MickinMD

After lots of recent rain and hard rain today (Friday), we're supposed to get several days of dry, nice weather. I bought a "5 lb. pick" to dig soil and am going to dig-up a planned new garden patch for cucumbers, eggplant, and carrots.: a 12"-18" deep, 11.5' x 3.5' plot of very-hard clay ground that probably hasn't been disturbed since the before the house was built in 1948. Last year I bought a very strong "Sun Joe TJ603E 16-Inch 12-Amp Electric Tiller and Cultivator , Green" that's as good at grinding up rock-hard clay as my BiL's gas-powered tiller that's a pain to get started. The YouTube videos show it tearing up grass and going a foot down into soil but it will be easier on the tines if my near-brick clay is busted into 6" to 12" chunks first. There's a new, 13.5 amp version of this Sun Joe tiller for $30 more, but my 12 amp is plenty powerful and I highly recommend it. I got it for $109 last year and it's $140 nove at Amazon. It just needs occasional blade lubrication, WD-40 or motor oil, and make sure the electrical extension is draped over your shoulder and behind you so you don't run over it. So I dig the soil, till it, and let it rest until May, when I'll add 3 80 qt. bags of Miracle Gro Garden Soil with Compost, mix it with the tiller into the top 8", add a little 8-8-8 fertilizer and rake it into the top couple of inches, then plant my seedling and carrot seeds.

I often ordered veggie seeds from the company "HouseSeeds" through Etsy.com and the prices were low, I got a 20% frequent customer discount, the seeds arrived quickly and germinated well for the past 3 years I've been doing ordering from it. So, I ordered seeds on March 12th and got a strange long-delivery date of "by March 29th." I thought that my close-to-planting-seeds date meant the company was in a rush and orders were backed-up. But that date passed and I kept finding a USPS tracking notice that the seeds were currently in TX and apparently about to be shipped. But when I looked on Etsy, I saw a notice: "Since HouseSeeds has stopped selling on Etsy, there may be an issue with this order. Reach out to us for help." So I reached out and the next day got the message my purchase was refunded. I quickly ordered the seeds I needed from other small, cheap third-party companies on Etsy. But the tracking info for the HouseSeeds order is STILL up today, April 12th and says "Updated just now:"

In retirement, I get right to work. I check the pre-market stock prices and look at my spreadsheets to see if today I'm making an automatic investment, getting any dividends, or any earnings reports on my tocks are coming in. Then I scan Yahoo Finance, the Wall St. Journal, Barron's, and Marketwatch to see if my stocks or prospects have new news - which is what started me investigating and buying GE Aerospace last week - I'm up 5% with it in a down market! Then I make breakfast, eat it while watching the news, then check my greenhouse veggies growth. I then double-check my food, hobby, etc. plans, especially on Fridays so I can hit the supermarkets, Costco, Walmart, etc. while most people are at work. Then I check the weather and plan my day. THEN I goof off with Microsoft Solitaire, Candy Crush Soda Saga, Chess, etc. and sometimes don't get around to my daily plan!

I came into possession of a bunch of Beatles mp3's some years ago and listen to a bunch of them from time to time. They're between my Beach Boys and Bette Midler collections.

If you go to Finland, let us know if it's still the job of Lapland herd-family girls to bite the nuts off reindeer to castrate them. I might travel there if that's a side-trip. By the way, actress Anne Margaret's parents were Laplanders.

It only cost me $16.19 for 12 1z2x8 furring strips today to make 24 stakes for 12 tomato cages but it cost me $58.20 to buy 5 of these 7' tall galvanized fence posts to make an 11' long, 6' tall trellis for cucumbers and eggplant with 22' of doubled-up 3' high leftover wire fence. But the fence posts are worth it since the trellis is going 1' away from my house's siding and a window. I don't want to allow any chance the trellis will get blown down in high winds into the house. This fence post is 2 1/4" wide and 84" in total length and ... The bottom (upside down, left pic) is 18" long through the hammer plate, leaving 5 1/2 feet of above-ground post with clips to grab the fence wire, which I'll reinforce with twist ties or zip ties. I'm lucky to have a 24' length of 3'-high leftover wire fence, 2 more feet than needed. (lucky, I have a 24' length, 2 more than needed) has a 2" x 4" mesh like the 5'-high fence below I use for tomato cages. I'm going to cut some 6" x 8" openings in the fence so I can reach through it to grab veggies growing on the against-the-house side, but space them a little farther apart than for the cages so the cucumber and eggplant vines can climb more easily.

I did a quick search and couldn't find where the Mini-Me Cucumber originated: it may be another name given to the kind of cucumber it is: most usually called a Persian Baby "Beit Alpha" Cucumber, sometimes called a Lebanese or Israeli Cucumber. The cucumber originated in India at least 3000 years ago;. By 500 BCE, it had spread through the Middle East and to the Mediterranean and the ancient Greeks and Romans ate it. Mini-Me is parthenocarpic, producing only female flowers, and does not require pollination, making cultivation super easy and growable in greenhouses. However, if it is planted near other cucumbers, pollination will occur, and seeds will form, though baby cucumbers are usually picked when they have few seeds - which stimulates the plant to produce more. I'm growing it next to an open pollinated (bees, insects) Lemon Cucumber variety which invites cross pollination which sometimes causes undesirable shapes and flavors. The 11' trellis will have Eggplants in the middle and the cukes at each end to minimize cross-pollination.

I wonder if the company that coined the name "Mini-Me Cucumber" paid the late Verne Troyer's estate for the rights to the name?

I say app as in application. Speaking of pronunciations, I've considered writing to TV series producers and commercial-making companies, offering to tell them how to pronounce words. It temporarily disturbs my "suspension of disbelief" when I watch a science show like Scorpion or Bones and they mispronounce sciences terms. Commercials are worse. For example, when the Garnier commercials first appeared on TV, they mispronounced it "gar-NEER" instead of GAR-nee-ay. That went on for at least a year. Many local companies in the Baltimore-Annapolis Area hire New York firms to make commercials, so the local pronunciations are lost. You'd think the locals would let the companies know! For example, our Riviera Beach community is locally pronounced "Rih-VEER-uh Beach" and Taneytown is pronounced "TAW-nee-town," but the commercials for businesses located there say "Rih-vee-ERR-uh" or "TAY-nee-town."

I love it when my sister's cat presents a dead bird to her, dropping it at her feet in the living room. When my sister and husband are away, I feed the 2 dogs and 2 cats. When there's a party at their house, the cats gravitate toward me, rub against my legs or leap into my lap. They seem to appreciate those who feed them.

Is the bolt bad or is there a gasket of some kind behind it that's worn and not sealing?

I haven't played one for a long time, focusing on piano, but I bought a nylon-string acoustical guitar and all the accessories a few months back, but haven't spent much time with it.

I vote this as the best answer!

On April 15 I'm going to plant seeds of Mini-Me Cucumbers and Lemon Cucumbers, and already have Black Beauty Eggplants growing. I'm also planting seeds of Rouge vif d'Estampes/Cinderella Pumpkins and Sumter Cucumbers for my sister. I have a 3.5' x 11'5 space where I'll use leftover 3' high galvanized wire fencing and furring strips to make three trellises 6' high amd 3' wide. plus a foot in between trellises for overflow growth. Two of each plant will be planted 18' apart in front of each trellis and carrots will go in front of them. If I have a lot more than I need, both cukes and eggplant can be pickled and canned. I wanted little cucumbers because they are the right size for me for a salad. I have the Mini-Me Seeds but decided to look for another small cucumber since I have room for three trellises and the Lemon Cucumber struck my fancy. It tastes like a cucumber - not citrusy, is yellow, roundish and grows to between lemon and baseball size. One customer on the seed-site where I bought the seeds claimed 30-40 cucumbers per plant. I'll be happy is it's half that, which is the typical yield for full-size cucumber plants. The Mini-Me Cucumbers are more like pickling-size cukes and supposedly taste great in salads. They are a hybrid, small variation of the popular, semi-small, Persian or Israeli "Beit Alpha" Cucumber, grown for thousands of years. Park Seed says "40 or more cukes per plant." Again, half will be ok The deep-purple, Black Beauty Eggplants only produce 4-6 per plant, but 2 plants is likely to be plenty for me this year. I grew them once about 50 years ago when I didn't know what I was doing and they did ok in the same hard-clay soil I'm using and improving now.

When I was a high school senior and made the decision in the Fall of 1967 to get an after-school job (20-30 hrs/wk beginning at min. wage, $1.25/hr)) to save up money because I had decided I was going to work my way through college, those decisions also meant saving up to buy a car since my parents didn't have one. Back then, old cars could be had for $300 - I got a '59 Chevy Impala: cars got "old" fast back then - with a 283 cu. in. V8 engine, they were virtually indestructible, and they were simple to get working - even for me with virtually no experience with cars. Thankfully, I had some high school friends who told me what to do or pointed me in the right direction. New points and plugs, new valve covers and gaskets, a 2-barrel carburetor rebuilding kit, and a replacement alternator salvaged from a junk yard's car were relatively inexpensive and it didn't take a lot of skill to install. I bought a spray can of engine-orange paint and had a motor that looked and worked like new. Today, there's more electrical and computer based stuff going on and, with the same lack of knowledge I had then, I wouldn't be confident I could deal with an older car and its problems.

When I commuted to UMBC in the late 60's and 70's, the commuter cafeteria was the typical grab-a-tray, pick from a few choices, and sit at a long, standard-type cafeteria bench. Now, the commuter cafeteria has stations for McD's, KFC, Subway, Pizza Hut and more. There are potted plants and several slightly raised levels and skylights. It has reached the point where the colleges are competing against each other for students so they try to present a country club atmosphere: tennis courts lighted at night, more-expensive, wood-veneer desks, etc. Consequently, the tuitions have soared and priced a lot of kids out of being able to go to four-year colleges. I was able to work my way through UMBC but, if I did it today, I figured I'd need $40,000 in loans.

In my neck of the woods, I have to avoid roads that are now bottlenecks at rush hour because of traffic detouring from the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge. Instead of traffic driving on I-695, the Baltimore Beltway, from the west side of the river to the east side on the Key Bridge, they now get off of I-695 at one of the roads leading to the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and one of them is Ritchie Hwy, which connects me to shopping areas. If I drive home from shopping after 2 pm, I have to creep along on a crowded road for a couple miles.

When I watch documentaries on TV now, the viewers are often misled when they say the featured researchers "discovered" things that I knew were known for decades or centuries. They intentionally want to pump up the featured people at the expense of the truth. In a recently created one this month, a "secret" cenote (cave going down into the ground filled with water) at the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza, was "discovered" and divers tried to see if the cave system went under the big pyramid there. I saw that cenote in 2017 when I toured Chichen Itza.

I love Cherry Coke. I load up when it's on sale. I'm not big on strong spices in drinks. There's a local beer produced with Old Bay seasoning in it that I have not tried because I drink beer while eating steamed crabs to get the Old Bay-type seasoning taste out of my mouth! Coke Spices has raspberry taste plus "a hint of spices." I buy the cases of Sugar Free Snapple at Costco that have 8 each of Lemon, Peach, and Raspberry teas. The Raspberry is my least favorite but it's not bad. So maybe I'll like Coke Spiced after I try it.

I think the most important thing is a very close family that always supports each other. A couple I knew since they were kids got divorced in their late 30's and it stunned me when the ex-wife, Gail, told me the thing she was going to miss most was how close all the members of her husband's family are to each other while her family isn't like that. The husband's mother was like a 2nd mother to me until she passed away in her 90's and was the glue for that family. Now her oldest daughter - we were in the same grade in school together - is. Ever since Gail said that to me, I've had extra appreciation for the closeness of my family - even including out-of-state cousins in VA, PA, and NJ.

I had the same feeling. I normally eat breakfast around 7:30 am and there are kids outside my house waiting for the school bus. Today, I woke up early and decided to have breakfast at 6:00 am and it was as black outside as midnight instead of the expected pre-dawn glow. I thought we had a third-in-a-row sunny day forecast but a quick Accuweather check says clouds and some rain through Friday. I guess the next good day for yard work is Saturday.

My mother wore high heels in the 50's but, as time went on the hells got lower and lower.

I was chainsawing branches in the yard to soon go in my BiL's chipper/shredder and checking progress of our 90%-max. eclipse with a pinhole poked in a piece of cardboard to make a camera that I projected on another piece of cardboard. I worked pretty well. At 90% max - I think it was actually a little less - it didn't get as dusky as the last time we had a 90%-max eclipse and no dogs were howling because something was wrong. Then, just at the max. for us, clouds got in the way for several minutes, thin enough that the dimmed, eclipsed sun could be glimpsed perfectly but not very brightly with the naked eye. So I tried to take a picture with my phone, hoping the sun was dim enough, but no luck. I took several pictures and tried several processing filters with Paint Shop Pro, but couldn't catch the moon in the picture, just this glare:

I've got a couple hours of yardwork to do at 70° under near-cloudless skies and the eclipse begins in 9 minutes, so out in the yard I go!

They have, or used to have, a Cherry Blossom Marathon where you have to apply for it and get chosen by random drawing. The year I got chosen was the year I ripped my Achilles Tendon!