Practical Matters For Physically Challenged Gardeners #5

Hay Carrie Just put a Small plate of Coke down for them to drink they can't burp they will fall over deader than 12 o'clock Noon ROTF .... put it out at night and pick it up in the morning just a lil bit on a small plate will do . and it is not expensive as all that other stuff .

Sarge

Try duct tape, Carrie. It's what keeps me together. I wonder what people did before the invention of duct tape?
Debra, I like what you guys are doing out there. The longer we can keep some of that stuff out of landfills the better off we'll be. I've come to the conclusion that if you have enough tech to do what you want and need to do, you have adequate tech. I wasn't always that way. It used to be that I thought I had to have the newest gadgets and most powerful system available. The cumputer geek equivilent of an auto geek who wants a car that can go 130 mph and has lots of shiny chrome. :-)
FINALLY, we are harvesting the 'Friar' plums. It seemed to take forever for those to ripen. Delicious and there are certainly enough of them, but they are not as large as they could be. I will thin out the fruit more next spring and go for fewer but larger fruit. The ladies are debating the fruits fate. Nadine wants to make pickled plums, but Kay wants plum jelly. I could just eat them all fresh while they are distracted and save them the work. . (Jim)

Jim, that's what the boss thinks, too. We pickup from corporations, 50+ school districts, people drop off here, and we are the residential recycling vendor for four municipalities. For the biggest one, we collected 608,995 pounds of electronics between December 2007 and July 2010. Our guys pull the most fun or vintage stuff they find and the boss displays his favorites in this case. While it ain't easy and none of us will ever get rich, it is certainly worthwhile and let's me feel "green" at home and at work. LOL

Sarg, I don't have mice in the house, but DH does in the garage. Now if we can find a way to keep the dogs from drinking the coke, I think we are in business.

I am still seeing ants, but only 2 or 3 at a time, so I am thinking the boric acid is working. Hip Hip Hurray, I have spent gobs of money on all the guaranteed ant kill products, and a $2.00 big bottle of this may have been the answer all along.

Debra I wish I had a place to dispose of all the retired/dead electronics that have accumulated here. I do not put them in the garbage, because I keep thinking that someone, somewhere will find a way to recycle, or to dispose of them, that will keep them out of the landfill. As far as I know, there isn't a place close to me to do that.

Thanks, Sarge. I will try that! My dog almost tore the house down trying to catch a field mouse that got inside. LOL. Kay*

LOL defoecat & Kay,

The dogy and Kitty can burp though he /she will be ok ... might have to put the lil one up for the night for a few nights . our Trixiy kitty did the same thing we had to do the same thing put her in the kitty car to keep her from drinking it made her mad cause she could not get to the mice .lol she cryed all night and had a fit .

Sarge

Hi, Bonnie. :-) One of the reasons it is so difficult to find a recycler pretty much anywhere is the cost of electronics recycling in the first place. Even those companies who just dump in containers and ship overseas have tremendous labor involved. (Anything we send out goes to a vetted downstream vendor, no landfill or trash). It's a headache, it's expensive, and, if not managed right, it's liable to get you spotlighted on national TV--and not in a good light, either. LOL

Looks like you are an hour or two from Lexington? Here are a couple of links that might help:
http://www.lexingtonky.gov/index.aspx?page=1766
http://waste.ky.gov/RLA/Pages/default.aspx

One of the things we do is work with small towns or rural areas to set up a periodic collection, like once a year or once a quarter. Everyone from County A can bring their stuff to Site X, etc. Kentucky might have a program to request such a service. Or maybe one of the private firms. Or you can get a big group of people together to load up a box truck or semi and take it all to a recycler in the closest larger town. Worth checking out, anyway, I think. The less land we use for trash, the more land we have for flowers! And peaches...and strawberries...and cucumbers...

I know this is all off topic, but lots of people have the same problem and don't know where to look for solutions....

Debra

Debra, when they get to Bangalore or wherever (in a container ship) aren't they just land-filled there? We have a Dumpster in the driveway RIGHT THIS MINUTE and it is so tempting to fill it with stuff I know they would take for free on recycling day! We have a house and basement full of things we aren't allowed to put n the Dumpster like old washing machine old furnace old computers and printers and monitors and so forth. Have you all seen the "story of stuff?"

Lots of times they are just dumped, which is why the responsibility for due diligence is on the originator (us). All of the stuff in your basement is readily recyclable. The washing machine has metal and wire and plastic, the computers have wire and circuit boards and metal, etc. Monitors and televisions are problematic because the glass has a phosphor coating inside, which isn't good for much, and there is lead in the neck that could, possibly, leach into the soil. We have a vendor that reuses working monitors to make small televisions for third world countries. Permitted and all. The rest, we disassemble down to the screws. The glass goes to a lead smelter in the US for use in processing raw ore and the other materials are aggregated by type to go for bulk reclamation.

If you have someone who can load them up for you, Milton has a once-a-month recycling collection. Takes computers and appliances.
http://search.earth911.com/location/LmA0RGZ/?what=computers&where=milton%2C+ma&max_distance=25&country=US&province=MA&city=Milton®ion=Norfolk&latitude=42.2495435&longitude=-71.0661612&list_filter=all

We have a recycaling plant here. Tho i don't know what all they take. I know they took 5 truck loads of new tires that was faulty rejects from a factory. The rubber(or whatever) went one place and the wires in the tires went somewhere else.
I'm washing and drying clothes tonight and better go hang some up and put more on to dry. Have a great night and a sunny but cool day tomorrow.
Vickie

Debra! How did you do that!? Isn't the 1st Sat of the month next Sat? Whoopee!!!

It is, Carrie. We are servicing a collection event that day ourselves from 9-12 for the City of Plano (just north of me). Bet it is cooler where you are than for us, though. Calling for 102 that day. Good thing the boss just put in a commercial ice machine at the office. Now I don't have to stop on the way in for bags of the stuff to chill the staff's bottles of water. LOL

I've been to Plano! Visited the site of the TV show Dallas with my father whatever year the Sesquacentinial celebration was in Ft Worth. Those were some L o n g horned cows too on that ranch.

I remember “The Story of Stuff”. It caused a lot of controversy when it first came out. The far right was hammering it as “un-American”. Lol. I guess because it pointed out that there were problems in a consumer-driven, capitalist society.
I don’t know how anyone can look at the floating garbage dump in the doldrums and say we don’t have a problem. It is now said to be TWICE the size of Texas. Kay*
http://www.cdnn.info/news/article/a071104.html

I saw "The Story of Stuff" pretty recently - our house has enough "stuff " for the floating garbage dump the size of RI all by itself.

How sad. Man is sure not doing a good job of being caretaker of this earth that God created is he.

Nadine did her bit for plastic recycling. She painted some old plastic chairs and made them usable again on the front porch. There are flowers molded into the design of the chairs. One of the flowers on each chair is painted purple which isn’t in the scheme we were using. But, Nadi claims a touch of purple in her work is her “artistic signature.” Lol.
I had to do some plumbing work on “Old Yella”, a single-wide mobile home that came with the property. I thought I had made a great botanical discovery while I was working underneath. I found canna lilies growing in the complete darkness there. They were the palest of greens, but otherwise healthy. I was planning what I would do with the money I made selling this botanical wonder. I even had a name to market it under, the “Phantom Canna” How cool could you get! A canna that grew in complete darkness! Then, Kay came along with her practicality and burst my bubble. She informed me my Phantom cannas were in all likelihood “Vampire Cannas. That they were drawing the energy to grow through shared roots with the cannas that were in the light on the outside of the trailer’s skirting. Oh well, I won’t make a thousand bucks off them, but I still think it was cool. I left one under there that was in a difficult place to dig out. I want to see if they will complete their life cycle and flower under those conditions. The ones I dug I planted in a very shady spot where we normally grow mushrooms. Kay claims these will slowly return to their normal color, if they survive. I am curious enough to want to watch what becomes of them. (Jim)

I always remember the line of one of the scientist in the movie Jurassic Park. “Nature always finds a way.” :-)
Yes, I would say praying for answers to our environmental problems are in order.
The others have given me to Sept. to get rid of some of the junk I’ve saved for projects. The place is beginning to look like a landfill. But, I’m not the one who saved the commode. Lol. It was decided the children’s playhouse garden needed a bathroom. So, the toilet is sitting there waiting for its makeover as kid’s garden art. Nadine wants to use the fill take part as a little bog garden for carnivorous plants. And, plans to fill the bowl with some sort of billowing flower. Petunias or Begonias, maybe. I’m holding Scraps and Sharon Brown responsible for this. LOL. Nadine stole ideas from something Scraps posted and Sharon Brown wrote in an article and ran with the ideas. Ran far out into left field. LOL.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. Nadine now has her own DG subscription. :-) Kay*

Photo: Jim calls it a spider lily, but I think of a flower that blooms in Fall when I hear the common name, spider lily. I think this is a Resurrection lily.

Yep, it's a Resurrection Lily, although they are sometimes misidentified as Spiders. Spider lilies are more segmented and ethereal looking. This photo of one is off the 'net.

So what's Nadine's user name and where is she hiding? Come out, come out, wherever you are!

(From Nadine--using Mamma Kay's user name for the moment) Hey! I'm not that bad, Lovemyhouse. Don't let MamaK and PapaJ warp your perceptions of me. The others here will vouch for me. I think? Even if I didn't get around to doing some art for them I said I would. (What do you think? Will 30 lashes with a wet noodle suffice as punishment?) Registration says it takes 2 or 3 days to process a new membership if you pay for it via PayPal. I did. They are still processing my membership subscription.
Hi Carrie (& Sheri, & Vickie) I don't see Scraps. Is she still a member of Dave's? I love the way that lady's mind worked!
My user name is Sansai. I'll probably be hangin' on the Carnivorous forum and on the different Beginner forums when I'm not on Plantfiles trying to identify our mystery plants. Can you believe it! They expect me to WORK for my room and board. :-] This being an responsible adult stuff stinks like bad compost sometimes.
MK has put me in charge of the W/C garden which means I'll be over here bugging you guys from time to time. Papa Jim couldn't fix my old computer. I'm getting a new laptop.....which is purple BTW.
Nadi

Hi, Nadi! Welcome. I look forward to your creative input. Will be asking your advice a lot, I think. LOL

Debra

Hi Nadi, They say being around bad company sometimes rubs off, so watch yourself, and if you see any bad habits forming, just back off a little. Hehe.

Always room for another face here.

Kay went to the Frankfort cemetery today, and no one was in the office. There is no point in me looking for the grave by myself, as the place is huge. I will either call and get a specific location, or go again when I am in town and hope that someone is manning the office. On top of that DGD was with me and wanted to take some pictures, since the scenery is beautiful, but the camera refused to cooperate, even with new batteries. So really glad that I wasn't frustrated standing in front of the grave with a camera that was inoperable. I will do this, I promise, maybe the moon is in the wrong phase or something, I have been having all kinds of misfortunes the last couple of days.

Bonnie, it's the solar flares. Disrupting EVERthin :-)

Debra

It could be an infestation of gremlins, Bonnie. I'm almost certain I've got them in my computer. Don't put yourself out trying to find Papa Ron's grave. I'm pretty sure he isn't going anywhere.
When I have one of those stretches where everything seems to go wrong, I just sit down with my favorite funny movies and a pint of Rocky Road ice cream. Kay*

Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Clue, Murder by Death, Arsenic and Old Lace, Harvey, Top Secret, Born Yesterday, Spaceballs, The Ghostbreakers (Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard), Dave...any of those and Mint Chocolate Chip... :-)

After a really bad day at work, give me a big bowl of Moose Tracks and my Dragonheart DVD. (The original Dragonheart. I thought the sequel was lame.)
Nadi

Hi Nadi, Welcome! welcome! welcome!
My favorite movies usually included an animal. Remember Francis The Talking Mule.Black Beauty,Can't remember the name but the lost 2 dogs and cat that talked. The latest was the Chihuahua lost in Mexico.And just about anything by Alfred Hitchcock. Tho i did love Encounters of The Third Kind and ET, Oh and Starman.
Monday I have my eye surgery than 2 weeks later the other eye. Had to have a complete physical for the eye surgery. So i asked my doctor if i was in good enough shape to go camping across the US. He said Well! why not? Go for it.I am without a doubt the happiest woman in the world. He did make me promise to keep in touch with him. And to stay in State Parks and to write a log about it. It will be as much fun planning the trip as making it. Of course i've already got maps and liturature from most states and will send for the rest this week.I wont go untill November.I will be going south.
Has anyone heard from scraps? I wrote her but it came back as a wrong address. and i can't find her phone #.
Will write more tomorrow.
Vickie

I havent Seen or heard from Scraps in a while


Sarge

SCRAPS! Stephanie!!!! Come back!!! D mail should get to her even if her subscription has lapsed .... if she still has a computer.... oh no! And welcome, Nadi! We've all wanted to meet you for so long.

I lost my cell phone that had her # in it. I'm gonna check and see if it is in an old dmail.
She is probably just very busy with gardening, fishing and keeping her brother busy. She also has the 2 daughters who each need her at times. I know she loves to be outside and working on her new house & garden.

Sheri

I'm on a Maxine jag this weekend.

I bet finances are really tight, as well. Things are especially tough in that part of the country. I'll send her a card. Her computer may be down.
I finally found a scented geranium. The citronella scented (Mosquito shoo) geranium. The front porch rail is lined with containers. I think that is a good place for it. Kay*

Kay, should help with mosquito repelling.

Debra

Debra, Jim just described that photo to me. That cartoon would be ideal on a t-shirt for Nadi. She wants to know where the thermostat is for the big blue & green room.

OH-H-H-H Debra! I did'nt think i'd ever quit laughing. I made a copy to put somewhere prominately on my gear. YOU MADE MY DAY!!! I'm still giggling. Gotta remember to take an umbrella!
I had a citronella geranium a couple years ago. Don't know if it repelled skeeters but i loved the smell.
I forgot about D-Mail. I'll check mine too.
Vickie

Kay, would you like a few other scented geraniums? Maybe Chocolate? Or Apple? Cinnamon? Lime? Pineapple?

How are the thymes doing?

Debra

So who is this Maxine? I like.

Our washer finally broke for good. It was a dud from the start - we thought "Kenmore" meant quality but apparently these days it's just as likely to mean "K-Mart." And we got an old model (thrifty me, as always) so when the repair guy called it up he said "This is about 5-7 years old, right?" My MS brain just nodded. It's a year and a half old, during which we have bought NOTHING ELSE from Sears, and yes, I'm angry. The thing has never worked properly, and our old washer lasted 20+ years. Back when washers were mechanical and didn't have a mother board and an LED screen. Sigh . . . my sainted mother "found" $1000 in an old joint acct. so I bought a washer + installation and taking out the old one + delivery and a giant tub of He detergent and a service plan. I wish I never bought the Kenmore in the first place.

About a year ago I bought a wringer washer from a man on craigslist - after watching for one for a couple of years. The other day I ran a search and there was another one - also on craigslist. I'll be picking it up in about ten days. We'll use the second one to make papercrete.

Now that I will have two I bought a replacement motor on eBay. Tony's mother used a wringer washer when he wasgrowing up so he's good a fixing the wringer when I dislocate it He'll even help with the washing. And hanging things up on my solar dryer.

No electronic washers for me, thanks.

kb

Wow, I thought the old wringer washers used elec for the tub agitator and that the wringer was the only manual part. I Gues that is just because I was too young to do anything but watch the skinny flattened clothes come thru the ringer and wonder why so many buttons got broke.
that is a great idea about using one for papercrete!!

Sheri