The Decompression of a Boomer

Whitefish, Montana

September 25, 2015

Visiting Glacier National Park has been on our bucket list for years. Back in March we decided this was the year to do it. “We’ll go in September, when it’s less busy, the weekend after Labor Day.” I booked the condo, at the Lodge at Whitefish Lake, for four nights, starting Friday, September 11. Great. Booked the flights to Kalispell, MT, for our kids, six tickets total, from New York, Atlanta and Boulder, respectively. “Hey, what’s this extra security fee?” Great. They’re all flying across country on September 11. (Good one, mom.)

Turns out, the flights were fine. Adam and Meredith flew out of Newark (where Flight 93 originated 14 years ago), where they participated in a moment of silence to honor the victims and heroes of September 11, 2001. While the kids were air bound, we drove the 7-hour trek from Idaho Falls up to Whitefish – in two cars, David and Eric in David’s truck, with Megan and I following in my car eight car lengths behind. I didn’t want to lose them! I made David swear he would not speed past 85 on the freeway (I-15 North) or pass three cars at once (his specialty) on the long stretch of two-lane highways (Highway 141, 200 then 83) in Montana that lead north through the Flathead Indian Reservation to Flathead Lake and up to Glacier.

I didn’t take any photos of the scenery on the drive up, since, uh, I was driving. And we gunned it. Stopped for gas once and then, after about 5 hours of driving, pulled over at Seely Lake, MT, for lunch at the ‘Chicken Coup’. Yum! (Well, we filled our gullets anyway.) Our driving route to Whitefish took us right past the the Kalispell Airport, and sure enough, four of the six of our clan beat us there. We had no room for them in our cars anyway, so they waited for the last two of our group to arrive on their flight and then the six of them took the free airport shuttle to the Lodge twenty minutes away.

We all converged on the resort about the same time. Here is a view of the lake from our condo:

Whitefish Lake

and the Restaurant, Patio Bar, and pool at the Lodge, overlooking the lake …

Friday evening we grabbed dinner in Whitefish. Downtown was hopping and the restaurants were jammed. We were lucky (just winging it) to get a table for 10 at Loula’s Cafe, a couple of blocks off the main drag. The food was good, appetites were sated, and after dinner we returned to the condo and turned in early. (Most of us, anyway. That’s my version, and I’m sticking to it.) Hey! We (I) had a big agenda planned for Saturday. Going into Glacier National Park for sure, hiking ….

Concerning Saturday… We could book our group of ten on one of those Red Bus Tours that escort you to magnificent sites throughout the park while seasoned park veterans provide informational and historical narration!

What a fabulous way to see the park! Let’s do it!

The famous Red Busses serve as an “ideal way to see and learn more about Glacier National Park. In fact, the vintage 1930s buses are part of the human history and heritage of the park. As much of the park’s scenery is vertically oriented, the roll-back tops are perfect for providing full views of the stunning mountains, and the area’s signature Big Sky. The guides are seasoned park veterans, who are here because they love the park and enjoy sharing the park with visitors.” (to quote information in the link)

Book our group on a Red Bus tour? Of course we didn’t. Although a group of us did see one parked at McDonald Lodge.

Here’s two more photos offering you a foreshadowing of what was to come on Saturday….

A cat brandishing an UZZI

Huh?

and a sour, wrinkly Bulldog you’d better beware of:

So what’s this blog about, again? Weren’t you up there in Whitefish to visit Glacier National Park?

Yes, that’s the idea …

Tags: flying on 9/11 2015, Lodge at Whitefish Lake, Loula's Cafe in Whitefish, Red Busses in Glacier
Posted in Glacier National Park, travel | 2 Comments »

Redfish Lake

September 3, 2015

Every summer we try to stay a couple of nights at Redfish Lake in the Sawtooth Mountains near Stanley, Idaho. This year we rented a cabin for two nights (August 23-25) while David’s sister, Pauline, was visiting.

Redfish is about a 4-hour drive from Idaho Falls. We usually stop in Sun Valley for lunch on the way. Then we head up Highway 75 – the Sawtooth Scenic byway – to Galena Summit, at 8701 feet. We always pull over to take in the view of the Sawtooths. I captured this photo from the summit – mid-afternoon, August 23.

It is smoky today so you don’t see the far right end of the range where Redfish Lake is nestled at the base of Mount Heyburn. Check out this wiki-link to Galena Summit for a better photo and information…

We’ve checked into our cabin and wander up to the lodge – pose for photos – David and Megan in front of the lodge,

Redfish Lake Lodge

and Megan and I in front of the lake. Mount Heyburn is the craggy granite peak poking up on the far right.

Another view of the lake and Mount Heyburn:

Mount Heyburn

Eric, Pauline, and I hike up to the Bench Lakes. It’s about 8 miles round trip. (David stayed behind with Megan, who didn’t feel well.)

Here is the map at the trailhead that gives you that reassuring ‘you are here’ aerial view of the lake and hiking trials uh, trails.

“No death marches, Eric!”

The trail to the Bench Lakes runs along the left edge of the lake; jogs off, and climbs steeply up to the Lakes when you get about 2/3 the way to the end of the lake. Hard core hikers and climbers can pack in and hike for several days – to Alpine Lake, Cramer Lakes, Hell Roaring Lake – Eric and David both have tales to tell (i.e. death marches) … You can actually hike for fifty miles from various trails leading off from the lake (and take a boat across the lake to save some hiking).

I only took one photo on the four-mile trek up to the Bench Lakes:

Mount Heyburn

We’re at the Lower Bench Lake now. Pauline and I are snacking on nuts, brownies, cheese, and chocolates, while Eric fishes:

Eric, the fish whisperer

He hooks one right away:

A beatiful lake trout. But it’s so fiesty, it’s about beaten itself to death fighting Eric yanking out the hook.

A lake trout and his no good very bad day

He catches 8 fish by the end of the day, throws them all back. (Yeah, with big mouth ow-ies, Eric, and occasional gouged eyeballs, and no lunch to boot!)

At the second Bench Lake (five minute walk from the first lake) there’s a nice view of Heyburn.

Pauline and I are pretty beat by the time we make it back to the cabin.

Pauline at the end of our hike

Except, she’s 79 years of age, and no more worn out than I (cashing in now on her years of dedication to yoga, stetching and exercise!)

For dinner we drive to Stanley, Idaho – just a ten minute drive. You might have heard of Stanley, as throughout the winter it consistently hails as the coldest spot in the mainland USA. But this late August night is warm and exquisite. I capture a view of the sun setting over the Sawtooths.

Uh, might be more impressive during the day?

Then we looked in the opposite direction. What the? …

You’re kidding, right? A fire?

Oh my goodness. A fire has erupted near Challis! Eric, is this caused by your voodoo or are you just photo bombing my photographic challenge?

You’re scaring us, Eric

By the time dinner was over, the fire had grown much larger…

We found out when we got home that the fire had erupted in the Salmon-Challis National Forest – 17 miles west of Challis, Idaho. It has not been contained yet, 10 days later.

Okay, time to put a wrap on this. On our way home we hiked near the White Cloud mountains to the Fourth of July Lake. Here is a great link that describes this hike and several other nice day hikes around Stanley, Idaho.

The area had been charred by a forest fire about six years ago.

The trees are bouncing back though! Many young spruce standing 4 feet tall:

New growth!

Walking back now though a burst of fall colors.

But, what I enjoyed most about our hike to Fourth of July Lake? The views as we drove back on the 10-mile dirt road to the main highway….

The Sawtooth Mountain Range coming into view!

I took a photo of the “Alps of Idaho”

Just can’t capture it!

And a video, which I tried to post here several times, but it doesn’t work, but it should, and maybe it does on your computer, laptop, i- Pad or i-Phone … but if it doesn’t – oh well, I’ll keep working on it: (?????)

Because I never want to forget how magnificent the Sawtooths are.

Well, we’ve been back home over a week now. Pauline stayed with us 10 days but then she flew home. But not before I cajoled her into posing for a picture in our back yard with my hubby, David, her younger brother.

David, Pauline, and Rudy

Two Caraher dynamos. Well, three, counting Rudy.

Pauline says she wants to do it all again next year. She’s in such great physical shape, she could probably even survive one of Eric’s hikes, you know, which inevitably turn into death marches.

Tags: Idaho, Redfish Lake, Sawtooth Mountains, Stanley
Posted in Hiking, Idaho, Redfish Lake | 6 Comments »

Part 2 – Picture Hoarder i-Phone Memory Melt Down

August 20, 2015

… to continue with this dumb saga, whew, of my i-Phone memory being all used up with photos and videos, I declared the problem solved when the piconizer arrived in the mail from my super-techno-savvy brother-in-law, Victor.

“Oooo- What’s inside the box?”

Great! Just upload the piconizer app to i-phone, connect gadget to phone like a thumb drive, transfer photos, delete photos on phone, voila!- I’ve freed up storage on my i-Phone. Right? Wrong. I couldn’t download the piconizer app to begin with because my i-Phone didn’t have enough memory, even though I had already deleted scores of photos and videos. Okay … fine. I deleted several apps. Rebooted my phone. 3 times. Still no memory available (in ‘usage’ under settings).

So then, Victor calls… “Did you get the piconizer? How is it working?”

“Uh, yes I did. It’s beautiful.” (Which is was. The piconizer was custom fit inside purple framed packaging like a crown jewel.)

“Are you sure you want to take it out of the package?”

“Did you get it to work?” he asks.

“I don’t have enough memory to download the piconizer app! That’s just bullshit because I’ve been deleting photos and apps like crazy. I’m ready to smash my phone.” (Hey, that’s how type A’s handle stuff like this, when the Universe is screwing with us.)

“Whoa…okay.”

A few minutes later Victor calls me back. “I’ve sent you an email with a link. Go open it.”

It was the link for the Apple search question: “Cannot free up storage space after deleting all photos.” There’s a pretty interesting discussion here about this problem – how comforting to know I have lots of company. Makes me glad I didn’t buy more memory on icloud.

“Okay, Jody. Get your phone ready. We are going to follow the directions on the link, step by step, to delete your (already deleted!) photos.” (Huh?)

Here are the directions contained in the link, which we followed:

First, check the Recently Deleted album in Photos, which is a new feature after iOS 8.1. If it’s empty you may have run into a strange bug, where deleted photos don’t actually get removed. To check for this follow these rather strange instructions:

•Go to Settings/General/Date & Time
•Disable Set Automatically
•Tap on the current date/time and roll it back about 2 years
•Tap <General in the upper left
•Launch the Photos app and go to the Recently Deleted album (even if it says there are 0 photos)
•Is it full of photos? If so, delete them
•Go back to Settings/General/Date & Time and turn Set Automatically back on

In other words, if you were smart, or dumb, enough not to upgrade your operating system past iOS 8.1, then when you delete your photos, they are deleted and you instantly gain memory. But apparently, if you updated beyond 8.1 then when you delete your photos they go to a ‘deleted photo album’ – they aren’t deleted. They sit there for 30 days, still chewing up your memory, until you go to your deleted photo album and delete them. That is, unless your phone contracted that strange bug where deleted photos don’t get deleted. (Try antibiotics?)

Ah … remember the good ol’ days with i-Phones: When you were low on memory, you just deleted photos, and maybe a video or two, and gained the memory back.

Anyway, Victor and I went through the process over the phone step by step. When we got to the deleted photos album sure enough, it was full of photos. 240 photos and 35 videos. “Delete them.” Victor commanded. Dang! I wanted to go back through them one more time and maybe save ones that had been deleted, you know, under extreme duress.

I did actually download a few albums of photos onto my piconizer (okay, with David’s help). Pretty cool. I can carry it with me in its nifty case and anticipate the day I might want to look at those photo albums from 2011, or just stow it away in our buffet drawer thinking I might someday pull it out, attach it to my phone, and see if I can figure out how to look at those photos again. Or maybe carry it with me the next time I see Victor …

There, now you have all the details involving a technologically disinterested Type-A personality embroiled in a picture hoarder i-Phone memory meltdown. Although I’m pretty sure I’m more smart than dumb by not upgrading my operating system.

Am I sounding more technologically savvy yet?

(Maybe just go back to a portable digital camera and a flip phone?)

Tags: cannot free up storage space on i-Phone after deleting all photos, piconizer
Posted in photography, technology | 2 Comments »

i-Phone Photo Hoarder

August 17, 2015

In an effort to keep up with the world of fast advancing technology my hubby and I sprung for i-Phones. Except the new smart phones keep advancing faster than we are and we never have the latest greatest smart phone. One reason is, of course, price. We bought the i-Phone 3 when i-Phone 4 was out (at 1/6 the price or something – 50 bucks). I accidently discovered the camera on the i-Phone 3 and found it so user friendly that I soon amassed 600 photos. I love all my photos. And I learned not to upload my precious photos onto the computer and delete them from my i-Phone, because I never see them again. I just don’t organize or bother finding photos on my computer. So, photos stay on my i-Phone.

When we update our phones I just transfer all my photos and videos to the new phone. So by the time I updated to i-Phone 5 (when 6 came out) – I transferred about 2200 photos and 25 short videos. My phone has a few apps, that I don’t use much. There’s no downloaded music on my i-Phone. 64 GB of phone memory seems way excessive – so I opted for 16 GB.

Soon I had 3200 photos and 65 videos and not enough memory to download the new operating system. Who cares? The current operating system works just fine – ios 8.2 or something. Oh, but I see in my settings that I also have 5 free gigs of memory available on the i-cloud! I can store photos there. Oh, but I have more than 5 gigs of photos and videos so i-cloud wants me to pay a monthly fee for extra storage. No! Okay so I’ll go through and delete my least awesome photos and videos and get some memory back. Which is what I did. Delete, delete, delete, (‘Ouch!) delete…

Meanwhile, my extremely technically savvy brother-in-law, Victor, who knows about my photo hoarding vs. phone memory problems sends me a new i-Phone gadget called a piconizer. It could solve all my problems! It works like a picture thumb drive where you can store photo albums, free up the phone memory, and plug it back in to your phone to view your photos. Great! Except, right off the bat when I plugged it in I got the message: Not enough memory to download piconizer app. What? Okay, fine. I started deleting other apps. Off went dictionary.com, Zillow, i-books and Delta Airlines. I deleted more photos and videos. Then I checked my settings and could not believe how much storage I had gained. Here you can see – I took a photo of the screen showing memory usage:

Available storage: 0 (Apparently Apple uses up 4 GB storage for their stuff on your phone, because I’m pretty sure it’s a 16 GB phone.)

icloud storage available: 5 GB

What the? How can this be? How did I even take that last photo, then? What about those deleted apps? What am I supposed to do here? I know that the 5 GB available on icloud is not enough. Has Apple Inc. devised some diabolic scheme to persuade old fart technologically disinterested picture hoarders into signing up for an icloud storage plan with montly payments?

Miraculously I still had enough memory to take a selfie.

Old fart picture hoarder vs. Apple.

This picture reminds me of a previous blog I wrote when I got my first i-Phone. It’s from June 15, 2009. Geesh. 6 years ago. Here’s the link. . Well, if it isn’t the link you can find it easily. It’s the only other blog I wrote under the category ‘technology’ (what a surprise).

There’s a selfie in that one too.

Well, I was younger then, but wiser now. What do you think? How does this get resolved?

Tags: i-Phone storage issues
Posted in photography, technology | 1 Comment »

New Roof!

August 8, 2015

Our house was built in 1966 with a fabulous cedar shake shingled roof. I loved the roof. But at 50 years old, it was at the end of its life. Over the past 15 years (since we bought the house) we’ve had to make lots of repairs.

our 1960’s shake roof

David has been up on the roof about every summer dealing with leaks.

Rudy pointing out a leak

We’ve hired roofers to make repairs, we’ve oiled the roof. Shingles blow off, exposing the felt under the shingles, which practically flakes apart. The shingles themselves, about an inch thick, could probably last another half century:

the original 1966 shakes

But the felt under the shingles is shot.

So this summer we replaced the roof. (Ouch!) I so loved the look of our shake roof.

But you can’t buy those shakes anymore. The shakes we could get to replace our roof aren’t nearly the quality they were in 1966. We’ve heard some bad reviews, like they curl after a couple of years and within five years you are already making repairs. So we decided to go with asphalt shingles.

We did lots of research, looked at roofs all over town, and found an asphalt shingle that has a 3-dimensional look: ‘Grand Canyon’ in Black Walnut. The roofing company, Wright Roofing, had us in their queue by early May, and would give us a few days notice that they were coming. I was dreading the call.

The call came Friday, July 24. They would be here the following week. I had this long convoluted nightmare Sunday night that the new roof looked hideous, it completely clashed with our brick and shutters; we’d have to completely change the colors of the house to go with the new roof. Awful.

Tuesday, July 28, about 6:45 AM, we hear voices. I raise up from my sleep and peer out the window. Roofers!

Roofer invasion

Soon they’re lined up on top of our roof like carpenter ants, ripping off shingles.

They flung the bulk of the shingles into their massive trucks parked alongside the house. Shingles were also flying onto tarps in front of the house.

yes, it’s a mess

The crew is back on the house at 6:45 am Wednesday morning.

6:45 AM! Rise and shine..

Needless to say, we’re up too. What are they doing? It sounded like 500-pound boulders with protruding nails being dragged across the roof, right next to our heads.

The foreman said it was the dirtiest roof they had ever done in the 40-plus years they’d been in business.

Huge messes accumulated by the end of the day…

By the end of the second day, the roof was stripped and prepped for the new shingles, with a new layer of plywood over the existing roof.

Thursday morning now – The shingles have arrived!

Here comes the shingles!

Each bundle of shingles weighs 60 pounds. They must have unloaded 90 bundles from the conveyer belt along the top of the roof.

Pulling the belt back down now…

Roofers are exhausted!

Soon they get busy. Part of the crew on each section of the house. The pattern is taking shape!

view from across the street

I’m happy to be the observer.

This is how I imagine it feels on the roof!

Whoa!

I’m loving the three dimensional look of our new roof:

Roofers laying shingles on the back side:

Rudy steps in to help

“Hey, I can hammer!”

Hammering the last shingle now…

Blowing debris off the finished roof

Final cleanup begins

Rudy dashes in to assist

Rounds up the rest of the crew to pitch in

Boy the roof looks great

Rudy dismisses the crew. Job well done!

A couple of days later, we notice burn spots in the the grass left by sun-baked asphalt shingles…

Rudy assesses the damage

That jack-o’-lantern face on our front lawn creeps us out when we glance at it from our upstairs bedroom window

Hope it’s gone by Halloween

But the house looks great.

“The roof’s a keeper!” I allow.

“Well, I should hope so!”

(Yeah, like we could change our minds, rip it back off and start over.)

Tags: cedar shakes, Grand Canyon Asphalt shingles, Wright Roofing
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Camping on the Big Lost

July 25, 2015

Last weekend we stole away for our yearly two-night camping trip to our favorite spot – Garden Creek campground – off Trail Creek Road – a few miles beyond Mackay, Idaho. We camped at the same campsite last year and I blogged about it (the last entry under my ‘camping’ category). I’m using that same ‘you are here’ Google map visual to show you where we camped – at the pink dot:

because it’s so reassuring to know exactly where you are on planet Earth. Trail Creek Road eventually takes you over the mountains into Ketchum, Idaho.

We headed out of Idaho Falls about 5 PM on Friday, July 17, for the two-hour drive. Stopped for prime rib dinner at Ken’s club in Mackay (population 517 – plus or minus 2) on the way.

We’re approaching Mackay now, and the Lost River Range has come into view:

Lost River Range

About an hour later, stomachs sated, we’re sailing down Trail Creek road – right at sunset …

Our campsite is available! In fact, the whole campground is available. Amazing. Of course, not the place to go if you’re looking for hook-ups. We pull in – us with our 1973 16′ bare-bones camper and Eric in his van, equipped with his new ‘deluxe’ cot tent (an upgrade from last year). Eric’s friend ‘Scott’ tagged along too, bedding down in the back of Eric’s van. Sheer luxury! I snapped a photo of our campsite in the light of day:

“Come on. You can’t afford a better camper?”

On Saturday we struck out on a hike. Struck out, that is, finding the lake Eric was leading us to. We rumbled over about 20 miles of dirt road to get to the trailhead. Three young women with 45 pound packs pulled up at the same time, planning to camp on the same lake. After waiting out a hail storm we all charged up the trail. Except we couldn’t tell, even from Eric’s nifty but grossly outdated National Forest Service map, how to find the lake. No problem, we just circled around, exchanged yells with the women, met up with them again, as we all hiked in circles. All told, our efforts added up to about 6 miles of hiking, so we called the mission accomplished. The young women eventually bailed and drove out to find another place to camp.

I took a picture of David on the ridge:

“Maybe the lake is between those two distant peaks?”

David and I posed for a photo in a patch of lupine:

I remained prepared in case the sky opened up again…

Dinner back at the campsite, surprised by visitors. I had told my sister Lisa where we were camping and she and her husband Tom hopped in their truck and drove to our campground area on Saturday. They got some hiking and fishing in themselves and we all enjoyed dinner together. They drove back home Saturday evening.

Sunday was fishing day on the Big Lost River, just a few steps away from our campsite. The men fished. I cheered them on and took photos. Scott demonstrated how he literally threads the worm on his line and plants the hook at the end. (Yes, the worm is screaming the whole time, and thank goodness we can’t hear it.) So the worm hangs in the water looking very real and delicious to fish. Scott caught three fish right off the bat.

Eric and David had their lines in too.

Eric fishing

Except their hooks kept snagging on the rocks. They spent a lot of time rebaiting their lines.

David fishing

I cautiously stood back as fishhooks, heaved up out of the river in quick jerks to avert snags, came flying through the air, sometimes sailing 10 feet behind where we were standing. This is how Eric snarled a knarly land octopus.

Eric’s early catch of the day

David and I bailed on the fishing early and decided to hike around the campsite. I snapped a few photos:

We’re back at our luxury campsite now, ready to pack up.

“Guess the party’s over”

Eric and Scott reappear with their fishing poles – of course, David and I missed the moment Eric hauled in his big fish. No worry – Scott got a picture.

Eric’s prize catch of the day

Threw it back, of course.

We’re loaded up and ready to hit the road toward home.

Now driving back toward the highway on Trail Creek Road with the Lost River Range sprawled out in front of us. You can see Mount Borah, the highest peak in Idaho, in the far left distance. Mount Borah is one of the five peaks in Idaho that are over 10,000 feet.

Lost River Range

The view itself is worth the trip.

No matter if you snag your line, get hailed on, miss your hiking destination or hike in circles.

Tags: Camping on the Big Lost, fishing the Big Lost river, Mackay-Idaho
Posted in Camping | 4 Comments »

‘Pigweedy walk’ / ‘Monsanto is the Devil’

July 13, 2015

Two responses to my latest (‘pigweed’) blog were just too precious not to share in a separate blog. So here goes…

This first one arrived as a ‘comment’ to my previous blog – from my brother-in-law, singer-songwriter Dennis Caraher:

That husband of mine don’t like to talk
He says “I don’t have time, I got windows to caulk.”
But I don’t mind that he loves to balk
I can clear my mind out on pigweedy walk.

Pigweedy walk. It’s calling me home.
Out on Pigweedy walk I am never alone

It’s there that I found my heart’s answer
Right in the ground and it don’t cause cancer
I don’t need much to make my life so great
No way I will touch that damned glyphosate

I go to work and my soul starts to sing
I clutch and jerk and claw and fling
It’s better than therapy, better than confession
Take it from me and start decompressin’

Pigweedy walk. It’s calling me home.
Out on Pigweedy walk I am never alone
Pigweedy walk. It’s calling me home.
Out on Pigweedy walk I am never alone

(fade out)

I’d like to hear the guitar riff that goes along with it. Dennis could perform this orignal hit on YouTube and get the whole population decompressin’ – doin’ the ‘pigweedy walk.’

Speaking of YouTube hits, my sister Stephanie sent me this link in response to my pigweed blog – Kind of a fun video about the evils of Monsanto, as in, “Monsanto is the Devil.” It’ll get you dancin’ and a-jivin’ like a fightin’ for survivin’ bumble bee.

Well, all I can say is, if you never have believed in the Devil, you might oughtta believe in the Devil now.

Tags: Dennis Caraher, Monsanto, Monsanto is the Devil
Posted in Gardening | Leave a Comment »

No Roundup on my prostrate pigweed!

July 12, 2015

Pulling weeds is a great activity to help you decompress from your anxieties, worries, obsessions, list making, etc. Pulling pigweed is especially rewarding. It sprouts and spreads like wildfire in the gardens, but even mature prostrate pigweed pulls out easily by the roots after a good watering. On days where you’re particularly angry, you can plant yourself in the middle of a neglected flower bed, clutch the base of a large prostrate pigweed, jerk it out, and fling it with gusto into a pile; clutch, jerk, and fling; clutch jerk, and fling. Great therapy. You can just claw at the little plants.

prostrate pigweed

I’ve been persistently clawing at the pigweed sprouting around the bricks in our back walk. And I’ve kept the walk looking pretty good:

Except for the last few feet, where the roots are really embedded.

pigweedy walk

What to do? I’m absolutely not using Roundup on the weeds, period, which (as everyone knows by now) causes cancer, contains that horrible chemical glyphosate, which disrupts your gut bacteria (gut issues, anyone?) and, it turns out, is toxic to humans even in minute amounts. And, by the way, Monsanto has known since 1981 that glyphosate causes tumoric growth and carcinomas in multiple organs and tissues. (!)

So this morning I mixed up a natural herbicide from stuff I had in my kitchen. My sister Lisa sent me the recipe – from Consumer Reports:

Mix:
1 gallon vinegar,
2 cups Epsom salts,
1/4 cup Dawn dishsoap (or similar pure dishsoap)

Pour in sprayer, spray on weeds.

EASY!

I mixed up 1/4 the recipe and drizzled it on the pigweed in the walkway this morning.

just applied the homemeade herbicide

I Googled ‘pigweed’ just out of curiosity. Some species of pigweed can grow 3 inches a day and reach 7 feet or more, choking out crops- creating huge problems for farmers. But the American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds. A pigweed that grows in the southeast, amaranthus palmeri, is resistant to Roundup. Other ‘superweeds’ are horseweed and giant ragweed. Nutsedge, which takes over lawns, is also resistant to Roundup. You saturate the Nutsedge with Roundup, the Nutsedge thrives, and the grass around it dies. Just ask my son, Aaron, who lives in Georgia. (Hey Aaron, did you try getting a flame weeder and burning it out?)

So who’s smarter? Humans or weeds?

You just as well try this natural herbicide to get rid of your weeds. Well, unless, of course, you’re compelled to plant yourself in your garden or lawn and maniacally clutch, jerk, and fling, claw at, or dig out your weeds. Or get a flame weeder and burn them out.

You know, to decompress …

Tags: glyphosate causes cancer, natural herbicide, pigweed, superweeds, toxicity of Roundup
Posted in Gardening | 2 Comments »

What’s eating you, uh, your garden?

July 5, 2015

Just a reminder, dear reader, before you go any further … my blog is not specifically a ‘gardening’ blog, it is a ‘decompression’ blog. As in, me, decompressing…

Lately I’ve been decompressing over the infestation of aphids, fungi and other pests in our back yard. I’m determined not to use chemicals and to implement a more organic approach to controlling pests. So far I trapped three beetles in our earwig traps – but have since ditched the traps because (1) beetles are adorable and (2) earwigs are probably not the culprit eating our salvia in the first place (3) I should stop hating earwigs so much even if I can’t get the thought out of my head that earwigs crawl inside sleeping people’s ears, eat their brains and cause infinite torture. Ewwww!

Moving right along to the aphid infestation (per topic of my last blog) I have received invaluable feedback from my readers. One of them grew up on a farm. Her dad’s crop was infested with aphids. He let loose bags and bags of ladybugs and they got rid of the aphids. Voila!

Another reader mentioned insects that herd aphids and milk them. Whew. Yes. Farmer ants feed on the ‘honeydew’ or sugary secretions (yuck) from the aphids. It’s a ‘mutualisic relationship’ in which the ants nurture the aphids and vice versa. Interesting. But not particularly helpful in getting rid of aphids.

One more reader suggested I have a ladybug wing-clipping cookout party on my deck – you know, clip the wings on the lady bugs so they don’t fly off to your neighbors’ … which, the fact that lady bugs fly off is a big problem. You would invite family members to such an event. My sister was proactive on the subject, commenting that, given the side effects of her asthma meds, she would for certain cut the ladybugs in half.

I tried last week to purchase a ladybug brigade to eat the aphids on our huge old crab apple tree. Called all the greenhouses in town – none of them have ladybugs for sale now. “It’s too hot and they aren’t shipping them because they’ll fry in transit.” I’m starting to feel really bad for ladybugs now – with all the horrible things humans can do to them. At this juncture, may I suggest: “Pray for ladybugs.” (Maybe set aside a national “Pray for ladybugs” day – first thing in the spring?)

So, back to our 3/4 dead aphid infested crab apple tree: We did not (A) use chemicals (B) cut the tree down or (C) implement a lady bug brigade. Out of default (and the fact that we haven’t heard from the arborist hired to cut tree down in over a month) we have implemented Plan D: Do nothing. Which, how surprising to see such positive results with absolutely no human intervention whatsoever:

June 30, 2015

Up close you see a healthy crop of crab apples!

“Keep the tarps handy, honey”

I didn’t see any signs of aphids on the few leaves I didn’t look too closely at. (Hey, I’m just not in the mood today for close encounters with aphids, okay?) I’m thinking maybe nature took care of the problem with the heat wave we’ve been under the past 10 days? I did do a Google search on ways to get rid of aphids. One way is to pick them off the leaves yourself (are you kidding?). Another way is to ‘displace them’ by shooting them with the hose (and then you stomp all over them once they hit the ground?). You should be very pleased with this link I found – for horticultural soap spray – an “environmentally friendly application used to eliminate small soft bodied insects such as aphids, whiteflies, spider mites and mealybugs.” Great. (Subjects for three more blogs?..)

To make insecticidal soap:

•Combine one cup of oil, any variety, such as vegetable, peanut, corn, soybean, etc. with one tablespoon of dishwashing liquid or other “pure” soap (Dawn, Ivory and Lemon Joy are mentioned on many internet sites). Be sure to avoid any dish washing liquids which contain degreaser, bleach, or those that are for an automatic dishwasher.
•Mix two teaspoons of this “soap” mixture to every cup of warm water and put into a spray bottle. Mix only what is needed for a one-day application.

“Horticultural soaps disrupt the cell membranes of the insect, resulting in suffocation.” Hmmm. Tough way to go.

Meanwhile, something somewhat alarming and uncomely has been happening in our neighbor’s lawn:

Don’t ask, don’t tell?

which abutts our driveway.

What do you bet, when you pull that dead grass out you’ll find it’s missing its roots. I’m not going to do it, though.

I’m just not in the mood today for a close encounter with grubs. You know, those critters (I made reference to in my last blog) with six front legs with claws for digging and the machine-like jaws for chewing? Should I, dear reader, post a link providing magnified close-up images of grubs and grub infestations for you? No?

Tags: earwigs, Grubs, homemeade soap spray for plants, Horticultural soap
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Our Back Yard Paradise

June 27, 2015

We have an ancient crab apple tree in our back yard and a huge old Canadian maple tree in our front yard. Here is a picture of our crab apple on April 27 – in full bloom!

Crab Apple in full bloom!

Uh, not exactly. The crab apple looked 3/4 dead this year before it even leafed out. Took a branch to the local greenhouse – they diagnosed it with an iron deficiency plus infestation of aphids – (tiny disgusting sap-sucking insects or ‘plant lice’) and then recommended about 60 bucks worth of iron and chemical spray to save the tree. What to do? (We had already done the ‘iron deficiency’ treatment last year.) We didn’t want to spray chemicals all over the tree. Turns out, lady bugs eat aphids, and you could also purchase containers of 500 ladybugs for 10 bucks. Couldn’t we just invest in, say, 3000 lady bugs?

Meanwhile the front maple tree started looking sick. We called an arborist to come look at it.

“Aphids.” he said. (Surprise, surprise.)

“We were thinking of buying lady bugs to eat the aphids.”

“Yeah, well, you let the lady bugs loose and they fly off – you can’t keep them around, and aphids will kill your tree.”

(Darned lady bugs)

“We don’t want to spray chemicals.”

“No problem.” He said. “We can apply a systemic chemical in the grass around your tree that is absorbed through the roots – kills anything that eats the leaves.”

“Do it!’ we said, because that meant we could make the disgusting tree lice go away without doing anything ourselves and we wanted to save the tree (and throwing money at problems somehow makes me feel better).

Meanwhile the crab apple in the back looked so sick we just decided not to worry about the aphids and just hire the arborist to cut it down. (Uh, plus did I mention how much we hate the mess in the fall raking up mounds of rotten crab apples?)

Except, the arborist’s schedule was a month out. That was three weeks ago. We’ve ignored the crab apple tree but now it looks a bit better, albeit, not exactly up to neighborhood standards, but we’re now thinking it could survive the aphid infestation and iron deficiency, or whatever it is, through the summer.

Gluttonous aphids!

We didn’t buy the lady bugs initially for fear they’d die from eating the poisoned aphids on our front maple tree. (Is this situtation getting easier, or more complicated?)

At this juncture I’m thinking of buying the ladybugs anyway, because (1) It couldn’t hurt, since they can devour aphids no matter where they fly off to – but they just might be smart enough to recognize a back yard feast large enough to sustain them through the rest of their lives (2) throwing more money at the problem usually makes me feel better and (3) lady bugs are pretty cute, albeit a bug of any sort terrifies Megan, like the other day, when she about wet her pants, frozen in a panic, while I calmly captured a lady bug off the side of our downstairs bathroom toilet and escorted it out the front door.

So that’s where we’re at. The back yard crab apple tree is still alive and we’ve decided we might not cut it down this year – although it does look pretty ratty:

June 21 – the tree’s a ‘keeper?’

It might just make it through the summer. Especially with the help of a lady bug brigade.

The front maple is doing fine, thank you very much,

Bugless and stunning

and is definitely up to neighborhood standards, even if the leaves are poisonous to insects (is something wrong with this picture?).

Can’t wait for our next battle with grubs. You know. Those critters in larvae form with large front legs for digging and huge jaws that chew on the roots of your grass, killing off entire lawns. I know this because we went through it last year. Our neighbors across the street dashed over here to alert us to the infestation right away. Because the next thing, every lawn on both sides of the street and down the block is infested.

This morning I was out looking at our hollyhocks. Ah, yes….

Rust, I believe it’s called. Puccinia malvacearum.
Yep. Our back yard is a fungus Paradise, as well.

Tags: aphids, hollyhock fungus, lady bugs
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