess you could say I am ready to have at least a short, but yet good, time at the range this evening. Thank goodness that Home Depot near me is open 24/7, I may still make it there tonight; and if not then I'll have to face the mobs of wanna be farmers, lawn masters, and horticulturists other suburban gardeners tomorrow.

Okay, that's all set, time for me to stop jabbering via the Internet, and get my other end and the rest of me, to the range! So I am off to the Westside Rifle and Pistol Range for an hour of so of fun. Later for you, bye.

All the best,
Glenn B