Coffee heat rising

Keep Ants out of Your Hummingbird Feeder

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If you live in a part of the country where you can enjoy hummingbirds, you may have noticed that ants love sugar water even more than hummers do. The little gals quickly learn the source of any drips from your feeder; parade up the wall, across the rafters, and down the hanger; and then drown in suicidal droves, contaminating the food and repelling the birds.

Here’s an easy, cheap way to keep ants out of hummingbird food. The one thing you’ll need that may or may not be immediately at hand is a plastic lid of the sort that comes on cans of spray paint: it has an inner ring of plastic that creates a kind of “moat” inside the lid. If you don’t have a can of spray paint around the house, ask your friends, relatives, and neighbors — someone who will let you mooch the lid is bound to have one.

You need:
spray paint can’s lid
piece of cardboard
sturdy tape, such as duct tape or packing tape
scissors
ice pick or large nail
hammer or tack hammer
vegetable oil
hummingbird feeder with stiff wire or rod hanger extender

In the past, I’ve taken a pair of wire cutters to metal coat hangers to make hanger extenders for my hummer feeders. A couple of years ago, though, I discovered that nurseries and Home Depot have rods with hooks on each end that work nicely to hang bird feeders from a rafter. Either will work — the hanger just needs to be stiff enough to support the gadget you’re about to make.

Take the ice pick or nail and gently tap a hole in the center of the lid, using a small hammer. With the scissors, cut out a piece of cardboard about the size of the lid — you can trace the lid, for a neater look, or simply cut out a three-inch-square piece. Punch a hole in the center of this, too.

Now push the metal hanger rod through the cardboard and through the hole in the lid, so that the lid sits atop the cardboard with the open side facing upward. Position it near the top of the rod, and tape it firmly in place, so that it will stay as level as you can make it. Finally, pour a small amount of vegetable oil in the outer “moat” of the lid. Fill the moat about 1/4 to 1/2 full. Attach the rod to the hook in your rafter and then hang the feeder from the lower hook.

Ants hate oil. They will not go through it. Even after it has dried up and congealed, they still won’t get into it! This gadget absolutely positively keeps ants out of hummingbird water, without harming them, you, or the birds.

Hummingbird photo copyright Mdf, from Wikipedia Commons

Moments of Fame

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At the74th Carnival of Money Stories, Not the Jet Set has placed Funny’s“lemonade from lemons”saga among the Editor’s Picks! Thanks very much for that, NTJS. At this carnival, Budgets Are Sexy tells the tale of the timehe had to pay for his own Starbucks(can you imagine? his employer hands out gift cards to Starbucks!). Trees Full of Money describesthe unfortunate decision to lease a Toyota 4-Runner; the first installment appears here. And No More Spending rejectsthe temptation posed by glossy magazines.

Broke Grad Student has posted the 167th Carnival of Personal Finance, with a Beijing Olympics theme. Funny’s squib about the national debt and its likely baleful effect on the US and world economy over the next decade or two appears here. Once again, many great stories here. At Alpha Consumer, Kimberly reminds me why I used to love being a journalist (because you can ask as many nosy questions as you like!) with an interesting report on how much bloggers earn, a story that incidentally reveals the traffic some blogs generate. The Financial Blogger has a hilarious piece on how some songs you’ll recognize relate to personal finance…along the way he confirms this old bat’s suspicions about what students are actually thinking about in class. 😀 In the suspicions confirmed department, Brip Blap reveals the truth about passive income, or so he says. The Wisdom Journal, on a more serious note, advises common sense when it comes to frugality. And Not the Jet Set describes an error on the bank’s part and the nuisance it led to.

The Make It from Scratch Carnival is up at Learning the Ropes, where Funny’s beauty tip for olive-oil hair conditioning appears above the fold. TM were pleased to see our recipe for fried green tomatoes also made the cut. Speaking of tomatoes — and frugality — My Daily Dollars has a tasty-sounding plan for a $3.00 family meal made with home-grown tomatoes.

Fire Finance hosts the 140th Festival of Frugality. As an employee of the Great Desert University, a decidedly public school given to larding FTE with (largely fraudulent) online courses and concocting graduate programs that do not require annoying details like the GRE or the GMAT, Funny is thrilled to see Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity hold forth on reasons not to go to a private college…but wait! snap out of that! It’s a Devil’s Advocate post. Speaking of the outcome of fraudulent practices, Care One Credit offers some strategies to avoid foreclosure. Back on campus, Frugal in the Fruitlands points out some of the many benefits colleges and universities offer alumni. Funny’s post on falling off the frugality wagon appears in this week’s Festival.

PF Buzz hosts the 27th Money Hacks Carnival, where Funny’s rave about the glories of doing business with credit unions appears. Here, Fiscal Liberty offers ten things to know before refinancing; No Debt Plan suggests some ways to save money on watering the lawn; and Realm of Prosperity tries to save on college textbooks.

How do I love the credit union?

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Let me count the ways!

Just discovered that the credit union allows you to give your accounts “nicknames” in its online environment. Probably it’s ever been thus…I only tumbled to it this afternoon. So, I just spent ten minutes or so renaming all my accounts to jibe with the monikers I’ve given them in Quicken. This will much simplify making online transfers, which up to now have required me to think about what I’m doing, of all the unreasonable things.

How is the credit union better than the banks I’ve known?

  • All checking accounts are free: no charges
  • No minimum to qualify for free checking
  • Low minimums for money market accounts
  • No sneaky ways to extract extra fees from customers
  • Human beings answer the phone
  • Employees recognize regular customers
  • Office is located at my place of work
  • Another office is located 10 minutes from home
  • Plenty of tellers are on duty at all times: short or no lines
  • Loan rates are very low
  • Loan officers are on the premises
  • Online pages are easy to navigate and have many nifty amenities
  • Online help is actually helpful
  • Password is not your Social Security number (!!!)

How is the credit union maybe not as good as a vast faceless national bank?

  • Fewer brick & mortar offices
  • Fewer ATMs (but I don’t know: I don’t use ATMs)
  • Difficult to manage an ETF from Japan or Europe

By how much do the plusses outweigh the minuses?

  • By about 1,000 to 1

Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine…

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Cassie the Corgi decided the crack of dawn was too late to start the day, and so began campaigning to spring to life at ten to five. Gronk! After wringing her out and finding myself still being importuned to get up, I put her on the bed, in hopes that would quiet her down. You don’t put a dog on the bed when you do that. You put a 23-pound puffball of fur on the bed — one that wriggles. So…we’ll be washing the bedding this morning, among other activities.

Precious few blossoms are clinging to vines here at the tail end of summer. When the power went out the other day, it shut down the irrigation timer, and so quite a few of the blossoming critters in my yard are parched. The weather has been surprisingly balmy this year: only a few 115-degree days. We’re supposed to have a heat wave this weekend, with temperatures predicted at around 110, although just now it’s quite lovely outside.

Thank goodness we get an “extra” paycheck this month! Last week’sfurniture-buying exploitoverspent my Diddle-It-Away savings by about $200. Truth is, the money could come out of ordinary cash flow, but that maneuver would engross this month’s payment into the Renovation Loan paydown fund. A couple hundred bucks out of the paycheck of the 29th will do no harm.

I vacillate between taking the $9,500 now accrued in the paydown fund and applying it to principal right now and keeping it in savings to double as emergency fund cash. One thing to be said for paying it toward principal right this minute is that it will keep me from spending it on anything else. Another thing, of course, is that it will cause a much larger chunk of the regular monthly payment to go toward principal, which would be good. On the other hand, with the economy as iffy as it is and the university busily laying off its employees, I hesitate to let those dollars out of my hands.

This is gunna be a hectic weekend. I’ve got to hand over an indexing project to my sidekick for proofreading no later than Tuesday noon; at the moment two chapters and an endless series of narrative endnotes remain to be marked up, and then I have to type, format, and organize the entries. That job alone will take at least an entire day. The author is paying us a premium to do a rush job, so in fact we each will earn more than enough to pay the extra $200 needed to cover the entire furniture adventure. But horrors! It requires me to (shudder!)work! Meanwhile, food needs to be purchased, laundry laundered, floors and furniture cleaned, pool tended to, yard plants rescued….where will the time come from?

TheHealth & Wealth rafflehas had its first two drawings. So far the organizers have not awarded me the million work-free dollars to which I feel I am entitled. One more drawing is slated for September 26. Surely at that time the money will be deposited to my checking account.

And so, to work.

More fame!

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I missed picking up on the 26th Money Hacks Carnival, which was hosted by Our Four Pence Worth, who kindly included Funny’s squib on A$king and Receiving. This week’s theme is “Old Money,” and it’s pretty entertaining, with pictures of amazing historic bills. Did you know there was a $100,000 bill? Yes: it had Woodrow Wilson’s portrait on it.

Interesting stuff here. Kristin at Twenties Money sent my blood pressure through the ceiling by reporting that SUNY CUNY (!! see below)sold her private information to credit card vendors, a stunt that probably violates FERPA, the federal privacy act that protects students. Economic Help posts a rumination on why housing booms & busts will always be with us. Quite a few good posts: be sure to visit this carnival.

This could be fun

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Check out this entertaining site, highlighted byMomma Blogs a Lot: it’s calledBooking through Thursday. The proprietor posts a meme a week, mostly about books and reading. Thecurrent memeasks you to write about your earliest memory of a library.

Naturally, I couldn’t let that one lay. VisitThe Copyeditor’s Desk for my response.
So, what’s your earliest library memory? If you’re a blogger, remember to link back to Booking through Thursday. Otherwise, please feel welcome to leave your story in the comments here.