Accessible Gardening: #19 Practical Matters for Physically Challenged Gardeners , 5 by Agavegirl1

Agavegirl1 wrote:
Good Morning Jayneth & Gang. :D

Jayneth,
Yes, get up quite early here due to husband's work sched. Actually my day STARTS at 2:15 a.m.! When I visited England I wore 2 watches. 0_0
One set to my time so I could call family who lived in a different time zone than I in in the U.S. (eye roll..math) and one so I actually knew what time and DAY it was in England! It was a real hoot when I flew back because I crossed the international date line so yes I actually lived the same day twice! I'll never forget it. I left November 3rd. Flew 14 hours to California where it was November 2nd still, and then when it became November 3rd half a day later I lived November 3rd all over again!
Have you ever traveled abroad? If so you know this phenomenon of there's no such thing of,
" You never get a second chance to live the same day twice or to do your life over" (LOL). If not I'll explain the time thing to you and the others if they haven't gone over seas .
But I digress....

Your flowers are lovely. I think it is so wonderful that you were able to save something from your wedding and plant it. What a joy and how special! Are you recently married or have you been married for awhile. Not trying to pry just wondering about the age of the plant. Do you have things family and friends gave you as well?
Ghost is a cute pup. :} Is he a Springer or Brittney(?sp) Spaniel or did I get the breed wrong? I think he's some kind of Spaniel, correct? Pretty boy either way. How old? Dogs are great fun because they're so interactive and expressive. I adore cats too. Unfortunately my allergies to them preclude me from having one. :[ I still appreciate them and admire them from a distance. I'd have one if I could. Although with Greyhounds I'm not sure that's a good idea. Greyhounds chase small, fuzzy things. That's the nature of the beast. It's what they do.

I enjoy herbs and cutting flowers very much. They would absolutely disintegrate out here into a pile of dust. Get fried to a crisp. Since America stubbornly refuses to adopt the metric system like the rest of the world (another thing I had my knickers in a twist about trying to convert) the burden of converting my farenheit to celcius will fall on you.

My temperatures for late May-early October are 90F-115F. Occasionally we've had a few 118F days! Last Thanksgiving it was 64F! The dead of Winter is 40F. I can count on 1 hand the amount of times we've flirted with anything that may have resembled near freezing or freezing; about 37F-32F. I live in zone 9B. The low Sonoran desert. Cacti my friend. We grow cacti. Even some of us are now putting up "shade cloths/tents" over our more delicate and smaller/younger ones to reduce temps by 15F and U.V. rays since we've been having perpetual strings of extremely hot days in a row with no "dips" into the lower range and no rain as is typical this time of year. We're 1/2 inch below our average. (Nah...no hole in that ozone is there when cacti fry in the sun.) Cacti are not something you can water and water. They are not designed for that. They get root rot quite easily.

You should not have thrown out your Aloe. They regenerate! You could break all the leaves off BUT as long as the roots are healthy it will grow again. They're almost indestructible. I'll show pic of one I positively destroyed through my ignorance and unknowingly leaving it in the sun, and it's progress of recovery.

Bookbinding sounds quite interesting. I love to read and (try to) write. That was the one thing I adored about England. They are quite literate, well spoken and very articulate. Even what appeared to be the most...shall I be snobbish and say, "dead common" persons, spoke like Rhodes Scholars in comparison to most Americans. It is a shame what we do here to the English language. I try. Being there made me very aware of this and also a bit self conscious; especially when I received peculiar looks or was ACTUALLY corrected! The good thing was it improved some of the bad habits I had. It must be so interesting to still work with books though. Do you read a lot?

At the risk of being a poor sport I will say the only thing I didn't like about London was the food. No offense I found it absolutely wretched! My whole month there I subsisted off of nothing but curries. I had scones during high tea where I insisted upon a PROPER cup of coffee. Yes, the 'ugly American tourist' reared it's head.
It was positively bone rattling cold there and I hadn't been drinking tea. I was renting it. I was spending all my time in the loo! If not coffee then Scotch Whiskey. By the time I left my both my liver and my personality were quite pickled. (LOL). In regards to the food my running joke was, "When the Nazis invaded they shouldn't have dropped bombs. They should have dropped cook books!" :) Is there ANYTHING green or red to eat in that country? Cucumbers don't count!

Never fear about writing a novel. We all do. Chat away. Great to virtually meet you also. Keep up with us.
Agave. :) X

(Pics of fried and virtually dead Aloe and 4 months of recovery time. I haven't taken latest pic but it is 100% green now. Still smallish and rat-ish looking but 100% green, thriving and growing! I'll take another pic and show you "today's" 100% green. I nick-named this plant Miracle. You can see why!)

Jim and Kay;
Waiting to hear about all the potential good news! Very excited. Cacti and I have been sending good thoughts your way. I've been out talking to my old friend and he tells me not to be worried or anxious.

Also read interesting article. Like everything in AZ it was a little behind. It was put out today but the incident took place on 29 July, 2015. But a Derek Paul age 46 and a Malibu Smith age 21 were just arrested for stealing power from the electric company in Phoenix. Also they were under investigation due to the amount of persons coming and going from their place. Meth, heroine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia was found.
Like I said, it doesn't hurt to ahem...tell the power company about the report you filed and the camera and the same with the post office. THEY may want to look into it and see for themselves why these things are there or were there and do a little "investigating" of their own. You never know what they might find. Perhaps the power company may question why their bills are all of a sudden so outrageous the last 3 months, etc. and go read the meter? Post office may want to find out why a camera was on the mailbox, etc.
Like I said you get to be "nosy" without being "nosy". Could be something, could be nothing. I'm shooting for something. People don't put cameras on mailboxes for no reason.

O.K. looking forward to hearing from you.
Hug to all!
TTC

Carrie,
How you doing?

BetsNC,
What's up?