Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Green spring cleaning is a pain

Green spring cleaning developed into a bit of a pain this weekend. Who knew I had that many planters?

A fast post, in light of our thunderstorm.

I was doing well on my goal of green spring-cleaning, of not throwing out anything that could be recycled, reused by someone else or repurposed by me. I’ve only had to throw out a few things — clothes that were unusable as dust rags, some cracked plates, a couple of broken shoes.

Then I reached the balcony and decided to work on the garden supplies.

When, exactly, did I acquire all those pots?

I have giant pots, pots in which small trees could grow. And tiny pots, that can only hold a miniaturized plant.

Pots of plastic and of stone, of terra cotta and what appears to be paper-mache covered — something.

I don’t recall buying most of them. And honestly? I haven’t used most of them in years, if ever.

The larger pots were easy to repurpose — my family members all own homes, and need larger pots for their patios. The tiny ones I gave to friends for their children, who are planting, say, one little lettuce seed to watch it grow.

But the exotic pots, the weirdly-shaped pots, the frankly impractical pots — where was I going to get rid of them absent a landfill? This morning, I wandered outside to go walking, and watched a neighbor put his old office chair on the curb next to the dumpster.

A few minutes later, a couple from another building walked out. Looked at the chair. Came over, picked it up, took it home.

I ran back into my building, gathered up my pots and placed them at the dumpster. As of this evening, there’s one lone, pink, medium-sized plastic pot left.

And on we go.

More and longer posts tomorrow, the power’s flickering and I’m hopping off to avoid killing my computer!

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Let’s Try This Again

Well.  Let’s try this again.

I’ve made some adjustments the last few weeks, to give me more free time to accomplish the things on my list — including blogging.

So we’ll try this 111 days of posting again.  Starting today and going another 110 days out, we end at the day before my birthday.  I’ll be concentrating primarily on my career and fitness goals, with some remaining green spring cleaning and general reorganization of life added into the mix.

On with the fun.

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My kitchen probably hates me now

Either my kitchen has decided to kill me, or I’ve acquired gremlins.  Those are the only things I can come up with to explain the odd occurrences this evening.

Green spring-cleaning. I set myself the task to go through every drawer, cabinet, closet and cranny in my home, and once and for all decide whether to keep, or set free, the contents.  The goal is to be green — to recycle, reuse, sell or give to a good home as much of my unwanted stuff as possible, so that I don’t transfer the clutter from my home to a landfill.  And along the way, to get a good look at the basics of my home, and repair or replace anything that is worn-out.

I don’t think the kitchen wants to cooperate.

My kitchen is quite small (the only real drawback in this apartment), only about 8 feet long, and sorely lacking in counterspace.  The basic cleaning only took parts of two evenings.  I pulled every plate, bowl and pot out of the cabinets, and stacked them on the dining room table.  Most of my serving and cooking prep pieces are new, and so obviously I’ll be keeping them — although having put everything in one place, I was somewhat surprised at the sheer volume of red cookware and serving pieces I have.  It’s possible I have become obsessed with the color red when it comes to the kitchen.

The dispute between the kitchen and I arose when I began applying a good polish to the wood cabinets. Now, much of my apartment has been renovated over the years — the management is really great about the upkeep on this complex. But with the exception of redoing the linoleum when it began to lift up, and replacing the refrigerator and dishwasher after a power failure, the kitchen’s remained relatively untouched during my tenancy.

Translation — the cabinets date back to the year the apartment building was built.

In, I believe, the 1960’s.

And they’re showing their age.

As I polished, I noticed that the molding strips are detaching from the cabinet edges. That the wood is chipped along the bracers. That the cabinets themselves are, well, dingy inside. You don’t really see these things unless you’re looking closely, but now that I’ve seen them, I can’t help seeing them every time I look at the cabinets. Oh, the polish helped — I absolutely love how Method’s almond oil sinks into the wood and gives it a glow — but even with the polish, the cabinets appear, frankly, dull.

I may have said that out loud while talking to someone on the phone. I may even have mentioned that I was going to talk to the management, see if there’s some way to do an upgrade or repair to the cabinets. And it’s obvious that the kitchen resents my remarks. It hasn’t exactly been shy about letting me see that resentment.

After washing all the dishes, I began refilling the cabinets. Twice, as I was placing items back onto the shelves, the doors that ordinarily hang open without moving swung into my head so hard I saw stars. I don’t recall nudging them so that they would move.

Then the appliances got into the act. I went to heat water for tea, and the burner underneath the kettle, which was set on low, abruptly turned cherry red and nearly burnt the bottom out of the kettle.

The microwave refused to shut off as I was defrosting some soup for dinner.

The refrigerator froze the milk, lettuce and eggs.

Either my kitchen is determined not to have a cabinet facelift, or else I have gremlins. I don’t know which is preferable — that there are little malicious creatures sharing my home with me, or that my appliances have achieved sentience.

Or possibly I’ve gotten a mild concussion from being whacked on the head once too many times tonight.

On the plus side, I believe that most of the items I’ve taken out of the kitchen will find a new home, and not end up in the landfill. I found quite a collection of cookie cutters and cake decorating equipment — which I haven’t used since my friends’ children got out of grade school.  I also discovered that I have enough wine glasses and decanters to host a small reception for 50 people, three different teapot and sugar/creamer sets, and more matched candlesticks than any sane person needs.  I’ll list them on Craigslist this weekend, or offer them to friends and/or co-workers who might need things like that.

I did toss out one pot, which had a very loose handle, but otherwise my green resolution is going strong.

There are a couple of minor repairs needed in the kitchen — small things like replacing light bulbs, cleaning the grease trap on the stove hood and declogging the garbage disposal.  I also decided that it was time to replace the rug — a red one will definitely brighten up the kitchen. (I know — I’m obsessing on that red color again.)  I’ll be taking care of those tasks this weekend — if the kitchen lets me live long enough.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go take two more aspirin, which fortunately are not kept in the kitchen.

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Rosemary and tomatoes and eggplant, oh my

My version of spring fever has now officially arrived — along with an onslaught of gardening catalogs, seed packets and some very lovely plants on websites.

It’s time to plan out my garden.

Yes, I do live in an apartment.

Doesn’t matter, because I can still have a garden — thanks to a medium-sunny, 50-odd-square-foot balcony.

My home is what realtors called an ‘old-fashioned garden’ apartment.  It was built some decades ago, and is literally set in a mini-park.  The curving main street and parking lot cul-de-sacs are lined with giant oaks and smaller dogwoods and pines, there are several large lawns and, bonus feature for me, my apartment looks out over the main lawn with its wandering stream, little bridge and lovely willows.

before the storm

But the main feature, for me at least, is the balcony.  Squint at the buildings above, and you’ll see that each apartment has a balcony or patio that runs roughly half the length of the apartment.  And they’re not narrow, the balconies measure 5-feet or so from the sliding glass door to the railing and another 8-10 feet in clear-length (the remaining 4 feet or so is a utility closet housing the heating and a/c units).

Which gives me more than adequate space for a mini kitchen garden, providing me with a spot to tinker with plants, de-stress while I water and prune and harvest, sit in the summer evenings and enjoy the fragrance of my favorite flowers while I read a book and sip some great coffee.

The plants can vary from year to year, as you’ll read below, and so do the surprises.  For several years, a pair of sparrows laid their eggs in one of my hanging baskets, then proceeded to raise their family around the minor inconvenience of a human who walked around the nest.  I nearly fell over the railing in shock when one of the fledglings landed on the table next to my coffee cup on his/her first flight attempt.  The sparrows no longer use my hanging baskets — they’ve bought up into a veritable family colony in the decorative brickwork of our building’s outer walls.  Instead, last year I got squirrels that ate all the tomato plants.  Really.  They ate the plants down to the dirt.

So, what else do I grow in my sort-of kitchen garden?

I always have at least one red (sometimes yellow), currant tomato.  Not only are these plants prolific — there are always at least 30-40 little dime-sized fruits ripening on the vine — but they’re quite attractive with their silvery-light-green lacy leaves and branches.  At their base, and in a separate wide bowl set far back in the shade, I sprinkle a variety of lettuces and greens — miniaturized balls of butter and romaine, oakleaf, radicchio (Castelfranco has such beautiful leaves!), mustard, sorrel, purslane and spinach.  I mix in some French breakfast radishes — if I time it correctly, I essentially get a new crop every thirty days.  And I’ll pot a couple of eggplants together with more lettuce — I’m particularly fond of the Hansel and Gretel minis, which reliably yield a bevy of one-serving sized eggplants.   (For reasons I will never understand, I seem to be the only person I know who likes eggplant.)

And then, I experiment.

One year I grew runner beans — which literally ran all over the railing and blocked the sun from the rest of the plants.  I’ve tried peas, which pulled the same stunt as the runner beans and then had the nerve to attract every squirrel in the complex, who ate the pea pods before they fattened up.  I’ve grown broccoli (not a rousing success), artichokes (which yielded a grand total of three artichokes), cabbages (take up way too much room!), and cauliflower (also a favorite of the squirrels).

I’ve had more success with ‘baby’ versions of root vegetables — if I’m patient, carrots, beets and turnips planted in with the other plants will yield a small crop of tasty snacks by mid-September.  And the fun of having your own fresh peppers cannot be overstated — there are now ‘mini’ versions of red and yellow and chocolate bell peppers.  I did learn, though, that one or two jalapeno or cayenne peppers is more than enough — those plants are the over-achievers of the garden world.  I couldn’t give away the jalapenos one year, people were so sick of them!

Naturally, though, the vegies I like the most are the ones that I can’t seem to consistently grow — cucumbers, zucchini and squash.  It doesn’t matter whether I scrub out the old pots, buy new ones and/or use completely fresh, non-peat-moss-based potting soil.  Within 2-3 weeks of planting them, I’ll have that flaky white dusty leaf-rot infecting the plants.  I may just skip them this year — the farmers’ markets are always filled with a variety of different types of these vegies.

I also grow herbs in hanging baskets, some of which I over-winter and then set back out the following year.  My standards run to the culinary plants — parsley, sage, rosemary, oregano, chives, dill, and so much basil and thyme.  More accurately, I’ll usually have Italian large-leaf parsley; green and purple sages; Greek oregano; garlic and plain chives; prostrate and Salem rosemary; fernleaf dill; and as I said, so much basil and thyme.  Italian and Neapolitano, purple and lemon basil; French, English, lemon, nutmeg and silver thyme.

Thyme, to me, is the perfect seasoning — I use it in everything.

To that lot, I add a few single plants — winter savory is one of my favorites, when I can get it, as it has a stronger flavor than its summer counterpart.  A lemon verbena mini-bush and a few scattered pots with chocolate and black peppermint and apple spearmint provide flavoring for summer tea.  And then, I sometimes add the odd herb, depending upon what I find at the annual Herb Sale at Yellow Springs.

The kitchen garden is not complete without flowers, and so my window boxes will feature a mix of alyssum, purple petunias, and bright red ivy leaf geraniums.   The spicy scent of alyssum and the petunias are wonderful in the summer night air, and the scent and bright colors also serve to draw bees in to pollinate the plants.  A few nasturtiums scattered among the vegetables and herbs, and the garden is complete.

Last weekend, I impatiently went through my seeds, and before writing this entry, I’d gone online and placed my order at a lovely website that provides what I call ‘apartment-sized’ packets of seeds (small amounts, 50 seeds or so, as opposed to the 200-seed packets that you see elsewhere).  I also placed my order for tomatoes and peppers and eggplants at the nursery near New Hope, which lets you reserve your plants online, then pick them up later.  I have lots more work to do, but my soul (and impatient mind!) have been soothed by the idea that at least now, I’ve started on the garden.

I just have to wait for that pesky frost date to pass before I can really get out there and plant!

 

 

 

 

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I forgot about tax season . . .

When I restarted at WordPress, I had the best intentions in the world to post over 111 days.

I forgot about tax season.

I’m a tax lawyer.  How could I forget about tax season?

Ah well, picking up the threads now.  I’ve actually been writing posts — just haven’t been able to get here to post them.

So there will be a steady stream of posts the next few weeks while I catch up.

Thanks for your patience!

 

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We waste water

We waste water here in the United States . . . and no, I’m not talking about swimming pools.

I recently read several books about the water wars of the past 200 years in the United States.  I knew about the California wars, courtesy in part of the movie ‘Chinatown’, but who knew there were wars over water along the Great Lakes and in the Dakotas, high up in the mountains and quite literally throughout the entire country?  Once I’d read those books, I started thinking about all the ways I use water.

Our country has been experiencing a rather widespread bout of drought for at least the last two years.  The south, southwest, midwest and western mountains, even areas on the Pacific Coast, were bone-dry last summer.  Farmers’ crops withered in the fields.  Cattlemen were forced to sell their herds because they could no longer afford to buy feed or ran out of water to keep them alive.  One town even had to literally truck in water, because their sources completely dried up.

And that was just in the United States.  Over the last several years, I remember hearing stories about widespread droughts in Europe, Africa, Asia.  Polluted drinking water sickening entire villages.  The desserts expanding ever-rapidly, driving people from their homes into makeshift refugee camps.

People everywhere without adequate water to drink.

I have a bad habit of letting the water run while I brush my teeth.

Seriously, I never thought about it.  Flip on the faucet, wet the toothbrush, add toothpaste and brush, then rinse out your mouth and rinse off the toothbrush.  How much water could I possible be using?

A lot. Well over three gallons.

I stuck a basin into the sink and did my usual brushing Sunday night.

The basin overflowed.  It normally holds three gallons — and it overflowed before I had even finished brushing my teeth.

To put this in perspective, I’m told my dishwasher only uses five-six gallons of water on a normal wash cycle.  That’s six gallons to wash twice as many dishes as I have teeth, plus pots and a large amount of utensils.  And I usually run the dishwasher every three days or so — which means I am wasting three times more water brushing my teeth than I need to run the dishwasher once.

Those wasted gallons of water could have allowed a rancher to hold onto a cow.  Ensured the farmer could provide me with cobs of corn for a July 4th barbecue.  Let someone take a shower instead of a sponge bath.

Kept someone alive for a few more days in another country.

And then I started noticing other ways I’m not water-conscious.  I let the water run while I’m conditioning my hair and shaving my legs in the shower.  I fill up a pot with water to cook — and put the pot on the stove before I turn off the sink’s faucet.  I drink half a glass of cold water and when it gets warm – I dump it out, then get a new glass of cold water.

There are more, but listing my sins isn’t really the point.  The point is — all those little, unneeded, overuses of water add up, very quickly.  I estimated that I waste probably twenty-thirty gallons or more just between the shower and brushing my teeth.  It doesn’t sound like a lot of water, until you realize what you could do with it besides letting it run into the sewers.

Water crops.  Keep people and animals alive.

Put a little less strain on critical supplies at a time when water is an ever-more-scarce resource.

I’m not talking about banning pools, or saying never wash your car or water your lawn.  I’m talking about the little ways we just use water without purpose.  If we all just thought, turned off the faucet once or twice instead of letting the water run, how much water could we save?  There’s 300 million people in this country — how many of us are letting gallons of water run down the drain, unused?

Eventually, hopefully, our drought here in the United States will end.  But the fact remains, water is a finite source.  We can survive with different food sources — substitute chicken when beef is unavailable, enjoy brussel spouts when asparagus prices go up.

We can’t live without water.

And we’re wasting it.

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The groundhogs are frisky . . .

Spring is definitely on the way — the groundhogs are frisky.

My company is located in a small office park on the site of a former farm.  Each building is surrounded by wooded areas with a stream running between and behind the offices.  Just around our building, we’ve found hazelnut, sassafras, crabapple, chokecherry, oak, hickory, elm and thorn trees, as well as honeysuckle, wild rose and various berry bushes.  The thickets and stream make an ideal mini-habitat for wildlife, and despite the surrounding highways, we enjoy watching the deer, foxes and rabbits, plus the occasional skunk, wander by the windows.  At last check, our bird count was over 60 varieties, including red-tail and Cooper’s hawks and a sharpshin hawk we think is nesting somewhere near the stream.

The only wildlife we could do without are the non-migrating Canadian geese.  They literally run across the roofs of the buildings — the noise is horrendous, and we won’t discuss the mess they leave all over the lawns.  On the other hand, the foxes love them.  Despite the size difference, I’ve twice seen a red fox hauling a goose across the lawn, taking it home for dinner.

However, our personal favorites are the groundhogs — each building has a least one groundhog as a tenant.

Our building has had two for the last three years — Freddie on the front lawn, Phoebe in the woods to the side of the building.  Each year, as summer blends into autumn, we watch the ‘hogs getting fatter, and fatter — and slower and slower.  By October, they’re keeping close to their dens, ready to run and hide at the first sign of danger.  (And danger there is from the hawks overhead to the foxes roaming the lawns.)

But in spring — ah, spring brings groundhog love.  They’re svelte, active, happy groundhogs looking to start a family.  We can always tell when it’s spring — first we sight the groundhogs out of their dens, each grazing their ways through the clover on their respective lawns.

Then, we’ll see Freddie amble over to join Phoebe on the side lawn.

A month or so later, Freddie will move back to his prime real estate on the massive front lawn, with its deluxe, multi-entrance burrow against the warm wall of our building.

And Phoebe will show up being trailed by a couple of miniaturized groundhog babies.

This is how I can tell spring is definitely here.  Friday I spotted Freddie and Phoebe on their individual grazing grounds.

Sunday Freddie was dining with Ms. Phoebe.

Romance is in the air — and so is spring.

(originally to be posted on Saturday, but work interfered)

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A Perfect Match

Godzilla + Marvel comics = Perfection. Two of my favorite things in one place. How did I miss this one?

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Yes, you are seeing Godzilla fighting a rat.

No, the rat isn’t a giant prehistoric rat mutated by radiation.

Godzilla has been shrumk.

By Marvel comics’ Pym particles.

Perfect!

I adore Godzilla — I once passed an entire winter weekend, snowed in, watching every film in order. And as you probably already know, I love Marvel comics as well. But somehow, I managed to miss the fact that Marvel had published 24 issues of Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Until, that is, the wonderful people at Showcase Comics, knowing my love for the Great Giant Lizard of Doom, mentioned that there was this comic with Godzilla fighting a rat. A teeny, tiny Godzilla. I bought it — and wow.  There’s S.H.I.E.L.D.! And Dum-Dum Dugan! And a helicarrier of sorts dedicated to hunting down monsters!

And of course, there’s Godzilla, who’s suffered the indignity of being shrunk, although it’s so he can be safely relocated elsewhere. But that goes awry (of course it does, it’s a comic, when does any operation like this one go smoothly in the comics!?!).  He gets dumped into the river and ends up washed into the sewers of New York City. Once there, he has to face down the foulest monster the city has bred — a rat. Poor ‘Zilla. And poor rat, suffering the delusion that it could defeat Godzilla.

I absolutely have to find the rest of this series. Wikipedia tells me that the series was gathered into a trade paperback, and if I can’t find the individual issues, I’ll have to settle for that book. Still, it’s Godzilla. And Marvel. Together.

Let’s hear it for crossovers!

 

(and again, meant for Sunday, March 10th, but work!)

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Alas, Marvel

Oh Marvel, why did you have to screw up my digital comics addiction?

I love comics.  Oh, I love books, and movies, and TV shows as well.  But comics are different.

The books I like run the gamut from entertaining and funny to self-improving and thought-provoking.  My favorite movies and TV shows are tear-jerking, soul-rending, heart-stopping and sometimes outright terrifying.  But comics?  Comics combine all those emotions with laughter and comfort.  Comics take me back to simpler times, when I could count on my heroes to to solve every problem while quipping one-liners.

I race to comics when I’ve had a particularly nasty day, because where else can I get a quick emotional boost and a thorough distraction in less than 40 pages?  And above all comics, I worship Marvel.  Truly.  But this latest redesign of their website — forget it.  I’ve seen new Microsoft products with fewer bugs and less customer irritation.

Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited was a wonderful feature that fit perfectly into my ‘digitize’ mantra.  Thousands of back issues, neatly formatted for a convenient reader.  I could track what I’d read, mark comics to read in the future, toggle easily from one comic into the next in the series.  If I was eager to read more about Hawkeye I would just search the character.  And if I wanted to revisit the Secret Invasion, I could just search for the series.

I have a subscription to MDCU.  Had.  Have — at least until I call the bank tomorrow and ask about reversing the charge.  You see, Marvel ‘improved’ MDCU, transforming it into the new “Marvel Unlimited.”

Improved it as in removed the features that made it enjoyable and transformed it into something so impossible to use that I’m essentially paying for something with little resemblance to what I thought I was buying.

Rather like paying for a new pair of Manolos and getting the left shoe from a used pair of low-budget sneakers.

I can’t even begin to list the problems I’ve found in trying to use it — that is, when the website isn’t jamming and freezing to the extent I nearly have to physically shut down my computer to get out of it!  No way to record what I’ve read or what I want to read.  No easy way to toggle into the next comic in the series.  The few comics I tried to pull up took so long to load that I gave up and backed out.  When something did load, the new reader did such a poor job of aligning it that I couldn’t read half the print and again backed out.

Useless.  And my resolution for 2013 is to eliminate useless things.

I won’t stop reading comics — but it looks like I’ll be sticking to the print ones now.  And since I’ll be print-only, well, I’ll probably buy fewer Marvel and expand out into other comics.  Been awhile since I read Batman, there’s the new Arrow — time to check out DC and the indies, I think.

Great sigh of sorrow, here.  I really, really wanted their redesign to work.  I loved MDCU.  It was my go-to place.  I had big plans for reading my way through whole series I’d missed.

Guess Netflix will be getting a workout, now.