The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits - Hervey Allen
Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday. - Thomas Arnold
After 30, a body has a mind of its own.- Bette Midler.
Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.- Georges Clemenceau
Time and Tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of thirty.- Robert Frost
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Several years ago, No. 1 drove off to California with some friends. I made sandwiches for them to take in a cooler (which they left in California) and thought hard-boiled eggs might also be good for the drive. I started the eggs to boil, got busy with something else (as I'm wont to do) and eventually went to bed for the night. Em was working out-of-town on contract somewhere during this period in our lives.
I was awakened by what sounded like missiles zipping through the air and got up to determine the source of the noise. The water had burned off the eggs and they'd launched, flying all over the kitchen. Might have been 2 or 3 years later when we'd hired two guys to wash all the walls that I found myself saying, "Pay special attention to the egg on the ceiling over there, please."
Fast forward to last night. The garage freezer was pretty empty and needing a defrost, so I did that last week in order to take advantage of the seasonal sales being advertised. Yesterday's "haul" took many hours of separating and wrapping, so I might have been a little tired when I made dinner of garlic chicken, slightly breaded asparagus spears and sweet potato casserole for the convection oven. Tired or not, I set it to bake a few more minutes than necessary and the pecans atop the casserole turned black, as did a few asparagus spears. Using oven mitts (as is my SOP), I put the glass casserole dish and the much lighter racked chicken/asparagus pan on a cooling rack which I carried from the counter to the island for serving. The counter was only TWO steps from the island, but during those two steps the glass casserole dish launched, hitting the floor 8 feet away (I just measured), throwing sweet potato casserole as far (into the frontroom) as 14.5 feet! I cleaned up the obvious last night, but doing the routine Friday cleaning today, both of us found more sweet potato casserole in the weirdest of places. Projectile missiles come in many forms.
After our trip to the stores yesterday we came home to find an exterminator working on the house nextdoor. We're familiar with exterminator "talk" because we hired one once to help us get rid of pharoah ants. I'm pretty sure we still have pharoah ants, sugar ants, fire ants, and the latest addition is carpenter ants. We also have spiders EVERYWHERE, using the vacuum method to semi-control them. We don't expect to EVER be free of ants, spiders, or any other insects. We live in Texas, for goodness sakes. We're grateful we don't have the BIG ones or the scorpions.
But, Em was concerned because he's been watching a trail of large ants marching up the side of the house outside the TV room window, so he asked the guy to stop by and talk to us when he was done. The guy charges over $500 (every 6 months) for a complete "guaranteed" extermination and pointed out how we have spiders (DUH!) and fireants outside. Heh. They make their living scaring people, so I pointed out how our spiders are also brown recluses, but how we couldn't do a complete extermination because I'm growing food in places he wants to lay poison. I left them then to go wrap food and launch missiles, but we'll be taking a much more nuanced approach to extermination. I'm not opposed to using insecticides IN the house for immediate results IF that method doesn't result in breaking up a nest into 40 or 50 nests in the process. Carpenter ants don't tend to respond to insecticidal sprays like pharoah ants, so when I saw carpenter ants crawling up the outside of our bedroom today on the INSIDE of the windows, I gave them a spray. I doubt they have a nest here YET, because this is the first time we've seen them and right now is their "season". If we'd been seeing them year-around, it would be more likely that we have a nest in-house. We'll keep our eyes tuned to them, though, and approach them like we approach the other ants that seem to like living inside our house (baiting them with boric-acid in some form of sugar or protein).
I coulda/shoulda got a few pics of that mess last night, but I didn't think of pics beyond the fish wrap. Em makes the bestest ever fried catfish and we were down to one meal left at defrost/inventory time, so bought 15 pounds yesterday (which will make 13 meals for the two of us).
I tried cutting our portions in previous packaging, but always felt cheated, so this year's portions are less what we should eat and more what we want to eat.
The gardens are doing well. 60% of the asparagus have sprouted, 2 of 3 rhubarb have leaves, the blueberry bushes are leaved and those from last year also flowering. Bought tomato plants from Home Depot because the seeds I'd planted sprouted and then withered before getting to the transplant stage, so we have 9 celebrity tomatoes and 9 better boy tomatoes outside along with maybe 20 strawberry plants that are doing well, along with 2 cilantro plants (also purchased, although seeds have been planted outside, as well), and one lemon balm. In addition, we have volunteers of maybe cantelope or cucumbers all over the place.
Haven't yet seen life on any other bushes besides blueberry and don't even know how to recognize life on the horseradish. Set the sweet potato starts out before the recommended date because they were drawing fruitflies on the bathroom window. Turned out one of them had died. Also got the regular potato "apartment house" going with more potatoes (white and red) that had been growing on the windowsill. Got some green bell pepper starts yesterday, but we're having a few days of cooler weather this weekend, so I won't put them out until next week.
Can't remember off the top of my head what seeds I planted around things in the past few weeks, but I wrote everything down. I know I started lettuces and spinaches, but didn't yet get around to kale or other greens.
Been doing much better moderating my time ... gardening, wedding planning, indoor activities, entertainment, chores, communication, etc. No. 1's wedding shower will be coming up April 11th and I'll be making pulled pork sandwiches (on my homemade buns) and potato salad for the group. That will be our next meat purchase and I'm thankful that I won't need to separate and wrap it.
We've had more than our share of rain the past week (for these parts -- said with a John Wayne old cowboy movie accent). Officially, we're in a drought ... AGAIN.
We bought two more 5-gallon buckets (with lids) to put on the patio to catch the rain last week and they're now full (along with the two that were already full before the rain last week). Em moved them a little, I think, because when I asked if they were full ALREADY, he mumbled something about how I might not approve of him having moved them to where they captured runoff from the roof. We don't have gutters on our roofs here so much, so it's not as though Em set the buckets under a gutter downspout. He set them where he saw a lot of water running off the roof, much like I set the shower bucket where I see a lot of water hitting the floor.
.
We're thinking about buying two more buckets (with lids) ... just in case it rains again someday, but we've had other concerns lately.
My worms came from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm. I ordered 2000 of them, but I'd be hard-pressed to testify under oath to 200 being in that little bag I got. I spread them about the yard in all the places where I want worms before I read the instructions that said to dump them all in one place because they like to live in societies. Heh.
My peach trees seem to be doing the opposite of what they did last year (respectively). This guy:
bloomed like crazy and produced 10 peaches last year while not being able to get the strength to open its buds this year.
The other one (which did absolutely NOTHING last year) is blooming its heart out this year.
Couldn't remember if they needed each other to cross-fertilize.
You can see some of the fence garden areas in the photos. I put wet newspaper up against the fenceline to deter weeds and set bricks to hold them in place. Took me 2 days to recover from that day of hauling bricks.
Been spending a fair amount of time lately working on No. 1's wedding plans. There's a lot of protocol to be considered and it's all been new to me. Dave's mom and I have been communicating and one of her questions revolved around what I was wearing. That's standard protocol, as the groom's mom is supposed to wear something that compliments the bride's mom's outfit. Who Knew? So, last Friday there was a 50% off clothing sale at the Thrift Store and I found a very comfortable dress to wear:
When Em took the photo to send to No. 1 and No. 2 for their approval, he said, "It's really not very flattering, you know." I said, "In what way? Style, color, fit?" He said, "Style, color, fit." So, over this past weekend we went over to Kohl's to see if I could find anything I liked. I found two white blouses that I tried on with a long black skirt. I hated the way EVERYTHING looked.
Today, we made a second stab at the Thrift Store. Wearing my first attempt, I found Em and moved him to right outside the dressing room. He didn't approve of the second attempt, either, so I went on to the third attempt. Whatdya know? He LIKED it:
It fulfills, IMO, the criteria of: being comfortable, as well as somewhat amenable to my brown birks. The terrain at the outdoor wedding location has the potential to be slippery/trippy, so I want safe shoes.
Next fashion concern will be for how to wear my hair. Tips are welcome.
Spent MOST of the day yesterday working in the back yard. I really had a good time laying wet newspaper as a weed barrier along the fencelines, hauling bricks to ensure the newspaper stays in place, and then very slowly and carefully watering the fruit bushes, strawberries, and other things we planted last week.
Too windy today to plant seeds (my next step), so I cleaned up the back yard, set out two new water buckets (might get some rain this week), tended to the bushes planted last year, did a little laundry, ordered some shower-head shut-off valves and basically tended to other activities.
I think many of us appreciate more oversite after salmonella in spinach or maybe tomatoes and salmonella in peanut products, but something doesn't sound right in this legislation, and it's certainly worthy of some chatter.
I mentioned sometime back how we'd switched from buying litres of juice to buying cans of frozen concentrate. Em's quite the juice hound. The litre juice/soda bottles can be recycled, yet the tops can't. How much damage could a little plastic do?
h/t to Beth at Fake Plastic Fish.
In other news, the cable guy came out but couldn't find the line that's been cut, so he told Em that if he can find it he'll come back and splice it. ???? So, Em found it within 5 minutes after the guy left. We're now wondering if we should try satellite instead, so that's my research project for the day.
I'm talking about dental work that my tongue's been ruminating over for the past 2.5 hours. I suppose at 62 I should consider myself lucky to have my own teeth, even though they look like they're 50 years old. I'm not proud of my smile these days. My front teeth (EVEN!) have been repaired many times after developing cracks, chips, cavities, and (yesterday) another chip from
biting into the bone of a porkchop.
So, I called Richard's office to see when they could fit me in this week and there was an opening at 11am today. I asked how much it would cost to fix a chipped tooth and they couldn't say because the chip might be so big as to require a crown. I've never had a crown ... or a root canal, although it seems like most people have had either or both. So, it was recommended that I come in for an exam of that one tooth ($45.00 to look at one tooth) and I suggested that it was time for my 6-month checkup ANYWAY, right ... and when they checked my file they learned that I was PASTDUE on my 6-month checkup and why didn't they send me the reminder card I'd been awaiting?
So, we decided to pay $125.00 to check ALL my teeth, X-ray them, and clean them. Over an hour later, I walked out $373.00 poorer, but my teeth were checked, cleaned, x-rayed, and my chipped No. 9 was not just corrected, but corrected with a little screw so the chip wouldn't easily break off again, and a cavity in No. 20 filled.
Can you see the screw in No. 9?
I can't.
In other news, took some time this past week to start some old seeds to see if they're still viable. Pay attention, Diane, as I'm testing seeds you sent me in 2005, including tomatoes:
1. Black Krim
2. Cherokee Chocolate
3. Creole
4. Costaluto Genovese
5. Aunt Ruby's Green
6. Super Sioux
7. Wisconsin 55
8. Riesentraube
9. Fox Cherry
10. Yellow Perfection,
and peppers, etc.
1. Chiltepin
2. Sweet Italian Pepper
3. Peter Pepper
4. Jalapeno
5. Poblano
6. Garden Salsa
7. Hot Salsa
8. Hungarian Wax
9. Long Green Hatch
10. Red Bull
11. Gypsy Bell
12. Yellow Bell
13. Orange Bell
14. Black Beauty Eggplant.
Washed used plastic bags and set them about to dry:
Cleaned my home office (and have since moved on to some Spring cleaning of other areas of the house.
On one of the chairs was the juicer to send to No. 2. Did you receive it, No. 2?
Currently in a box in my office waiting for Ken to till and amend the soil in the areas we discussed are:
25 Chandler Strawberry plants
5 Apache Blackberry bushes
5 Austin Dewberry bushes
3 Victoria Rhubarb
3 Horseradish
10 Asparagus
2 Ozark Blue Blueberries
5 Heritage Red Raspberries
5 Cumberland Black Raspberries
They arrived last Thursday. I hope they don't wither waiting.
We used faxzero to send our information to Gexa last week, and got confirmation in the mail which I had to confirm by phone today. Electric companies here go out of their way to ensure no slamming or cramming charges.
One of the things I told Em that I needed to see from the Whitehouse during the Obama Administration was the first family rototilling some of that White House lawn for a community garden.
On our way to Home Depot one day this past week, we passed a house where a black guy was mowing the lawn. It was obvious from the trailer behind the pickup parked in front that the guy was hired to do this. I think Em's one of only 3 people in our neighborhood who mow their own lawns, but this guy stood out because he's not Mexican.
I feel really jingoistic, but if the US is experiencing the same recession as the rest of the world, it makes sense to me that we should hire US workers, Mexico should hire Mexican workers, China should hire Chinese workers, etc. So, anyway, Em pulled into the driveway and asked the guy if he'd like more work (thinking that we had some bushes in the front yard that needed cutting back). The guy said, "Sure!", we got his card, and continued on our way.
Em ended up paying the people who do our neighbor's yard to cut back the bushes, but I'm preparing to buy 22 fruit bushes, 25 strawberry plants, asparagus, horseradish, and rhubarb. Just the thought of digging all those holes is enough to wear me out.
I gave Ken a call and he came over early this morning to give me an estimate on what I might want done. While the weather recently has been in the mid 70s, a cool front came through yesterday and the early morning had a blustery wind associated with it, so Ken and I walked and talked around the outside of the house while doing some serious shivering. His input really helped me get the seeds planted in my head for what I want, so I emailed him with my final thoughts.
Did you ever hear of mushroom soil? Ken did, and we're gonna get a yard of that to amend the backyard stuff over and above the amendments from tossing kitchen scraps. It's times like this that I appreciate the rich black dirt of the Midwest, although No. 2 says that the soil on the back 40 at her dad's place isn't any better than ours and now that I think about it, we paid to have that rich, black dirt dumped in our backyard so many years ago. Like everything else in life, mushroom soil has its
critics. I'm not going to market my garden stuff, so "organic" concerns are nill, and a little over $50/yard doesn't strike me as over-priced (especially when pro-rated over 3 years).
The final plan is to have rototilled and amended: a 3 foot wide garden area along all 3 back fences, my 4x9 compost area, another 4x9 garden area perpendicular and on the other side of the yard from the 1st one, along with six 3' circles for my sweet potatoes. The 22 fruit bushes will be planted along the fences on the north and west sides. The rhubarb will be planted in the shade of the northeast corner, the horseradish and asparagus along the east fence.
I don't have final plans in my head yet for the 4x9 garden areas, but will be planting lettuces, spinach, cilantro, and other cooler weather plants between the bushes along the fenceline and lining pretty much every blank space with thick wet newspapers as a mulch. The current 4x9 space gets some shade from the house, but the second one will be exposed to a full day of Texas summer sun. The gears are still clinking and clanging in my head on what I want to plant in both areas. Part of the decision will rest on what seeds are viable, and I'll get going on seed-starting tomorrow.
Gonna order the bushes, strawberries, asparagus, and horseradish from Simmons Plant Farm. Their website is
here.
Ken's lived in this area all his life, and has never heard of rhubarb. Rhubarb isn't something that typically grows in the south, and the red-stemmed stuff won't tolerate the heat, apparently. I'll be growing the green-stemmed stuff that could tolerate the heat here, as well as planting it in the corner of the yard under the canopy of our neighbor's tree. Did you know the leaves are poisonous?
Ken's also not heard of arugula, which now grows pretty much everywhere in my backyard like a weed, and which Em considers "bitter". He's welcome to take ALL my arugula home with him AND welcome to all my arugula seeds.
I really enjoyed my hour or so with Ken this morning. He's actually a banker by trade, but maybe last October found himself out of a job with a severance package and an attitude that said, "I need to reinvent myself." He's found that he enjoys this outside gig way more than he ever liked the office politics, and it seems to support his family, as well.
We're probably also going to invest in some kind of backyard staging area because this house just wasn't built to do anything in the back yard. We have a "no shoes" rule in the house, and our garage is at the front of the house. This means that anytime I need something like bonemeal I put on shoes, go into the garage, come back into the house, take off my shoes, walk to the back door, put my shoes back on, go outside, come back in, remove my shoes, etc. Might be a shed, might be something Ken called a planting "table", but there's definitely got to be something back there in which to store things like my garden kneeler and (of course) my sun oven. Reminds me of George Carlin's thing on Stuff:
I'm still on the schedule of a vampire and I suppose reading Seize the Night isn't helping.
Having fallen asleep during our third Netflix offering last night, I found myself awake this morning at something like 2:30am. So, I got up, because it's apparently worse to flop around in the bed awake than it is to get up and flop around in the rest of the world.
Yesterday, a representative from TXU called to get us to start a new plan with them because our old plan had expired. At the time of the call, I was in the middle of cleaning my office and had NO time to talk. Em had no time to talk, either, so we took their number. TXU is probably the biggest electricity provider in Texas.
February 12, 2009
SaveOnEnergy.com launched SaveOnGreenEnergy.com to market 100% renewable power, it said yesterday. The new site will mimic the firm's established site where some green power plans were already available but CEO Brent Moore told us yesterday that it makes more sense to market such deals separately.
Consumers that want green power search for it and thus are likely to be drawn to a site with only those products.
"We strongly believe in renewable energy efficiency and feel SaveOnGreenEnergy.com will be extremely well received by customers looking for the best in green and environmentally-aware products," said Moore.
The new site launched yesterday with the firm starting an advertising blitz through the internet and more traditional mediums.
Moore isn't sure if it will achieve the same volume as SaveOnEnergy.com -- that now has commercial offers in 20 states -- but he believes the green site will be a success.
SaveOnGreenEnergy.com is starting in Texas where the parent firm has its roots and hopes to follow the original site on its path to other markets.
The eventual goal is to run in every state with deregulated power and natural gas markets, said Moore.
Firms with residential offers on the site include Green Mountain Energy, Gexa, TXU Energy, First Choice and Bounce Energy.
The commercial retailers are the same as those on the firm's original site: TXU, Reliant, Mid American, Cirro Energy, Glacial Energy, Liberty Power, Star Tex and Gateway.
Customers wanting 100% green power options usually pay a premium for them but Moore sees that changing. His firm hopes competition spurred by the website will help drive prices down as the firms offering green plans realize they can win more volume through the website if they do, he added. Moore saw that happen on the firm's main website.
We're gonna try Gexa. Their rates per Kwh were LESS by several cents than we were paying TXU to pollute.
So, I tried to get everything in order to acquire a switch to their services for 6 months, including faxing them a copy of Em's driver's license and our last electric bill to avoid paying the deposit fee.
We don't have a fax machine, but I was pretty sure this new Vista install included one, so I scanned the docs and the PC "talked" to the printer/scanner/copier just fine. I needed to hook the PC up to the phone line, so I did that, too, even though the DSL line goes above the phone line kindof like = . THAT brought down my PC.
I called Dave (my new son-in-law) maybe 3 times for help, and the "boot to the previous" option restored everything to WAY, WAY after I'd have thought it would. It went so far as to include the scanned docs right before the fax that blew everything away.
So, it looks like we're gonna try a new company with 100% wind energy at .125 kwh for 6 months ... as soon as we can find a fax machine that'll accommodate the docs I burned to disk.
Our service with TXU doesn't end until the next meter reading, anyway, and that won't be until maybe the middle of March.
The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits - Hervey Allen 
