I look out and all our koi are out swimming. This can be very bad. We lost Rukia to hypothermia, and random swimming is a symptom.
I got online and googled “koi premature waking”, “koi wintering”, and half a dozen other phrases and finally got one article that hinted they do sometimes get a little more active during a warmup, and still pointing out if certain bad co2 situations got started they could go up seeking oxygen.
Well…I ran out and tested water temp—42 degrees—incidentally scaring all the fish back under cover. They all looked ok. But I got the test strips out and did a water test. Perfect. Right in the Zone.
So…my imagination of having to build a koi pond in the basement—rushing off to buy a pond form, and  organizing a pot filter and hauling tons of water downstairs from the pond to the basement (there’s water down there, but they’d want their own, for safety)—quickly gave way to “Whew!” thank goodness I don’t have to do that, because once you bring them in and warm them up, they’re with you until spring.
But that was ok. Which led to the next job—planting ten ‘trees’. 40 foot potential blue spruce, sent to us by the Arbor Day Society, because Jane sent them 10.00. Aaagh. We’d given up on them. We expected them in early October. Not so. We’re one snow down and in a little warm snap, so here we are digging back 5″ of mulch and wrestling with wet soggy ground in the rose bed in November. Not only that, they sent us an extra—read: one more hole. I planted 2 between the 40′ tall hemlocks along the road, and will have to defend them from the lawn crew come spring. Jane set more out near our little Fat Albert blue spruce. And 8 in the rose bed. So she did the lion’s share of the soggy, muddy, cold, bent-over work. I dug holes. All this before breakfast.
Now I get to get Bren out of his current pickle and help Jane where possible with the CC site. We talked to Lynn last night: she is very relieved to have us step in, with the broken hand and the sudden obligations that have descended on her—a very dear friend is gravely ill and needs Lynn’s help: and this, with several other matters of that nature, is what has been going on—well, except the broken hand. So we are making progress with the things Lynn has already done under an extremely pressured set of circumstances, not to mention a book deadline, and no kidding, we have Paypal buttons, and are very close to launch.
Arbor Day trees. I have planted lots of those. The rate of attrition is quite high–I think of the thirty I’ve planted over the years, only ten have survived and about half of those struggle from year to year.
However, I am not the gardener that you guys are. I give them a home and some water and let nature pick and choose as she will. I do have a nice variety of trees though.
And hurray for Bren! I am sure he is relieved the cavalry is finally on the way.
Well, we have about a 50% survival rate for the spriglets. We got something that has beautiful red leaves in fall, a redbud, a crepe myrtle (nuclear strikes cannot kill crepe myrtle), and something we’re not sure of—the rest bit the big one. But (not uncommon, apparently: volunteer labor) Arbor forgot to ship when they should have, finally shipped after a 3 month delay, so they didn’t go in when they should, they had a little mold on them from the heat in their package, and we didn’t know how to handle them, so it was a learning curve: we’re not sure they were all alive when we got them. Of course the dogwoods, which we wanted, died. But we saw them advertising 10 blue spruce seedlings for 10.00, so we bit, and they were, this time, only two months late, but in great shape, with many side buds on fully half of them, plus the one extra. We worry what we’ll have the day these huge hemlocks die, on streetside, so we decided to try planting there, but they mostly went into the rose-bed, for a spring replant. At least we’ll know where they are.
But so far so good. They’ll replace anything that dies early, and we’re going to send them a donation and ask for a reship of the original packet (we’d rather have just the redbuds, but we have a friend with an acreage, so we can give the spares to her—including spares of these potentially huge blue spruces.) Mulch in bright sun seems to be key to the best survival rate: where we mulched deep around them in full sun, the sprigs had about an 80% survival rate. But we’ll see next spring.
Those unfamiliar with the organization http://www.arborday.org/index.cfm , they sell little 8″ to 1′ sprigs for planting. If you’ve got time, a good environment, and don’t mind coddling seedlings or losing a few, you can landscape at considerably less than at the greenhouse. Plus they sponsor tree renewal and greenness all around. I like the notion of an environmental organization encouraging us to forest-up the place where we live.
My Mom donated to the Arbor Day Society some years ago, got the shipment of random seedlings and planted them around the yard. Several are still alive (including the very thorny… agghh, I forget its name but it is British and part of hedgerows!). She has transplanted them to better places in the yard several times.
A large redbud in full bloom is very impressive. Dogwoods
are a huge favorite,that delicate,lacy look is so pretty.
A hint: never plant a blue spruce near a fir,unseen war of
a chemical nature will ensue.
Don’t you have a so far unpublished Foreigner book already
at the Publishers?
Thanks to my doctor I’m about to become thoroughly 21st.
century. I’m to get a cell phone,a first. The ones I’ve
seen terrify me,so many dohickies and something called a
bluetooth?
Azureblu, I was a cellphone holdout too, but we use it to find one another in big stores, at the state fair, and to call for assistance (AAA, etc)on the road, or to coordinate meeting someone. I don’t converse on the phone much, but as a means to reach out instantly and get somebody’s attention or coordinate a rendezvous point, priceless: just think of it like the Guild’s ability to let each other know what’s happening. Useful, but not necessarily for chattering on. 😉
You have 2 options: if you WANT texting and being able to use your phone as an internet reader, even an e-book reader, AND a pocket camera, go for a standard cellphone: I use an LG, which has a long battery life (important): you don’t want the thing to be dead when you need it. It comes with an instruction book, and one of the most valuable things outside the one-button-call of regular contacts (Jane is #2 on my phone: there is no #1)—is the ability to assign a ‘ringtone’ to certain common callers, a signature piece of music that lets you know who’s calling and whether you should scramble for the phone or let it ring and go to voicemail (hear it later.)
All these things are in the instruction book, and ask any teenager 😆 to help you set up—I did, when I got my phone stuck on speakerphone. I asked a random kid at the drink counter at the rink, and yep, she knew how to switch it off.
Verizon and others offer a free phone if you sign a contract with them for a year or so.
If on the other hand you want a dirt-simple phone, you might look at Jitterbug: you pay 157.oo flat rate for the phone, but there is no contract, just a flat fee per month thereafter. There is also an Operator (old-fashioned thought) that can help you plus 24 hour Roadside Assistance and a Nurse On Call, who can give advice and answer questions. It also has large-type readout.
Either one costs about the same in the long run.
Bluetooth is (among other things probably not useful) a way of getting a wireless connection, which a phone already is, so don’t worry about that, IMHO: you probably won’t need it, just a phone.
I do have Deceiver sitting at the publishers’ and am nearly through with the current book.
And thanks for that info re firs and spruce.
(As long as those PayPal buttons don’t actually require an account with them, it’s okay.)
There was one Arbor Day when we were handed seedling sequoias at school. Some of them actually survived, although I don’t know if any are still around. One of them was six feet tall, three years after planting.
I think you have to have a Paypal account, yes. HOWEVER, if you’re like me, and have run into so many phishes it’s dizzying, they now have a service called Iconix, and if you’ll go to the Paypal site, you can get the download. It’s safe, efficient, and it checks any mail purporting to be from Paypal and verifies it to be actually from them. That should go a long way toward solving the verification problem.
But if you have a problem with online payments, you can send a check to us via snailmail and we’ll get you the file you want: our addy will be on the first page of the site.
IF you can get them to process credit cards, I’d be happy.
(The problem I have is that, after you’ve used them for a certain dollar amount of purchases, they want online access to your bank account. I refuse to do that, unless it’s an account I control, for only that use.)
Sheesh! No, I’d not heard that one. Anyone have experience with this one?
They do process credit cards: that’s one reason we’re using them. They show the cards right around the checkout button. They advertise they HAVE a direct-draft option, but it’s not available with all banks, they say, and while you ‘create an account’ to use credit cards on their site, it’s probably so they can bill your Card company for their little fee. I’m a stranger to this myself. Let me know everything you know about Paypal. I’m all ears. But we’re not in a position to take credit cards ourselves. I wish we were. The software that allows that is just too expensive for us.
I just looked at PayPal. You can add money to your PayPal Account one of 2 ways; direct from a bank account or by a “GreenDot MoneyPak”. You can buy these at WalMart, KMart, a number of different drug store like Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS, and others.
Go to http://www.moneypak.com/paypal/Info.aspx for more information.
It’s the only way to get money to your account that bypasses the bank access. And it appears to be free.
Thanks CJ,I went to eBay and I can get a new Jitter J for
just under $100 with free shipping. I called the company
and they are so laid back and genuinely helpful,I think
that’s where I’ll go. Really appreciate the heads up on
that. They have a deal where they use Verizon’s towers so
they have good coverage!
I had a good nursery man warn me about the Fir & Spruce
deal. My property was all over Douglas Fir and the Blue
spruce I was mooning over was not meant to be. I’d had no
idea.
I’ve got the cheapest phone I could find $30 with a $30 rebate coupon and a 12 months extension on our household contract (3 phones on it; mine, DH and a friend of ours). My only stipulation was that it HAD to be GSM so I could use it in Oz just by swapping out the SIM card. Oh, and it has very LARGE numbers on the screen. I don’t need all the bells and whistles and cheaper is better. We’re on AT&T here and I usually go with Optus in Oz.
The Arbor Day people will not ship to me — something about long transit times and not wanting to monkey with Hawaii’s ecosystems 😀 I’ll just have to content myself with some of the locally available stuff they hand out at the annual county fair. I’d really like to get my hands on a pakalana vine that survives more than one season, or a wax vine. Both have elegant flowers with haunting scents. I think our climate is tough on those plants, especially trying to get established.
We have cedars and fir trees that were Arbor day presents that we put in twenty years ago and are growing like gangbusters. Alas the dogwood and crepe myrtle did not survive. I have never had any luck with crepe myrtle, wonder what I do wrong.
Strange weather here on top of the hill……we have had a few frosts severe enough to kill dahlias licorice and plumbago still green. This time last year I think we had six inches of snow. 😉
If anyone is hesitant about using charges online, another option is to buy a debit card. It exists independently of everything. A friend who refuses to have credit cards in any way shape or form does this with great success. 😀
I only use my cell phone when I am in the field at work. Tracfone works for me. I manage to get deals when I renew online where I get two years and double minutes for a small amount more than one year. I don’t bother with any of the bells and whistles so it’s perfect for me.
Thanks for mentioning Jitterbug, CJ. This sounds like a great solution for clients who need cell phones. 😆
I love the wax plants,the scent of the flowers is truly
intoxicating. They are,however,very hard to find around
here,but I keep looking. Here they are a houseplant,but
then most plants are!
Hawthorne! It’s a hawthorne my mom got from the Arbor Day tree folks, plus a redbud which is still doing well some 10(?) years later. The hawthorne is big and pokey and pricky and not a good tree to walk close to.
As for cell phones, I’m still a luddite. Aside from the expense (when we are already paying for a landline and my phone at work is fine), my main complaint is that the sound quality is CRAP — static, cutting in and out and simply not loud enough or clear enough! Cell phones feel like a giant step backwards in clarity of communication.
There, that’s my rant: relatively concise because I have practiced it a lot.
But yes, I agree that they are invaluable for emergencies and that brief “toot” to say “here I am, where are you?” And, pay phones are getting few and far between and now cost 50 cents a local call!!! (Oops, another rant coming on). Still, that 50 cents every week or so to whine, “it’s raining. Can you come and pick me up at the subway?” is way cheaper than a cell… if you have the quarters on hand.
You know, reading other people’s posts makes me glad to live where I do. The trees have finally decided it’s fall out here, and the ones that turn colors are in full blaze. I am too impatient to do the arbor trees… I go with 36-inch box trees. Pricey (egads… the labor to plant them is $300!), but it gets me 10-15 foot trees to start with, and I am willing to live with that. A bit of advice I was given… you don’t really want to go bigger than 36-inch box trees. Those are actually planted in the boxes, and raised there. The bigger box trees are grown in dirt, and then dug up and boxed, so you are dealing with double transplant shock when you put them into your yard. (Btw, a boxed tree is one of those that comes in a box, where the dimension is the size of the crate around the root ball.)
My mom lives out in the country, and has done the arbor trees. I’m not entirely sure why… she has three acres, mostly wooded, and seems to spend a lot of her time figuring out which of the trees need to come down and be replaced by other trees. But there are a lot of scraggly older trees in her woods, which are dangerous if they decide to come down in a storm, and she is trying to keep the landscape as “managed wilderness”, so she is willing to go with the cheap trees and see what survives.
And to the person with troubles growing crepe myrtle, I’d say that the biggest problems are either that it gets too cold, or it is being kept too damp. I just put one in my front yard, and once it gets established it is going to get to survive on minimal water, since the entire plan was to go with a low-water landscape.
Re crepe myrtle: where it thrives (and where redbuds do) is in Oklahoma red clay, closely resembling a brick in summer (no kidding, you only have to bake it and you have a pot.) Acme Bricks is a major industry in Oklahoma City, digging their clay locally, I assure you. The soil closely resembles greased bread dough come spring rains—you literally cannot walk on it: it squishes, deforms under you, slips like ice, and you’ll fall after 3 steps if you’re trying to traverse a clay bog. Get a car into it and just forget it and call a wrecker, who will not be happy to go out after you, either. This is the preferred environment of the crepe myrtle and also the redbud (state tree), in temperatures ranging from 110 in the summer to -10 in the winter, at a soil ph of 11. Ours seems quite happy, however in a medium-dry sunny side of the garden with a lot of mulch, at a soil ph of about 6.5. This is why I now think of it as indestructible. Both crepe myrtle and redbud are surviving up here in Washington. I didn’t think they could.
Not unlike the soil in west Texas, which also comes with a layer of caliche underneath the topsoil.
There’s a variety of redbud, C. canadensis texensis ‘Oklahoma’ (there’s a name for you!), which tolerates high summer heat just fine – it was happy in Southern California summers – although I don’t know how it does in colder winters.
Oh yes,red clay! It’s found here in Montana,in all of it’s
greasyness! Leaving my property at 6,6002ft. and sliding
down 3,000ft in wet,red clay in the springtime was always
a trip to dread. I still don’t know how my truck went side
ways through a smallish cattle guard. My grandmother in
Tennessee grew crepe myrtles everywhere,wet or dry soil.
I’m on black clay here in Tulsa. Very similar properties to the red found southwest of us in OKC. Crepe myrtles and redbuds do wonderfully well; the temperatures are about the same as over in the City plus/minus a couple of degrees either way. We may be a little colder but when you factor in the wind there’s no difference to speak of.
Iowa isn’t exactly a trendy place to live, but we do have really good dirt! When we moved back from southern California years ago, it was quite a shock to see things growing everywhere, even when no one had planted them or taken care of them. When my late mother-in-law (born and raised in New Jersey) first came to visit Iowa, she asked why we had burned the fields. Rich black soil was a new experience for her.
Rich black soil? I wish! NOT down here in the Okies.
😆 when I was a senior in HS, I used to ride with a friend who had access to a lot of horses; and upon a time, I was on an energetic but fairly small horse near a dam holding up a stock pond. Well, my friend was on a behemoth with the instincts of a polo pony. She kited past as we were riding the earthen dam crest, and her mega-horse swerved and boomfed mine right off the dam. We hit the wet clay on the downslope toward the water—and my poor horse locked all four legs and we slid sideways as I leaned, trying to counterbalance inboard so as not to cause her to fall. We went down about 15-20 feet of clay skidding sideways, leaving great gouges in the muck, before we stopped, just short of the water.
My friend, losing control of mega-horse, was out of sight. Myself, on mini-horse, studied how to get up that bank, and there was nothing for it: I could lame the horse trying to ride her up. I got up, over my ankles in muck, and took the reins and started up the diagonal, slogging along, pulling the horse where she had trouble, and generally cursing all the way—you could find us by the blue glow.
The horse was not hurt, but when I got back on the tack was a mess.
LOL! THAT’S a new story to me. Good one!
WOW! 😉
You wonder what experience lies behind Shoka and Taizu and the rice paddies…
Shoka and Taizu? Rice paddies?
That would be in _The Paladin_ (or it may just be Paladin… I’d have to go check to be sure which it was). It’s in an odd genre… not science fiction or fantasy, but sort of “historical in a land that never was”. Think _Prisoner of Zenda_, but in a pseudo-Asia instead of pseudo-Europe. It’s a very good story, whatever the genre is, and I really love the cover of the edition I have.