Oh he is cute.
Your Neck Of the Woods part 12 Dog Daze
the view from our hammock near dusk
(learning how to upload pics from phone to computer using cable)
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM,,,,
What are we all doing in these Dog daze????
No one seems to be posting a lot! I am going into with drawl! HELP!!!!!
If you are bored too--here's something fun to occupy your time;
What holding downAlt. plus tapping a Number brings up.
☺......(1)
☻......(2)
♥
...(3)
♦
...(4)
♣...... (5)
♠
..(6)
....... (7)
◘...... (8)
○.......(9)
◙...... (10)
♂...... (11)
♀...... (12)
♪
...(13)
♫
..(14)
☼..... (15)
►..... (16)
◄......17)
↕...... (18)
‼...... (19)
Ά...... (20)
§...... (21)
▬.... (22)
↨...... (23)
↑...... (24)
↓...... (25)
→.... (26)
←.... (27)
∟..... 28)
↔.... (29)
▲.... (30)
▼.... (31)
wonder how far this would go??
#.......35) Nothing exciting after this...
(
...(40) It just prints reg. Letters.
).......(41) eg: M......(88) G......(71).
♣......(75) a.....(97) A.....(65)..
I give up! Gita
Interesting Gita, I'll have to try my computer and see what I get. Ric's Father and Nephew are here from Fl. It was a big rush getting the painting and floor in before they showed up. They have been here about a week and a half. I think they are heading to Chambersburg tomorrow to see family that lives up in that area. It was nice having them, we hosted a good size party last Sunday. Going in tomorrow for Dental Surgery and got a call from HD they will be starting our kitchen remodel on Tuesday so this weekend we will be empting all the cabinets and cleaning them out in prep for the make over.
Holly---
How do you handle so much company--so often? It is so great that Ric cooks!
I would go nuts--but then again-I have not entertained any 'real" company
for a good 25 years. I have very little family--my daughter is the only one living close.
My 2 sisters are far away....AK and NJ.
My sister(s), passing through,now and then--but it is like just a B&B.
Somewhere to spend the night--and off they go. And--I go off to work on Sunday AM.
I am both slightly jealous that you have all this family--and at the same time--
relieved that i do not have to do this.
My house is not company ready at any time. It would take a serious effort
to spiff everything up. "Spiff up" means vacuuming everywhere straightening out the kitchen--
cleaning the bathrooms, etc....and making sure my garden is in good shape.
Stuff I seldom do here.....If you like the "lived in look"--come on over!
Gita
Gita, We are definitely the "If you like the "lived in look"--come on over!" type.
Ric Has been cooking up a storm every night. Well he will get a break from cooking big meals for awhile. They are starting the kitchen remodel on Tuesday, it will take about a week and we won't have use of the kitchen while they are working on it. So it will be easy heat up meals, sandwiches, and eating out.
Holly and Ric, what a busy summer you're having! I didn't realize you were doing a full kitchen remodel -- I thought you were just painting the walls. I'm looking forwarding see your new kitchen!
It has been a crazy summer. You will see that the gardens have taken a back seat this summer. Ric has been getting his garden work done but the flower beds that I care for are hurting this year. I was having health issues earlier this summer and just couldn't do the work. I finally hired a little help to weed but it was so late in the year that the annuals really don't look like much. I'm doing much much better now but then I put all my energy into the inside of the house. I washed and painted the walls, plus packed up everything in the living area so we could move all the furniture. The desk, china cabinet and kitchen saver all had to be empty to move. Then everything polished and cleaned and put back. Still don't quite have it all finished. Family visitors and lots of extra entertaining for about a week and a half. We are dog sitting this weekend, Jen's two large dogs will be here and Ric and I will be taking everything out of the kitchen cabinets and setting up a temp kitchen in the mud/utility room.
With no kitchen--you could grill up a storm. YUMMY!
Light a bon-fire and 'cook" potatoes (wrapped in foil) in the hot ashes.
Then--Marsh mellows on a stick for desert.
One of my fond memories from camping once.
G.
We called them silver turtles!
What a glorious day!
We took the dog to the river to swim. The water was amazingly clear, for this creek going into the Magothy. There were baby fish galore, and tiny mussels on submerged branches. It made me very hopeful for the survival of the Chesapeake Bay. The rest of the day I've been piddlin around the yard to my heart's content.
Sally sounds like a lovely day. Ric and I did some work in the yard today. It was just beautiful out there. We got the new pond feature up and running. All it needs is to have the river stone poured around it. Can't wait to see it completely done.
I was feeling well enough to tear the front off of the GH today and begin preparing to add a used Anderson 6' sliding glass door ILO the mfg. doors. Trying to keep heat in with the old doors was like trying to catching rain in a sieve. If this goes well and I have the time, I want to replace the N. side wall with a well insulated solid wall. If I get both done I expect to half the heating cost.
good deal.
I thought about your GH today while reading a thread about uses for styrofoam sheets that someone had from getting furniture shipped. One idea was using them for insulation, like greenhouse sides
I finished the "new" GH door, and realized that it is another 36sq' of glass for me to clean. LOL As most of you have seen our living room, you already know, I do windows.
I was pleased with the outcome and Holly is very accepting of the change. She would have preferred to keep her cute little GH in pristine condition, but heating it was a nightmare.The mfgs door leaked something awful, as I've said repeatedly. I also like being able to see inside from the house and yard. After we return from NC OBX, I hope to replace all the north side panels with cement board (Hardie board) and 3" foam I scrounged from Freecycle.
gives you a good view of the plants!
Looks good ! Tell Holly a GH is always cuter with unfrozen plants. Trying to remember which way is north in your yard & whether you'll still get a nice view inside the greenhouse... Can you do insulation panels that can be removed in milder weather?
I do like that you can see in but I think when the colder weather sets in the moisture collecting on the inside of the glass might change that. What I liked about the old doors was that they both slid out and the whole space opened. The sliding doors opening is less than half the space. Plus it looks different than rest of the exterior. I have gotten past my aesthetic issues in favor of cold hard cash. Last winter with the much lower temps, our GH heating costs were 1/3 more than the previous year. Making the cost not just expensive but ridiculously expensive. So I am pretty much on board for any of Ric's energy savings projects.
The North side was already insulated last winter and a poly layer over that side, too. But I found free 4in thick foam insulation on Freecycle that will beef up the insulated side.
What I would really like to see is for the whole thing to come down and be rebuilt with the north wall and roof solid and the 2 halves of the GH house only on the South side giving us twice the size GH. A seriously big job for next summer. We will see, it's not too hard to talk Ric into anything that has to do with Gardening just the details of how we do it. LOL
Maybe you can use a low cost solar water heater? A big tank of water probably can keep the GH warm overnight.
We have some passive solar gain with the insulated concrete floor that was painted a dark color to make it more efficient. We have black heat radiators that sit under the south side benches were they get some sun and produce some solar heat gain as well.
Seedlings like this have been sprouting all over my yard this summer, and I wondered what they were. One of them finally came up with a peanut attached, so the mystery has been solved.
Mother Nature forgot to tell the squirrels that peanuts don't keep as long as acorns do!
Oh Muddy, That is too funny. LOL
I often find clusters of sunflower sprouts in the garden and in flower pots.
I get clusters of what I think are safflower seedlings in flower pots. I pull them out, and then the critters dig up the soil (again) in the hopes of finding them. Good thing I like squirrels and chipmunks!
With brains the size of small walnuts, squirrels have amazingly good memories ;o).
I don't think they remember all the places. They just have that much energy and activity level they dig in likely places, repeatedly. The phrase, running around like a squirrel, comes to mind. LOL
Something like Deja Vu, all over again.
I do not give out whole peanuts but I swear every time I take a plant out of a pot I find whole rotten inside peanut.
This is as good a place to post this as any.
Heard an interesting discussion early Sat am over public radio about Fungi and mushrooms in the DC area. One of the ccall in questions was about truffles and the response was enlightening to me at least. Seems there are truffles everywhere! Their major adaptation is that their fruiting bodies mature underground so they need pigs and wild boars to dig them up so the spores can spread!
Ok so far, but did you know that almost all animals have a comparable truffle variety that appeals to them, so they will dig for them. We humans prefer the same ones pigs do, but there are ones that squirrils adore associated with hard wood trees like oaks! So whilst we think them walnut brained with some memory facility, they are feasting on truffles and burying acorns maybe just as a sideline!
http://www.mushroomthejournal.com/greatlakesdata/Terms/squir27.html
Ain't nature grand!
Sally---
I have also observed that, if i throw out a peanut-in-the-shell, the squirrels
will eat the first one but bury the rest.
Therefore--IF I feel like feeding squirrels some peanuts--I buy them in bulk
and then sit and shell them out while watching TV in the evening.
I would only be doing this in the middle of winter when there in nothing
for them to eat...
And, yes! I also dig up rotten peanuts in my pots.
If is a nice little cluster of grasses growing in a pot--the culprit is a Chipmunk
who buried a mouthful of bird seed.
Gita
They also use dogs to find truffles. The market today is flooded with truffles that are inferior to those being wholesale harvested in China. The Chinese just dig up whole areas without regard to the state of growth and market them all.
Some interesting tidbits:
Acorn truffles
Acorn truffles are underground fungi that look (and smell) a bit like acorns. Squirrels find them, mistake them for something they buried last Fall, and eat them, distributing the spores once they pass through the squirrel's digestive tract. Other underground fungi also have their spores distributed by animals that eat the fruiting bodies. Acorn truffles are actually "true truffles", species of the genus Tuber, but don't have the powerful smell and flavor of their more famous relatives. Nor are squirrels the only animals that do this - - the California red-backed vole lives exclusively on truffles and other hypogeous fungi. Maybe good mycologists come back as red-backed voles...
World's largest known organism by mass is a fungos that covers 2200 acres in Oregon
So you want to be a truffle farmer or hunter? Check out Cornell's Mushroom Blog on the subject
http://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/2008/02/19/so-you-want-to-be-a-truffle-farmer-part-1/
Alfie just went to doggie camp for 2 weeks. We're going to OBX for 2 weeks to squeeze a bit more from summer. We're off to Atlantic beach tomorrow for part of a week, then Duck for Josh's wedding, and a week to rest in Duck after. Wi-fi can be sketchy, so we'll check in when we can.
Sounds wonderful, Ric!
Btw... what or where's Duck?
AWESOME!!! Enjoy the festivities
Duck is somewhere in Outer Banks NC. Sounds awesome!!
Should be a great trip. I love the Outer Banks. It is so quiet and peaceful compared to some of the more commercial touristy type beach destinations. SSG, the Outer Banks is a long strip of land between the sound and the ocean along the east border of North Carolina. Duck is towards the north end, Cape Hatteras is towards the south end.
Me and my crickets. Enjoying one more lovely evening on the deck surrounded by cricket and a few katydid songs.
Just sitting here looking out at the Ocean. Getting ready to head for the beach soon.
Sally and her crickets, me and my stinkbugs. Crickets are much nicer than those HORRIBLE stinkbugs, but Holly's ocean view has my vote for what I'd love to be doing.