Doug – Page 21 – Random Thoughts

Ultimate Guide to Pet Adoption

Lancelot's new family, pet adoption — Our friend Lancelot and his new family

If you are thinking about acquiring a furry companion, pet rescues and shelters are filled with animals waiting to be adopted. Giving a new forever home to a rescued pet is a big decision. You want to give him a loving home and the best care possible. Pet adoption is lots of fun, but it does take planning and research.

You may ask yourself: How does it work? How do you choose the right pet? Where can I find a rescue or shelter near me? How does the adoption process work? The folks at HomeoAnimal.com know you’ve got many questions on adoption, and have put the answers together for you! They have created “The Ultimate Guide To Pet Adoption”. This guide is comprised of articles that will teach you everything you need to know Continue reading “Ultimate Guide to Pet Adoption”

Welcomed Garden Guests

When it comes to deterring garden damaging insects, we can employ chemical agents, we can employ companion plants, or we can invite predatory critters. By chemical agents, I do not mean just the commercially produced poisons (which I avoid) but things like Neem oil and pepper spray made from my jalapeno and cayenne cast-offs.

This year I companion planted borage with my tomatoes. That worked exceptionally well. My only mistake was in planting them at the same time: I should have given the tomatoes a month’s head start. By the time the tomatoes were bearing ripe fruit, the borage was dying off. Shortly after it was gone, the hornworms started appearing. But I still had help.

When I find a hornworm that is covered by white cases, I either leave it be or move it to a sacrificial tomato plant so the pupae it carries will mature and hatch. These are pupae cases of the Brachonid Wasp: a small, non-stinging, parasitic wasp that favors hornworms as the preferred meal for its young. The female Brachonid deposits its eggs just under the skin of the hornworm. When they hatch the larvae chew their way out (feeding on the worm as they go) and spin those white pupae cases. By the time you see those, especially if there are lots of them, the hornworm is in a weakened state. Many that I find in this condition will do little more damage, some never move from that spot.

Learning What I Already Know

storing (and misplacing) what we know — metalonmetalblog .blogspot.com

Because I get into a lot of social media stuff, in addition to the traditional reading I do, I come across a lot of “inspirational” quotes and sayings. Most times, these do not reveal to me some previously unknown celestial truth. Instead, they remind me of something I know but have been ignoring. Sometimes I just misplace these nuggets of wisdom, other times I deliberately tuck them out of the way because I’d rather wallow in my inadequacy for a while. That is not a good thing, but we all do it from time to time. Continue reading “Learning What I Already Know”

The Good Old Days

Every generation looks backward as the world marches resolutely forward and pines for The Good Old Days. However, those old days were not always as good as we like to think. Even modern Good Old Days had their drawbacks, but as we go further back we find life was not always as pleasant as the romanticized books and movies make them out to be. Here are just a few examples of life in the 1500’s which explain the origins of some of our idioms. Continue reading “The Good Old Days”

Peppers by Peter Piper n Polly

It rained during the night last and everything is wet. Too wet to mow, but because it has been dry for most of last week I do not (for a change) have to worry about gnu’s and wildebeests moving if I don’t mow right away.

Last night when I took Bristol’s dinner out to him, I saw a medium sized rat crawl out through the skirting under my workshop and scamper into a drain line that leads up behind the garage – which is right on the edge of the forest. It is getting to be that season, and I don’t want rats taking up residence in my workshop, so I patched the hole it used and put out some fresh D-con packets in places where vermin may find them but dogs won’t.

Among my chores this morning are to can a pint of red jalapenos and a pint of banana peppers. These can be water bathed, so I will use our stock pot to whip them up. It holds up to 4 pint jars. More than that and I need to drag out the big pressure canner, even if I’m water-bathing, because it’s big enough to hold up to 10 pints. It’s also heavy and takes a lot of water to fill it, so I only use that for large batches of water-bathed goods — and pressure canning, of course. But that only takes a little water. Continue reading “Peppers by Peter Piper n Polly”

Well, Here We Go Again

A couple of years ago, maybe a little longer, a tree root grew under the water line that runs from our water well to the pressure tank under my workshop: 80-some-odd feet distant. As the root grew, it pushed upward on the water line. This would not have been an issue had it happened most anywhere along that 80-some-odd foot span (in fact it probably has happened several times) but because it happened right next to the well head, which does not flex at all, the PVC water pipe fractured.

We didn’t know that at first. The water line (and the well head for that matter) are underground. It had been raining a lot, and the ground gets wet when it rains a lot. But when the rains stopped and the ground refused to dry, I began to suspect something.

I hired a plumber who specialized in well work to come see what was what. The biggest problem was that I wasn’t even sure where our well head WAS. The fella who installed it (long ago) cut off the head pipe below ground and buried it. I had a rough idea, but that was all. The plumber watched the way the water moved and found some burbling that indicated pay dirt — or pay mud.

He cut out a piece of the PVC and installed a flexible metal line between the PVC run and the well head so the line could “give” as tree roots bullied it.

The Saddest Realization

The saddest words any parent can hear is their child saying, “I don’t need you.”

The saddest realization any parent can experience is that the child is right.

Where were you when they wanted a lap to sit in and be read to? Where were you when he wanted you to attend his softball games, when she had a recital, when they had some personal crises and needed your guidance? At work? Or saying, “We’ll talk tomorrow, I’m too tired tonight.”

And now that you have come to the point where you want to be adviser, mentor, confidant… they have no need of you. For so long they have fended for themselves they do not need, or want, your input.

You are, after all, just the breadwinner.

Are We There Yet?

We often make light of youngsters’ exasperated query from the back seat of a car that’s been on the road longer than they’d like. And we can sometimes empathize with them when we wait longer than we anticipated for some event or milestone in life. But we need to recognize that these markers are just that, markers – perhaps rest stops – along the highway of life. The real question we need to be asking is, “Where are we going?”

If we have no destination in mind when we set out on our journey, how can we ever arrive? Would we then not be simply driving endlessly from one rest stop to the next – never really accomplishing anything except using up the resources of our life?

But how do we choose a destination? Continue reading “Are We There Yet?”