stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

FlowerBug,

I used to say that my soil amendments for the year came to an end when I bury Jack o'Lantern from Halloween. That doesn't always work because of frozen ground. (Sometimes, his service is held at the covered compost pit.)

One Spring, I dug up the ground where Jack had gone ... the pumpkin was absolutely full (or nearly ) of earthworms!

Steve

after finding out how much worms go after melon rinds i have always made sure to not throw those away. squash skins are a bit more heavier and have a lot more nutrition in them, but for me last month the issue was that i had so many that i had to compact them somewhat to get them all in the buckets and buried under some of the dirt. normally i don't have quite so much material to work with (plus i'd done another batch a few weeks before). those worms were busy and getting pretty fat.

i should also say that i'm pretty sure that they can hear each other in the ground so that when eating if one finds something good they'll attract others.

 

[flowerbug]

my main glasses are fixed and back in action. it took me a few weeks to get them properly layered with nail polish and then top coated with clear epoxy. the mistake that annoys me the most is that i thought i was buying chrome nail polish but it was actually clear. grr! but what do i know about nail polish anyways?

on to getting the spare glasses cleaned and coated now too so they're ready for the next time i need them. the first coat of black nail polish is drying on those.

it's been fun to me to see how i could do this without spending a huge amount of $. i spent almost twice as much for a bad solder job (with no warranty ) for one pair of glasses and so i ended up doing my own solder job which i hope will hold a lot better. it looks a lot more solid now than what it was before.

the main thing is to get them coated with something to protect the metal from getting pitted and the plastic ear thingys were splitting so i filled them in with a bunch of layers of nail polish and then put the clear epoxy over them to protect all of those layers. i'd already done the nail polish layers once and they held up for three weeks before starting to degrade so the plan-B epoxy coating had to be called out.

 

[flowerbug]

note, yes BPA is a part of epoxy and will slightly leach out, but not a huge amount and since i'm older and already full of BPA anyways it's like it doesn't matter. given a different world (one with no plastics) i'd have done something different... perhaps my next trial will be to see if i can carve wooden glass ear thingies...

 

[digitS']

I wonder about super glue as a coating. Looking at Wikipedia, I see no reference to BPA. Safety concerns have to do with fumes.

It's used in woodworking.

LINK

Steve
who gets himself in trouble about half the time when dealing with super glue

 

[flowerbug]

I wonder about super glue as a coating. Looking at Wikipedia, I see no reference to BPA. Safety concerns have to do with fumes.

It's used in woodworking.

LINK

Steve
who gets himself in trouble about half the time when dealing with super glue

it's really dangerous to go to youtube and start watching fixit stuff because then i may not actually get anything fixed at all.

as it turns out i've started in on the 2nd pair of glasses and found out that i really should have waited a few more days before coating the first pair as there are now a few wrinkles showing up. i'm hoping the first pair will hold up long enough that i can get back to them and coat them again to smooth them back out. i'm not really worried about the chemicals. i would not want to use superglue. it's too brittle and would crack easy even if it could do a smooth coating. i want something with a bit of flex to it.

and for sure, i've had some fun with the superglue, but since using the gel versions life is much easier. the countertop in the bathroom Mom had to redo with varnish because she got something stuck to it by accident. yes, go with the gel version if you have trouble with the others.

 

[flowerbug]

this is long overdue:

UN agrees to create world's first-ever plastics pollution treaty in a blow to big oil | CNN

The United Nations approved a landmark agreement to create the world's first-ever global plastic pollution treaty on Wednesday, describing it as the most significant environmental deal since the 2015 Paris climate accord.

www.cnn.com

 

[flowerbug]

local gardening group at the library is going to happen. yes, i volunteered to run it. once a month. 3rd Wednesday 2pm - 4:30pm.

 

[flowerbug]

yesterday i was able to get the worm buckets fed and checked for moisture level and also this helped me out that i had a case of old jams and sauces that were never eaten up just stuck under my futon for the past, um, five years or so at least. you would think that these would not be good, but the sauces still smelled great and i really should eat them and while the old grape jam in the smaller jars seemed to not have any grape flavor i tried some from a larger jar and it was still good so i'm going to eat the last half of that jar up.

this means i got rid of a case of small jars that was collecting dust and turned most of the contents into worm food. sad though that i wasted so much labor and ingredients. won't do that again! lesson learned. worms will really like the garlic sauce. it's very potent and full of all sorts of fruits and spices. the small jars will eventually be given away. we don't really use them here any more and i don't care if i keep them or not, but i also see no reason to throw them out - they come in handy when we need to give someone some salad dressing or sauce.

 

[flowerbug]

made up my bulletin board sheet so that can go off tomorrow and show up in a few places. nothing too fancy, but we'll see.

had to be sure to talk to Mom about putting a phone number out there like that, but she was ok with it since she said i dealt with the phone most of the time anyways (she actually uses it a lot more than i do but that may change...). i was ok with just leaving it as an e-mail contact for me and then she'd not have to deal with it much at all. so, ... let 'er rip...

this will really force me to get the bean page finished or at least more figured out. i've been stalling on it because i think it's just too much in one place and too long and not really well organized. i probably need to break it into more than one page (growing and history/records keeping). i've not tried any nesting pages before with my website generator so i have no idea if i can do this one way or another, but at least this will give me something to do this afternoon to see if it will work or not - then i can go from there.

 

[flowerbug]

figured out that a nested sub project page wasn't going to work so i just made another project and called in beans history. beans history for my own growing the past 10-12 years not the general history of all beans. that topic is already covered out on the internet or in books...

that means the original bean project page of a few months ago is back to mostly looking like it used to. i do still need to work on it, i don't think it's the best it could be (recruiting for more beans?), not sure i'll get much more done though i still need to think about it.

the beans history project page still needs a lot more work, that's why i had to do something with it to put it off more to the side. i also put notes in each of them referring back and forth to each other but recommending the bean project page to most readers since they're not likely to have too much interest in nitpicky lists of what i grew each year or my various codes or whatever else i manage to put in there. i'm sure i'll eventually figure something else i like better.

as it is i'm contemplating some other rework on the whole site because i don't like a few things about it and it might be a good learning experience for me to figure out some other things i've not had to deal with before. not sure i can do it in a few weeks though. we'll see how much i get into it or not. i'm distractable a bit too much lately.