So it’s past the time to cultiver notre jardin here at the Funny Farm. I’ve put off a lot of those little chores I like to call don’wannas: all the dopey little tasks I don’t want to do because they’re ditzy or messy or nuisancey or…just can be put off until another day.
The pool, which ideally should be tended daily, has been neglected for at least a couple of weeks. Fortunately nothing much is going on: a pile of leaves had collected in the lee of the circulation system; a little mustard algae clung to life despite the water’s excruciating chill. Sweeping up the pickled leaves with the hose bonnet was easy, as was dumping out the leaves that had floated into the skimmer and the pump pot filter in the absence of Harvey, who was disconnected after the first big rainstorm.
My invention for power-cleaning the pool walls without having to screw around with endlessly annoying and inefficient brushes — let’s call it the Algae Machete! — really does work. It works big-time. Only took a few minutes to blast the green scum off the plaster and the dust off the steps.
Threw in another chlorine tab. In this weather, the things dissolve very slowly, so the pair I’d put in a week ago were barely eroded. But I’m almost out, so soon will have to order some more. Costco doesn’t seem to carry them in the winter, but they are available online at both Costco and Amazon. Costco much underprices the Amazon vendors, and so within the next couple of weeks, we’ll be sending away for some of that stuff.
The cute little composter I bought last summer also is working quite nicely. By this morning it was pretty well full of composted leaves, litter, and kitchen scraps. And after a summer and a fall of 100-degree-plus heat, it breaks stuff down quickly and well.
So I finally got around to unloading some of that and packing it in around the potted rose, palm, and ficus who so need a plant pick-me-up.
It’s colder than a bygod out there right now, and so as a practical matter a pick-me-up is not what a potted plant should be getting just this moment. Probably a plant sleeping pill would be better. Oh well. If we don’t get a hard freeze — and truly I doubt if we ever will again, not here, not in my lifetime or in your kids’ lifetimes — they’ll be fine.
The roses need to be pruned. That didn’t get done. Oh well.
That potted ficus is quite the elder among the backyard plants. It came over here from the old house, where it had already been around for quite awhile. Since I moved a dozen years ago, that makes the ficus about 14 or 16 years old. All of which should tell you that it’s very hard to kill a ficus…
A day or two ago I cooked up a defrosted package of pork for the dogs. But in the “oh well” department, didn’t feel like fooling with converting it into dog food. In the first place I overcooked it and probably drained it of most of its nutritional value — so had to think over whether I wanted to throw it (i.e., to throw $$$) in the garbage. And in the second place, I had a lot of other things to do, what with wrestling with the car headache. So I stuck it, still in its cooking pan, into the refrigerator.
Decided to defrost a half-package of Costco chicken today, cook that, combine it with the pork, and come up with a larger portion of dog food that would last longer.
By 1:30 in the afternoon, the chicken was still frozen! It’s so damn cold in here, meat left out on the counter won’t defrost!
So I wrenched the pieces apart as best as I could, tossed it in a pan, and put it over the heat. It’s about cooked now. Whenever I get off my duff, I need to grind it up with the pork and mix it all in with some veggies and some sort of starch…probably oatmeal.
It looks like a large new assignment is coming in, one that will keep me and my associate editor busy between now and the end of January.
Said associate editor, sometimes known famously as The Kid, is taking the LSAT today. She’s decided to knock of some off the full-time jobs she holds down (no, that is not an exaggeration) and go to law school.
Since she’s frighteningly smart and has at least one extremely interesting job, admission to GDU’s nationally prominent law school is pretty much a given. She would make a killer lawyer, she being a bit of a bulldog…the type that doesn’t let go easily. And IMHO she would be extremely good as an education lawyer.
Well, we shall see.
Now I have to get on with one of my own projects so as to get that as close to done as possible before said “large new assignment” shows up…but before that must concoct the dog food. And so, away!
Glad to hear the composter is working well. Mine is on it’s last legs but it was free. I’ve use the heck out of it and have been looking for a “frugal” replacement. It amazes me how the use of the composter has reduced our trash. Between the composting, scrapping the metal & aluminum, and recycling the glass and plastic we’re left with about plastic grocery bag of trash….every 2 weeks. Trash is a BIG DEAL in this “neck of the woods” and getting bigger. I watch the local access cable station as our elected officials “ring their hands” about waste and how to deal with it. Here once more it seems common-sense is gone out the window. IMHO these guys just don’t get it and how to reduce waste. This group is still smarting from having to pay $3 MILLION to be released from an agreement with an adjacent county to build a “waste to energy” plant. Yes that was tax dollars down the drain. It seems their answer is to raise fees. As memory serves we pay pretty close to $60 a ton to haul our waste to Virginia Or Pa., where it goes to a “waste to energy” plant….It’s swell….
Wow! That’s ungodly.
Phoenix has a large landfill, and I imagine the outlying suburbs do, too.
We have a recycling program…how good that is, I do not know. At the outset, it was a sop for the environmentally anxious. In the first week or so after it was implemented, the city hyped a BIIIIG to-do at a local elementary school where the kiddies were taught to separate out recyclables. They proudly stashed the debris in a big bin on the campus. Then one of the giant recycling trucks drove up, with the city fathers and a legion of reporters present, to collect the junk from the cute little kids.
It was such a deal.
Welp…a couple of reporters (in those days we HAD reporters! Can you imagine?) took it into their heads to follow the recycling truck — these trucks look suspiciously like regular garbage trucks. So they climbed in their car and drove on down the road after the behemoth, which, they observed, went right straight up to the landfill and dumped all the “recycling” on the ground with the regular trash and garbage.
😀
Apparently we now really DO have a recycling operation here — they regularly bitch in the TV and online play-nooz about people putting plastic bags in the recycling bins, thereby clogging the equipment. But the city and county have never risen (sunk?) to the level of sending trash cops to be sure that you ACTUALLY put your blue barrel out every week and that your blue barrel contains actual recyclables. They have a lot of complicated, arcane rules about what can and cannot go into the things, but no one pays much attention.
I stayed at a friend’s house in Portland some years ago. They had not two but three nuisance barrels: blue for paper, plastic, & metal; yellow for glass; and something else for regular garbage.
The Funny Farm doesn’t generate a lot of recyclable waste, because I eat fresh foods and don’t drink soda and so don’t buy a lot of stuff that comes in cardboard and plastic containers. I use plastic bags to pick up dog waste and also to store wet garbage in the refrigerator (there’s not enough room under the sink for a trash can and Ratty gets at trash left in the garage). So I don’t usually have enough recyclable stuff to haul out every single week. And with a composter, as you say, there’s a LOT less kitchen garbage to discard — if you don’t eat much meat, there’s hardly any.
Plastic bags aren’t recyclable here, anyway. Why they don’t require bag makers to use that plastic-like stuff that biodegrades, I fail to understand. Instead, the cities of Tempe and Tucson (college towns: damn eddycated liberuls!) are trying to ban plastic grocery bags.
I made a recycling bin out of a plastic trash can with a lid. Take your drill and, using a large bit, punch a bunch of holes in the sides and bottom, so liquid can drain out of it. Secure the lid with a bungee cord strung over the handles, and then lay it on its side to roll back and forth for mixing.
It was a little too large for me to manage easily, so it didn’t work all that well here — it might work better with a man’s strength to handle it.
The path of least resistance, really, is to give up and buy a rotating bin.
Weeeelll…..Don’t get me started….In this neck of woods they have tried to put a 10 cent then 5 cent “tax” on plastic bags. Idiots…..I mean representatives with averse opinions…say it would put an undue burden on “the poor”. That’s the same”poor” I witness dropping $6.50 on a pack of KOOLS. Then backers offered to give coupons for FREE re-usable bags TO OUR “BELEAGURED CITIZENS”….no dice. I’m sick of plastic bags hanging off trees and shrubs….IMHO….it’s not OK. The Washington DC area imposed such a tax a couple of years back because of severe damage to the Potomac and local sewer systems. And basically said “let the poor be damned”… The impact was immediate and some reports litter has dropped 90% and the “poor” have survived just fine. As for the recycling…..about every 4-6 weeks I take my recycling to the Center while on errands….easy access and it’s FREE. The County makes some money off the proceeds which lightens the tax payer’s burden. As for plastic bags, around here the grocery stores have collection sites out front….JUST for bags. Those bags are then either made into new bags OR made into the new plastic decking “lumber” that folks rave about today. Wish more folks fully participated……
Ugh. How stupid. What is the matter with people?
The plastic bags make an awful mess, especially in some states like Texas where people seem to think it’s OK to throw trash out the car windows. On the other hand, paper bags harbor roaches — roaches lay their eggs in the bags’ folds and the little guys hatch out in your kitchen or garage.
Don’t know what the situation is now, but when we were in London lo! these many years ago, stores didn’t dispense ANY bags at all. Period. Everybody brought their own bags to markets and pharmacies.
You could buy, cheaply, these stretchy net bag things that would fit inside a man’s pocket or a women’s purse. One of them would hold a phemomenal amount of junk.
People tended not to buy week’s or a month’s worth of goods, at least not in those days — you stopped at the various grocers on the way home from the Underground stop. But in fact, three or four of those net bags would have held several days’ worth of food and sundries.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen them here. Instead, we’re offered clunky canvas totes that advertise whatever store is selling them — only YOU pay for the privilege of carrying THEIR ads wherever you go.
Here they are on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ECOHIP-Reusable-Grocery-Bags-Produce/dp/B016BDZ6CQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480869039&sr=8-1&keywords=mesh+shopping+bag But holy ess aitch aye! Look at the price: fifteen bucks!
Here’s one for six bucks, which is more like it: https://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Cotton-Shopping-Ecology-Organizer/dp/B014XHB6P8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1480869039&sr=8-2&keywords=mesh+shopping+bag
Some stores around here have a bin to put used bags in. Some people will take bags out of it for their own shopping. Don’t know what becomes of the ones that aren’t reused by customers.
Costco doesn’t hand out plastic bags, and their customers don’t seem to be in much pain…
Funny, If you’re interested DD2 went out West to study a semester at Chico California. If memory serves a group of “smart students who want to make a difference” put together a program to get just such bags you describe into the hands of the consumer and for them to use them. DD2 worked on the project from it’s infancy while there and after she left it bore fruit. I can’t remember the name of the project BUT it was at Chico State and if I’m not mistake the program was nationally recognized and won some awards. She was “dumb-founded” when she got “home” and found the sentiment so pathetic. WHICH may be why she resides in the WEST today and will not accept a plastic bag on a bet…..Pretty sure you can buy these things from the school and the money goes back into the program and it MAY be deductible….Now if we can just get these kids to work on the Federal deficit…
Whoa! Kid & a half!!! I’ll see if I can find them there and report. If you can find out from her what she knows — does the program still exist and how to find it? — lemme know.
The kid’s out West, eh? Y’know…it’s never to late to move to Arizona… 😉
Hi Funny….Did some research and oddly the project is called the “ChicoBag”. It appears this thing has “morphed” into a advertising/ fundraising/ get the word out vehicle….and a pretty big deal. The very cool thing is plastic bags were outlawed in Chico in January ’14. As memory serves the students were instrumental in this grass roots efforts and the acceptance of the “ChicoBag”. Gonna try to get in touch with DD2 and see if the name Ed Keller rings any bells….evidently this was his dream as founder and it bore fruit. Aaaand YEP the kid lives in the WEST…..and …. loves it….most days. She continues to be an environmentalist and enjoys the great outdoors…..and hates traffic jams on our Beltway from the airport….Her question….”Why doesn’t someone fix this?”….”This happens daily….well that’s crazy!”…..