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Our House II (Still Under Construction)
Waitin' on Spring in Da 'Burgh!
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e. e. cummings
I thank God for most this
amazing
day; for the leaping greenly
spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural, which is
infinite, which is yes.
Dear beautiful Spring weather, I miss you.
Was it something I said? ~"Skipper"
Kim Corbin
How is this for an inconvenient goof?! Snowmageddon has descended upon Da Burgh...started Friday and continued into Saturday; similar to 1993 (in '93 snow fell a lot faster in shorter time)...A-a-aw stuff! There goes the state of emergency horn...Hey, you live here, too; that's life in da Burgh! Update: Buses haven't run for 2 days!
I made myself a 
snowball as perfect as could be.
I thought I'd keep it as a pet and let it sleep with me.
I made it some pajamas and a pillow for it's head.
Then, last night it ran away.
But first...it wet my bed. ~ Shel Silverstein
Moving Day Seasons Greetings From Da Burgh
Gas Prices Photo Celebration of Da Burgh!
What is the true cost of fuel?
Garden in the Rough Garden past (enter)
Liberry
OurHouseMediaPlayRoom Lil Sprout of Horror
10 Things You Didn't
Know About Michael Jackson
Smokey Inc. Growing Up Gotti What in tha? Ugliest Dog
The inc. stands for incarcerated believed 2b reincarnated
Rescued Dog from School Kennel!
Smokey 2 States
The Story of Doggy Poo
Claymation LOL story of dog poo
The King and I - Post Your Pet Pics WordlessWednesday Dogs doing what they doo
here mummy...for yooooou
Music Mondays Timeless Tuesdays It's Waah-Waah Wednesdays Thankless Thursdays
Movie Spoofs
FunkayFlashbackFridays Say Whaaaat? Uni-verses
Weird News post fave quote
UgliestShoes/FootSwagger ShoesGeeks Would Luv TheRaven Flea Market Finds
Most PainfulShoes
MySpinOnThePeopleofWalmart EarthAlbum Asleep on the Subway
More Hilarious on the Subway Other People's Gardens
Fall Harvest
We Welcome You Great Pumpkin! Disco Days and Nites
Funny Food Sculptures
Moving Day Goody-Goody Hip Hop Hurray or Home Ownership Blues
The Pipes-The Pipes, They Are Callin'...(frozen)
Winter has come to da Burgh...and that has meant snow; it snowed before and after
Christmas and off and on ever since. We've only been in our house for about 4 weeks. Guess
we put the heaters in the wrong spot, cuz the pipes froze and we had to call the plumber. We
saved money because when they thawed we saw where the water first started shooting out
from and that was this socket by the sink. Thank goodness for this design fail! And we were
right. It was only a disconnect and not a burst pipe so no major repair was needed.
This gaping hole
in the wall will soon transform into an access panel. Til then we'll keep the heater on the pipes below the sink and not on the other side of
the wall where the bathroom is. Gotta get an electrician out here to move that outlet it's right
behind the shower where the leak occurred, design fail...not a good place for an outlet.
(Danger-danger! Will Robinson!)Things We Saved In the Move...
These
cabbages were the last items salvaged from our former garden. We boughta house in a cul-de-sac with a
small back yard. This is my new canvas. Oh yeah, I salvaged the container grown carrots that sit center, gotta get some hay around them before the temps go
below 0 degrees. See if I can harvest thru the winter. Stay tuned.
Things We Lost in the Move...
Let's see... things we lost in the move, like my pots of
blueberries! AAAAUGH! It takes about 2 yrs before these bushes produce fruit. This set I got at home depot got some
berries on them,
a cupful, but before I could enjoy them, the birds came and ate them, this past summer. Onestagin... after our move we went back 2 days later to retrieve them, the
maintenance men had tossed them in this HUGE dumpster. No way could I retrieve them. They killed
it!
Moving Day...Thanksgiving Day Do Overs, Casualties of the Move...
Ain't noboday home cuz....we
moved! Yeah, goodbye rent; hello mortgage. We packed up the
cats and 
Smokey and headed off to our new
house. 
I wish my pets would get along like this. But in reality they act like 
this, instead.
Anywho, I get to the closing and notice that the stove and fridge that were part of the deal were missing and
the seller's agent and my agent started shushing me when I brought up this point. Ya see, the house was
being rented prior to sale and the renter took the appliances with her, remind you now, this was NOT a
foreclosure,
process. So the owner gave me cash to buy new appliances. Scratch and dent here we come! Then, the
waiting game. It is the waiting for the hook ups that mess up a well planned schedule. In the meantime I
rented this big a#! moving van from Penske's cuz it was Thanksgiving Eve and U-haul said they closed at
1:30p. Really the
truck was more like the size of a Port Authority bus. (At least I know that if facing a layoff, I know what my new career might be.) The side streets in the 'Burgh are narrow with
parking on both sides. My knees were shaking after the first load and I promptly turned the truck back in
at 6 o'clock in the morning! I threw the keys through the slot and hubby drove me home.
So when the
to turn on the gas, he couldn't! Honey, we got tagged! Soooo...we were sitting in the cold, huddled
around a space heater. The temps that nite were in the low 30's
B-r-r-r-r-r...more waiting for the hook ups. I SEE COLD PEOPLE!
Thanksgiving Day Do overs!
(Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Day Do over, NOT leftovers)Remember Charlie Brown had the first meal that he, Linus and Snoopy cooked, then he
called his grandmother and they all got to go there for the real meal...this was a do over...and
I say that from here on out, if you encounter an occasion that doesn't turn out right or meets
your expectations, there is nothing wrong with a do over.
Because we had to cook dinner at the former residence, and then bring it to our new residence, where we sat
down to dinner in a cold house,the food cooled off faster, so we kept having to micro-wave stuff over and
over. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy myself. So with everything that went wrong...I decided to have a do
over. The kids cooked the dinner over the following week and we have been enjoying leftovers since the
do over.
Garden In The Rough
So this is how I envisioned our new home. We would sit out on the back porch which overlooks a We would have a
vineyard and a small fruit orchard...wine year round (sigh...)
My home would be an energy efficient, zero energy building.
Upon waking from my dream...However, we live in the city, da Burgh in a cul-de-sac and THIS (below)... is my new canvas! Composter in the corner and some carrots from our old house
Snowpocalypse 2010
SNOW PLOW MAAAAN...Schools close, roads disappear, grown men weep...
The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it
and wrong too often for us to rely on it. ~Patrick Young
-----------------------
Hark! What light through yon window breaketh?
Yes, t'is the sun and it is warming the house. This house hath plenty of potential for energy savings.
Those solar energy and engineering classes will come in handy in our new place.
To be continued...
Fall Harvest
It's the Fall Harvest, we got a little bit of everything. It would make a big pot of soup or a lot of side dishes. We got potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, collards and more collards, eggplant, brussels, greenbeans and cabbage.
Off The Beaten Garden Path: Too Late We Grow Smart
I've always been rather fond of this Pensylvania Dutch Amish proverb: Too soon we grow oldt and too late schmardt. I read it as a child off of a wall pocket, shaped like a tea kettle, that hung above the stove in my great grandmother's kitchen.
More recently, it calls to mind a comment that a fellow student in my solar panel installation class made one night, after a flurry of discussions on the still relatively high cost of solar panels and installation even with government tax incentives; especially since this technology has been around for decades, with a peaked interest in the ...<< MORE >>
Best Buys: Latest Garden Purchases
I adored my compost bin made up of free pallets that I had begged off of a local electrical supply store. However, I could not resist bumping up to the sweet little deal on the right. I got this best buy at Lowes. This compost bin was less than $60 and don't you think it looks a lot better than the pallets. I'm sure the neighbors think so too, although I tried to place it out of sight. I have had several best buys over the year. For example, the black plastic pots beside the compost bin were only $3 each at Family Dollar. Family Dollar has plenty of best buys too, it has a nice seasonal gardening section where one can purchase garden supplies throughout the gardening season at extremely reasonable prices.
Lil Sprout of Horror
Sprout harvest with pigpen Ah say...chicken hawks like sprouts
Sunflower sprouts, lettuce, grow light, mmmm... Lil Sprout of Horror
Container Gardening: June Month of Projects and Experiments
The month of June has proven to be the Grand Project Month. First the Potato Project. I chitted potatoes
from regular store bought, cut two eyes per potato, planted them a-a-and !Voila! Photo 1 is April, photo
2 May
Photo 3 end of May had to add an extension and photo 4 is June's potato progress, new extension, looks like
the Fawlty Towers. Next time I will buy a cheap tall garbage can, but for now this will do. Will have to see the
return on investment.
Pig-Pen is my mascot for this month, with the dirt of ancient civilations this child of the earth oversees my
Great Pumpkin Project. I know...Linus was the one waiting for the Great Pumpkin, maybe we will see him
later in 'Pumpkin's Progress.
The pumpkin patch consists of just two hills. The project is to grow a pumpkin weighing over 300 lbs.
I plan to transplant the seedlings to the hills as soon as they get their 2nd set of leaves. I hope to reveal
the results of both experiments on youtube.
June gas prices continued to rise and more motorbikes started piling up in the alley behind the bank. Gas
prices rose to 2.75 but went down a few days later, resting now at 2.63. Maybe I'll get another post in before
the end of the month. I had another project, a tomato one, my own version of tops-turvy...end trans
Happy Mother's Day and....A Blow Pop... Is An All Day Sucker
Happy Mother's Day! And $2.29, is what I was greeted with on my way to see 'Star Trek, the Prequel',( by the way, the movie was G-r-r-r-reat!) Anywho, the gas price on the 8th was $2.25, before that it had been moving up and down between $2.09 and $2.11, then $2.19 and up-up and away-hey...They're at it again. Greed the reality show. Speculators driving up gas prices again...a plot and a plan with a purpose! It's my understanding that it's $2.75 by this summer, in time to ruin summer vacation again for folks. This doesn't just affect summer vacationers; it's more far reaching than that. How about, it affects the prices that you will pay for heat this winter, if you still use gas and oil. The utility companies purchase gas and oil at certain times of the year for the coming year. Do you think the speculators don't know this? Yeah they know, a plot and a plan with a purpose. So it's not only going to affect the summer vacationers, but the folks who depend on gas and oil this winter for heating and cooking purposes even if the prices go back down.
As the poet e.e. cummings put it, 'the greedy the people if needs must be... I laugh in retrospect when I recall that the financial analysts earlier last year were referring to their supply and demand models, looking for answers to the gas crisis...They were WRONG! Some were even blaming the Chinese because of their so called 'veracious appetite' for cars and that demand was driving up gas prices...WRONG, AGAIN!...It t'weren't the Chinese...The word for today is Blow Pop! The word on the street is that a blow pop is an all day sucker. So, SUCKER-R-R-R-R-R!
MSNBC busted them, cracked the code that eluded the analysts tenaciously clinging to their crusty models and so did Sixty Minutes. It was speculators moving the gas market, NOT supply and demand.
As the President said before taking office, that just because the gas prices had gone down, that we as consumers, after breathing a sigh of relief couldn't go back to our old habits and allow ourselves to get suckered back in to buying gas guzzling cars and not demanding and supporting new 'green' technology. So on the following Monday I noticed the bikes are starting to pile up again in the alley behind the bank. I showed you from a previous article there were as many as eight bikes then.
The economy has always been part of homeland security, every country's security. Speculators could care less. Neither do the car companies, they keep pushing the same cars and technology on ya with a few new bells and whistles added. They tease you with new technology but the price is so high that the savings and return on investment is laughable. If you fall for the marketing, instead of putting your mortgage payment in your gas tank, your monthly car payment and car insurance payment become the new mortgage payment.
And...How about those realestate taxes, in the amounts of another mortgage payment (another story, not only that after paying your home off, that you can be taxed out of it...as well as causing the housing market to recover wa-a-a-y slower. For instance, there have been plenty of houses in my neighborhood in the Da 'Burgh that potential buyers have looked at and the price was right until they fielded down to the tax part and discovered a second mortgage payment that doesn't go away but usually grows with each new assessment. Meanwhile, back at the homestead in West Virginia, land developers and realestate developers serving on the assessment boards and committees (a conflict of interest) want that land that grandma has been sitting on that has been in the family for umpty-nine years, have driven up the land prices and taxes).
So...it's back to the garden, my food fight, my Victory Garden. I've also increased my indoor sprout production. Fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice shame on me. Next, paying off existing debt, building an emergency fund and living debt free.
Collards, Cabbage, Brussel sprouts and Marigolds
Growing Sprouts: Sprout It All Out! Indoor Farming for Those Who Just Can't Wait!
Remember this l'il fellow? He's the L'il Green Sprout from the valley of the Green Giant (ho-ho-ho). He is simply beaming over his first harvest of sprouts. So am I. This was my first attempt at sprouting. This uses a form of hydroponics, soil-less growing, with only water and little light to green 'em up a bit. I started with what I had in the house, after going onto youtube.com to view some examples of how to do it. I started with some lentils and some veggie seeds left over from last year.
I am so geeked about my sprouts. I have these babies on bagels with hummus, in soups, in salads and just about anything else I like. I have even started to make up names for sandwiches and stuff. For example, I am making 'Harry Potter 'sandwiches for a work associate's baseball team. The sprouts kinda look like hair so I threw some on some potted ham sandwiches now I have 'Hairy Potted' sandwiches. LOL!
Now for the health benefits. All that sprout goodness is chock full of antioxidants, riboflavins, vitamins A, B, C, E, iron and calcium, yes calcium from the lentil sprouts and more. Shown in the photo are lentil sprouts, broccoli sprouts and spicy radish sprouts. The radish sprouts taste just like tiny l'il radishes and are just as potent, so I mix 'em with the gentler tasting lentils. As I've gotten older, out of my teens and twenties, I stopped drinking milk on a regular basis. Milk is a major source of calcium for building strong bones and teeth. And, as one gets older, one needs calcium to stave off osteoperosis and bone loss. Also, during the birthing years, calcium is needed so you don't lose your teeth during and after pregnancy. Now I have found a flavorful substitute.
I went to the local food co-op and bought wheat, clover, mung beans and sunflower seeds for future sprouting. The co-op had the sprouting jars and lids, as well, but I chose to sprout mine the way my Grumma showed me a long time ago, and that was in an old mayo jar with some cheese cloth. I'm getting tired of the cheese cloth, so I'll implement another method that she used, and that was by putting nail holes in a jar lid, the water drains out just as well and seeds stay in. (Works for me!) It's great for the environment because I reduce waste to the landfill through the reuse of the jar.
Til next time...Happy sproutin' in Da 'Burgh!