Apropos of Nothing v.10

I've done Physical therapy over the years- it doesn't help with this. Neither does the chiropractor. Or accupuncture. Or voodoo. Or powdered unicorn horn.

Let's move on, shall we? I hate talking about this.

Maybe Osita could use some glucosamine? I hear it's great for cats and dogs for stiffness in the joints. My MILs cat has certainly shown a big improvement since she started giving it to him.

Today we went to Lowes. (Dun dun DUHN!)

I got a pitchfork, a nice heavy duty garden hose, a caladium, and a shiny new garbage disposal. Yay! (the disposal that we have now was borked when we bought the house, and Tracy has been promising to fix it for a year and a half.)

Of course, now it will probably sit in the box for another six months before he installs it, but at least we have it now... LOL

I got my blood drawn today- they said I'd hear from them within 3 days, so hopefully soon I'll know just what suppliments I really need etc.

Where is everybody? All of a sudden I'm rattling around this thread alone...

Helloooo... ellooo... ellooo... ellooo...

Echo... echoo... echoo... echoo...

Sorry Pony, didn't mean to abandon you. I've been in and out, on and off, and not keeping very well organized. The pitchfork and hose sound great. I always love buying tools and supplies and having that nice feeling of being ready for anything with the right tool in hand.

Good luck with the blood tests. Hopefully they will give some direction about what to do to feel healthier.

Now I just have to find the energy to -use- said new tools... heh. I'm really glad to have the new hose though- the one I have out front now is so old and stiff it's very difficult to use.

We stopped by Lowes again today, and Tracy told me to pick out some plants if I wanted to... but I didn't. I must be sick. LOL! Actually, I just feel like it's silly to spend money on things I have no beds for, especially when I still have a gazillion kinds of seeds waiting to be started. I need to get on that. I have piles and piles of milk jugs, I assembled my bookcase-sized greenhouse thingie, now I just need some gumption.

I was so dissappointed to find my dahlia coccinea didn't make it- I had it wrapped in moss in the garage, and it shriveled up and disintegrated. *cry* I was so looking forward to growing that. :(

They need slightly damp peat moss or wood shavings and dark cold storage.

The moss was damp, and the garage is cold and dark. :(

Pony, Sorry about your dahliah. It really is a bummer when stuff doesn't survive... especially when you have taken extra caution. Hope your blood tests help you come up with a solution to your doldrums. Have spent plenty of time there in the last couple of years myself, and it is no fun! I have found re-awakened energy after using my treatment light religiously as well as taking a vit. d sup., although sometimes I still have to force myself to get going. Once I have my hands in the dirt though, all is good. Hopefully it is as easy for you.

I just got the first of the test results via email- my cholesterol is higher than it should be. Not by a lot, but enough that I am going to want to take some steps to reduce it before it gets any worse. Omega-3, more veggies, etc. etc.

Very curious as to what the rest of the results will tell me...

Tracy just installed my new garbage disposal... I want to know where my husband is, because this is obviously a pod-husband. Then again, maybe I don't want to know... hehe. ;)

AWW, sounds like he loves you ---offers of plants and installation of GD. Wonderful, but sometimes it does make you wonder when they do things that are out of the norm :)

^_^ Yeah for the disposal! We don't use ours much, but boy is it nice to not have to fish the gooey stuff out of the drain when it gets in there!

I bet Tracy is just doing everything that he can to make you feel better/cheer you up. Sounds like he knows you well enough to know just how to get to you! What a sweetie.....

Pony GO OUTSIDE IN THIS WONDERFUL WEATHER, get off internet, and dig in the dirt. Plan a new garden space and lick your fingers when dirty. Lay down on you back and let the sun hit you as much as it can. Then repeat this as often as you can. Wear a Bikini to expose as much skin as you can. You have Vit D waiting to become active just get out in the sun for a long walk, long dig in the garden and long roll in the hay with your wonder partner. Tracy needs motivation too. LOL

Sofer!!! Marvellous.


Pony, do you not put all that good good kitchen scrap onto your garden heap? Or maybe you use kitchen disposals for putting a serated edge on all of your teaspoons.

Sofer... I have been going outside. As for the rest... that's none o' yo' danged bidness. :p

I do compost some of our kitchen scraps, but there are plenty of things I don't want to put in there that the disposal takes care of nicely.

Actually, the plant buying approval is totally normal for Tracy- the disposal installation was just a surprise because it usually takes him months to get around to fixing things of that nature. Maybe the year and a half of asking him to buy a new one was enough that he felt motivated to put it in right away? hehe.

Pony -- I've not forgotten the honeysuckle I promised you, and plan to pop that in the mail tomorrow. I have one with some roots to it that I dug up, a couple I had in water with baby rootlets started, and a little bundle of fresh starts for you to try to root. The main plant is growing like crazy now so I hope they will not get too bedraggled in the mail and settle into a new home. They will be in a tube. Hope this cheers up your day! Deb

Laurie, I too would not live without a garbage disposal. I do compost nearly everything and the furries get their fair share of the clean-up, but it still seems like there are plenty of times to rinse something off before putting it in the dishwasher. Does save on the sink clean up! Ah, yes, the serrated spoon syndrome...........

Sofer, good advice. The sun and dirt do make the world seem better.

Oh, neat! Thanks, Deb! I had actually forgotten about that... hehe.

I was out trying to rig fishing line over the pond, but had to give up for today. My back was giving out and I'm not having much luck with anchoring the lines securely because of the way the pond is set up... hard to explain. Hopefully I'll get it figured out. That still won't keep them from trashing my flower beds though. I'm losing more and more plants to them. They're not even eating them, they're just shredding them for the sheer joy of destruction, as far as I can tell. Not to mention all my garden art and solar lights they keep tearing apart... Grrrrrr. I hate them SO much.

Pony, you and I should have ourselves a little hate fest in terms of garden pests. I've been having all kinds of pixy rants lately about the da##$#$ voles. Turns out they are pine voles. They never see the light of day, just stay nice and cozy in their subterranean nests, chewing the roots off my plants. The hydrangea border is under attack. I pulled out what was once a beautiful rhododendron that even Laurie would have liked, named 'Midnight'. A very deep wine color, not big and bushy. Really a nice, well mannered shrub. It is no more. Basically, it has no roots. I"m trying to feel the love for these creatures, trying to look at the positive side of thinning out the border, replacing things, etc, but I tell you the more I read about them, the less positive I am feeling. Not feeling the love. Not at all.

I use short rebar, hammered into the ground around my pond, to attach the fishing line to protect the pond. So far, it is working a treat this year.

Is the pond fishing line to protect against raccoons? If so, I totally feel your pain. I managed to feed several families of neighborhood raccoons last summer with a succession of fish and pond plants.

They also enjoyed disassembling my pond pump mechanism and laying it out on the lawn. Do you think it was a challenge?

Does fishing line work? How much of it?

http://www.critter-repellent.com/contech/scarecrow-sprinkler.php

Have you guys seen these for garden pests (well, those that come above ground)?

Two things work for me in keeping racoons out of ponds: deep water and fishing line. (well, and then there are the dogs.) After a racoon fell into the deep end of my pond, apparently after trying to climb onto the large flat rock I had precariously balanced in the middle for just such an unfortunate occasion, they never came back. That was three years ago, knock on wood. The water at that end of the pond is 3 feet deep with straight sides. Racoons do not like deep water. If you are going to have a pond, make it a deep one or racoons are going to be a problem.
The fishing line is a trick someone else on the pond forum shared with me and it seems to work for all kinds of animals. I have it strung all around the perimeter, about 4 and 6 inches off the ground. In the spring, like now, it also goes across the pond several times because last year I lost fish to a heron, and eagles fly overhead frequently. I don't want them to get ideas.
The fishing line is, I guess, confusing to the animals, who can't see it easily,, so they come up against it and can't figure it out. It has been a great solution so far, because it also doesn't spoil the view of the pond for the people.

Kathy, it's been said by those who have more experience than I do that racoons, who are exceptionally smart, are not fooled for long by those things. I have heard of people using them and moving them around frequently so that they are always coming from a different direction to keep the animals on their toes.

I looked into those sprinkler things and the user consensus seemed to be that for raccoons you needed the deluxe models that had motion sensitive lights attached as well. My husband didn't go for that - seemed to think we'd end up drenching the kids and cats and watching the light go on and off all night - but he'd probably go for fishing line!

That doesn't surprise me. Even with my five dogs, every now and then a trio of raccoons will make it's way into my back yard. They are like coyotes, always willing to take a chance . . .

Yeah- the sprinkler thingies don't work well on raccoons from what I've read.

I know people who have used kitty litter on moles with and without success. I know people who have tried ultrasonic mole deterrents both with and without success. I know people who have used these both with and without success.

It just depends on your pests and what you're wiling to try.

Rinse them off!! What is the dishwasher for? Big chunks off and into the bokashi bin and dishes straight in! Sheesh, don't coddle a machine, next thing you know they will be wanting soft water, and their own cleaning agents! Nuts to that!

A deep wine coloured Rhododenren - I just might......NO no, I'm not going down that slippery road. Now those WERE plants that were hard to get out! But, a wine coloured one...... I might just .......eeeeeeeekkkkkk! PIX!!

And, at last - a garden problem we don't have. Thank goodness NO ONE in the history of the US/UK alliance has ever thought of releasing racoons into the wild here. We have more than enough to deal with. The powers that be have decided to 'reintroduce' beavers and wolves - just in Scotland, of course. Does anyone in their right minds think these animals know when they get to the border? For goodness sakes, they don't have maps!!
I like the look of beavers - I don't particularly want them flattening my woodlands! Next we will have Moose coming over. Actually, that might not be so bad - slow traffic down a bit, mingle with the llamas at the farm up the road, who also happen to have two camels. I think I'll concentrate on the possibility of a (choke) Rhododendron.

Beavers can be quite devastating in their own right. We have a creek fed pond and over the past decade or so we've had 3 families of beavers decide to set up shop. At first it was kind of cool to watch them build their dam and lodge, check out their slides, and occasionally see them gliding through the pond...until they flooded out our entire bottom land to the point we could no longer get across the creek to our back 10 acres. All the alders for about 100 feet on either side of the main creek are now standing dead (death trees I call them, as they fall over at any given moment, wind or no wind), with no reasonable way to get to them. The current dam is 3 properties below us, so we can't even trap them ourselves - just have to figure out how to deal with their 'rearrangement' of our lowlands. Per the powers that be (DNR), beavers are nuisance animals but you can't kill them. Their brilliant idea is to trap them and 'relocate' them so they become someone else's headache. Go figure.

With nuisance voles that live in the ground I would get a "Fencer" and program the intermittent voltage release (the zapper) to low frequency and place the dangling insulated wire with tips touching the ground around tuberous plants. No voles like to get zapped. Then I would do the same thing with dangling exposed wires around the pond so the backs of Raccoon touch the wires and then when dipping fish or washing food they would get fried. Just a thought. Beaver is still a trappable fur so I would hire a trapper to selectively eliminate the pest.

Okay, I thought you were joking on the other thread, Soferdig, but now I have to look up this incredible product and see for myself.

My brother and SIL woke up one morning to find a fairly substantial cherry tree completely cut down and dragged off down through the brush from their yard to the lower part of their property to be used for a beaver dam. Wish I'd seen that happen.

I had a little electric fence around my pond, and it did work for a while. But the control box shorted out repeatedly and the raccoons finally tore the thing down. Not going to replace it, because we have no outside power, so we had the thing running on an extension cord through the window... not ideal.

I got the last of my blood results- my vitamin D is low, and my thyroid is not performing well. (that certainly explains the fatigue...) I have an appointment on Friday to discuss suppliments etc. with my doctor. He thinks I'd benefit from a low dosage of thyroid hormone, so I'll probably go ahead and do that.

I'm also going to ask him about an epidural for my back pain. I don't care if the injection is painful- if it will give me any lasting relief, it will be worth it. I'm so sick of not being able to move without pain.

Pony, I'm glad you have some fixable things to focus on. The injection can't be THAT painful or no one at all would do it, don't you think?

So I've met this guy -- handsome & interesting AND he searches out Oregon plants & other foods to make gourmet things that are carried by groceries, farmers markets & whatever. How up my alley is THAT?! We haven't actually gone on a date yet because he's been traveling for work & my calendar was unusually booked this week. (I left the house this morning at 7:45 for Salem for the 2nd day of intensive training to take in the foster kids & then drove on to Eugene to hook up my '56 Bubble, which was a chore & a half and then had to drive home in the dark & rain while staring down the headlights of every degenerate gambler headed home from the Spirit Mountain casino. Finally got the trailer parked in my driveway around 10 p.m. and THEN had to return some phone calls of all things. I'm exhausted. AND there's this guy Don coming in the morning because he really wants to buy the Bubble from me even though I really really don't want to sell it.) SO ANYWAY ... this guy I met is hoping that, even if nothing works out between us, I will lend a hand with his business since I need a part-time job. He is going up to Long Beach for 4 days next week to dig geoduck clams and, unrelated to me, had to reserve a 2bed condo rather than his usual studio. So he's hoping that I will join him up there so that he can teach me to dig, clean & cook clams.

Oh, I so want to go. But I'm nervous. Ms. Love-em-&-Leave-em of the '80s & '90s is nervous to go on an actual date, go figure. Plus I am tired. So so tired. I will think about everything in the morning. And no one can make me sell the Bubble even if I need the money. If I sell the Bubble, I will have a bunch of money to play with. If I don't, I'll have the Bubble to play with.

And come to think of it, I really enjoyed my day -- I like driving through the mountains at dawn, and learning new things, and working through the mechanics of my trailers, and even driving home in victory. I love Oregon. And her people.

So life is good, I am reminded at this moment. And there is a fire going & a dog licking my knee and it is good to feel tired from hard work & some seed catalogs came while I was gone & I can go to bed ANY DANG TIME I FEEL LIKE IT NOW.

OK, that's my story. Very tired.

Sofer, we've trapped two families and annilated their dams and lodges twice, but another family shortly shows up with their little suitcases and sets up shop again. I'm resigned to the fact that we have a beaver-friendly environment and will attempt to co-exist with them. This may involve building up our road and/or bridging the wetlands they are creating. Here's a current picture. The tractor is just crossing the culvert over the creek, and from there to the green grass by the cedar tree it is about boot-high deep. All the white trees are dead alders standing in water, and all the long grass is under water as well.

I have just returned from a ski trip to Park City/Deer Valley and while there learned about many beaver problems. I never really thought about these creatures before. People around Park City are going crazy trying to control the damage. There are flooded fields and diverted streams everywhere. I didn't notice all this until I got on a ski lift with two ranchers. They think the problem is worse this year than in the past. And will get even worse as the snow pack melts. Funny what you can learn on a chair lift.

Sounds like material for a B horror flick.

SummerKid -- sounds like adventures ahead for you. Jump in with both feet.

BH, are the trees dying because of the new wetness or from beaver's attacking the trees? Gosh, it really is problematic - but what a beautiful setting you have. I am hoping they have ring fenced Scotland - I really don't want these little creatures down here.

Hello Portland, I was just wondering where you were.