One mans trash is another mans treasure

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Last night I was watching a repeat television show of My name is Earl. I’ve only ever watched that particular show two or three times in my life before because normally I am busy doing something else when it is on the air. But last night I was having trouble falling asleep and turned on the television just as that show came on. The show was about how tornadoes kept hitting the trailer park where the show’s characters were living, and that everyone’s possessions were strewn around. When the tornado subsided everyone was going crazy trying to take possession of the items that were strewn around.

In a way it made me think of a treasure hunt, people looking for the “best” find. They had a “finders keepers” rule – whoever gets it in their hands first gets to keep it. What was particularly humorous about this was that people were valuing some items that would hold the interest of most people. The adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” was demonstrated throughout the show. The next time I’m channel surfing and see that My name is Earl in on, I think I’ll watch it again. It was a little bit slapstick, but funny just the same.

Landscaping and hardscaping the back yard

Ever since we bought this house several years ago my wife and I have been trying to come up with a plan to fix up the back yard into a showcase lawn that would rival anything you could see in a Better Homes & Gardens magazine.

We’ve been thinking about putting some patio pavers on the ground right outside of the sliding glass doors in the basement to make the area look like an outdoor living room/lounging area. I am even thinking about turning the area out there under the deck into a screen room, but first we want to take care of the yard. We’d like to make a path with paving stone that winds down to the platform at the pond’s edge from the back deck.

For now we need to come to a decision about whether to set the stones in gravel, concrete, or go the more natural route and simply have them set in mulch. I’m inclined to go with gravel or mulch because concrete does not fare well in this area. I’d like to do something in the back yard that will reduce the amount of mowing that I have to do back there; there are several steep hillsides that need to be terraced. I think that with a little bit of elbow grease that we could have this yard ship-shape in no time at all!

Powdery mildew

One of my favorite plants in my garden is the perennial tall garden phlox. They come in a variety of colors, orange, white, pink, purple, and red. Every year I have noticed that my tall garden phlox suffers from powdery mildew. I’ve done some research on the problem and I get the impression that I can address it by spacing the plants further apart and to stop using the lawn sprinklers to water them. Apparently the lack of air circulation from having the plants crowded together in addition to wet leaves makes the powdery mildew thrive. I’ve always thought that they were not getting enough water because the powdery mildew looks like it is a drying problem.

So anyway I’ve decided to try to dig up some of the plants to space them further apart, giving them a little bit more room to let the air circulate, and then I will try a drip irrigation system of leaving the perforated hose in the garden winding around and through the plants. I think that will minimize the amount of work I need to do, and hopefully will solve the problem. Have you had any experience with this problem? How did you fix it?

The Internet makes moving so much easier

How many times have you had to move from one house to another in your lifetime? Two, three times? I don’t know about you, but I think that moving from one house to another is a huge pain in the you-know-what! When I was a young child our family moved three times, and to be perfectly honest they didn’t involve the kids in the move at all. They just sent all of us kids away for a week to a friend’s house or to a sleep-over camp and at the end of the sleep-over when our parents picked us up they just took us to our new home. Matter of fact – oh by the way, while you were gone we moved. This is our new house, and this is your new bedroom.

I guess we should be grateful that they came and picked us up! We never would have found them if they had just moved away and left us there! Wouldn’t that have been a nightmare for the camp owners and/or family friends! Anyway, the point being we never saw the work involved in moving, all of the packing and unpacking, none of the negotiations with removal companies, none of the headaches.

Since I’ve grown up and been on my own I have had to move five times. And they were a pain. Especially the first four – prior to the invention of the Internet. I found it very difficult to locate the services that I needed to make the move go smoothly. Thank goodness for the Internet and all of the resources that I’ve been able to use to find the right companies and services that I needed to make the last move as easy as possible. It even helped me find the house that I wanted to buy!

Moving

Thanks for the post from Sylvester Campbell

The list of things that need to get done before moving is seriously getting longer and longer. I know that I sort of take on that responsibility since I am a homemaker and my husband works out of the home, but he is going to have to help me with some of this list or it just isn’t going to get done in time. The things at the top of my list today are to research New york energy rates and find a list of day-cares that I am going to check out when we go for our house hunting trip. I really am excited about this move, but I do wish that I could crawl in my bed and just wake up when all of this work is done! I just want to wake up and be in my new home with everything unpacked and my children in their new schools. This is not my first rodeo, I have done this plenty of times. I know in my heart that it will all get done and work out, I just need to start my to-do list!