Friday, September 11th, 2009
I was sitting on the front steps a few days ago when I looked to my left. I noticed a strange white powdery substance on the branches and stems of the Lilac bush right in front of the house. I stood up and walked towards it. As I got closer, I noticed a whitish coating on all of the leaves. I knew something was wrong. I have seen the white stuff on the leaves before, but I just thought that was the way things were supposed to be. The white stuff on the woody parts of the plant gave me concern.
I went inside and started doing some searches on the internet for “white coating on lilac leaves” and so on. I got the results I was looking for rather quickly. Apparently, “Powdery Mildew” is very popular. It infects a variety of plants and trees, with the Lilac being one of them.
There are any number of remedies to deal with Powdery Mildew, but they all boil down to doing one thing…spraying the infected plant with a fungicide. Where was I going to get a fungicide? Oh no, not another trip to Home Depot.
As I sat there in deep thought, I remembered a few years back when our old neighbor, Tim, was cleaning out his garage. He cleverly made a pile of small bottles next to our basement door. He said that I could either keep the stuff or just get rid of them. Gee, thanks Tim. Well, as it turns out, I kept them and I’m glad I did. I recently discovered that a few of the bottles contained a fungicide that can be used to deal with Powdery Mildew, Black Spot, Rust, etc… It’s called “Garden Safe Fungicide 3″ and uses an oil extract from the Neem tree, a native of India. The active ingredient in this fungicide is called clarified hydrophobic extract of neem oil, to be exact. It’s non-toxic and safe for the environment.
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Powdery Mildew on Lilac leaves
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Powdery Mildew on Lilac stems and branches
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Rust spots on shrub leaf
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Garden Safe Fungicide 3
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Clarified hydrophobic extract of neem oil
I decided to give the shrub a nice spraying of this fungicide. I poured some of it into my handy dandy sprayer and hooked it up to the hose. I did my thing and sprayed the Lilac bush. I decided to leave it at that, just in case everything died because of it. The directions say to do this every seven days to eradicate the Powdery Mildew from the plant. A few days have gone by and I’m not noticing all that much of a difference. The good news is that nothing was killed because of the spray. I can now reapply and also tackle another shrub out in the front yard with what looks like rust spots on the leaves.
I’ll let you know how things turn out in a few weeks.
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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
As promised (almost), I drove down to the wood stove store today to check out the scene. I was having a little trouble with the price of the wood stove insert that I wanted and needed to see if there was anything less expensive. I also wanted to see what the free standing wood stoves looked like. We can easily put one of them in the fireplace.
When I got there, I did my typical “guy” stroll around to browse all the stoves and inserts. I see it every time. The guys walk in with their hands in the pockets making grunts and noises, like “hmmm” and “hmmph.” It’s so funny because I do it too. There is kind of a lot to take in. Good thing the sales guy walks out to put things in perspective. I must say, I really love wood stoves and stuff like that.
I saw the “Hampton HI300 Wood Insert” that I wanted. It’s just as nice as I thought it would be. If money wasn’t an issue, I would tell them to pack it up and bring it over. Since I really don’t want to drop that kind of coin, I am becoming more and more interested in a smaller free standing wood stove. Remember, we already have the pellet stove, so we don’t really need that much more heat. Just something to keep my toes warm, something that doesn’t use electricity and something that will burn all the wood I am cutting down so I don’t have to watch it rot in the woods.
The sales guy introduced me to the more “economical” line of DutchWest wood burning stoves. They are pretty good looking and don’t have a lot of frills. Here is a picture I just took from the brochure.
DutchWest free standing wood stove
It’s cute, isn’t it? It’s also about $1000 less than the other one. A large part of the expense comes from the lining of the chimney and the installation. Heck, if all I needed was the stove, I could just run over there with the trailer and pick it up. That’s not the way it works anymore. Now, you need to have a 35 foot piece of insulated lining stuffed down the entire length of the very tall chimney and attached to the stove. All of that extra stuff actually costs more than the stove itself. At least I managed to drop the price somewhat.
I am hoping to have the stove stand on the stone outside the fireplace. The stove is 17 1/2 inches from front to back and the slab of stone is about 20 1/2. If we can do this, I can still access the side door to put longer (up to 19″) pieces of wood. That would be good. Otherwise, I will have to load shorter pieces through the front and cut about two inches off the stove legs so it fits inside the fireplace.
Anyway, I’ll get into all that stuff later if I decide to get this stove. I’ll make my decision by Saturday.
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Saturday, January 31st, 2009
This was something I was totally unaware of, so I am guessing many of you are unaware of it too.
After the tennis clinic this morning, I stopped by Whole Foods to grab some sushi. I also got some ice cream and whipped cream. I have been jonesing for a warm brownie sunday. I mean, I really want one. I explained this to Laura in great detail last night. Ruby Tuesday makes the best one I have ever had, but I am not at Ruby Tuesday, so I have to handle this myself.
I got what I needed and was ready to go to the checkout counter, when I realized that I was a little thirsty. I usually just drink water because buying drinks is a huge rip-off, but I figured that since the sushi was going to cost so much anyway, what’s wrong with treating myself to a little juice? I walked over to the juice area and lifted my hand to pick up a small “Pom” pomegranate bottle. My hand got about half way to the product, when I noticed that the little bottle cost $3.89. What??? That was out of the question. Then, I saw another store brand pomegranate drink and actually picked this one up. It was only $2.99, but still a very small bottle. I decided to put that back down when I saw a 2 quart bottle of black currant juice for lest than $3. That was more along the lines of what I was looking for. I basically bought it because the label said that black currant is high in anti-oxidants.
Currant Affair - Black currant juice
After I left the car and started driving, I cracked that bottle open and gave my new juice a taste. It tasted different, but pretty good. I continued drinking for the rest of the ride.
When I got back to the house, I decided to do a little research on the health benefits of the black currant. As it turns out, the black currant is a pretty healthy food to eat.
Now, let me be clear – the black currant is very healthy, but the drink that I got has a lot of sugar in it. I’m sure if I spent a heck of a lot more money, I could have gotten a more “pure” juice. For my purposes, this did the job.
You can read up of the blackcurrant over here and check out the health benefits here, but let me just tell you that it has an extraordinarily high vitamin C content, good levels of potassium, phosphorus, iron and vitamin B5, and a broad range of other essential nutrients (I got that from Wikipedia). It treats diseases, ailments and aches. From what I read on Wikipedia, it’s pretty neat.
I really wish you would read about it. There is a long story about how the black currant was banned from being grown in the U.S. because of the threat it was to the logging industry. It’s pretty interesting reading. Who knew that a fruit was banned from being grown over here? Now that it’s back and grown in New York, Vermont, Connecticut and Oregon, it’s getting some traction again, but still remains fairly unknown.
Well, there you have it. A new food that is really good for you. Next time you are in that expensive juice aisle, you might want to check out the black currant.
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Friday, November 7th, 2008
The World’s Largest Concentrated Solar Project
Earlier today, concentrated solar company SolFocus announced that it has signed a deal to install over 10 MW of its systems in Spain for EMPE Solar. Upon its completion in 2010, the $103 million, multi-site project will be the largest concentrated solar deployment in the world. Provides energy for 40,000 homes.
New Coating= Solar Panels Harvest 96% of Available Sunshine
A new type of reflective coating can make solar panels far more efficient, soaking up nearly all available sunlight from nearly any angle. Current solar panels — which convert energy from the sun into electricity — absorb only about two-thirds of available sunlight.
Solar Cells Set New Performance Mark
Researchers are reporting the highest efficiency ever for one type of solar cells in a breakthrough that could lead to more widespread use of solar energy.
Trees Are Nature’s Climate Air Conditioners, Study Finds
If you’re reading this, I probably don’t need to waste my time trying to convince you that trees are great. They absorb carbon dioxide, they can be used to power small remote sensors and they’re pretty darn nice to look at too. Now a new study by a team of scientists from Germany and the UK has discovered another beneficial property…
Millennial Youth to Take Over America’s Environment?
Generation We is new to me. Have you heard of it? It’s the Millennial Generation of Americans born between the years 1978 and 2000. They are being hailed as the next “greatest generation.†I take just a liitle offense to that statement, being GenX myself.
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Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
I happen live live in a very beautiful area of New York. The Shawangunk Ridge is absolutely spectacular and visiting the Mohonk Preserve has become a favorite activity. Unfortunately, it seems that the western side of the Hudson River has water that smells like rotten eggs. I know there are towns on the eastern side that have this problem, but I know of more over here.
We moved in to this house on the hottest day of 2005. I am not exaggerating. It was honestly the hottest day. I remember it well. We unpacked half the truck and I was sweating bullets. I stopped because I was out of breath. I asked anyone if they would like a glass of water, they accepted and I walked in the house to get some out of the faucet. I filled three glasses and walked back outside and handed my friends the glasses. We put them to our lips at the same time…and all at once we said…”Eeewwww, rotten eggs!” Boy, what a delight! We had sulphur in our water!
As with any problem I am confronted with, I immediately say that I can fix it and then my mind starts to go. I thought of the biggest and the best carbon filter I would get. After I put that baby in, there would be no more smell. Well, my friend Craig tried that up in Oneonta, NY, to no avail. My father also tried that in Wilmington, NC and he is always changing the filters. If that doesn’t work, what was I supposed to do?
We lived with the smell in the water for about a week. We weren’t too far past the closing on the house, so I wasn’t too thrilled with dropping a bunch of money. I asked around at work and got a nice wide variety of answers. No one seemed to know what they were talking about. Things were getting worse because when we got out of the shower, the smell would follow you until you completely dried. This had to change FAST!
The next day I got on the phone with a few water purification companies that I found in the yellow pages. Most of them said that there was iron in the water. I said, “No, you must be mistaken, I have Sulphur in the water.” They said, “Yes, but Sulphur is created by Iron.” What? Well, apparently, they were correct. The way it works is this: Water with small traces of iron enter the house through the well. Then, the water sits in the hot water heater. Somehow, the heat changes the iron in the water to sulphur and then, whalla, stinky sulphur water! I am not too sure of how this works. My friend Paul wrote a much more informative entry in his blog about water treatment.
The answer to my problem was to get a Whole House Iron Filter – a Manganese Greensand Filter. I was talking with my neighbor about this problem and he recommended a local water guy to do the job. He said he was the most reasonably priced in the area and new what I needed. I gave this fellow a call and he came out and tested my water. He said, “Yep, your water isn’t hard, but you do have iron in it.” I said, will the filter you install get out 100% and make every thing perfect?” he said, “No, but about 95% will be taken out and you won’t have the smell anymore.” That sounded good to me. My only concern at this point was how much I was going to have to give this guy to fix my problem. I had to have him install it because I didn’t know the first thing about it, didn’t know where to get the filter and had no way to get it to my house. He told me it would cost $1100, said and done. I told him that was fine, just get over here and do it ASAP. The picture below is the actual filter he installed.
The water guy told me that this filter was one of the best on the market. No shortcuts were taken and it would last for about 20 years.
He did a great job installing the filter. The soldering of the copper pipes looked good and he ran the backwash line to the septic pipe in the basement so it wouldn’t make a mess outside when it backwashed the greensand with the Potassium – water mixture. It does this about every 4 days at 2AM.
He also flushed out my electric hot water heater and put some bleach in there to kill any bacteria. He told me to put about 2 cups of bleach in our well every year. I have done this and it’s amazing how good the water smells after I do it. I am happy to say that ever since this very maintenance free water filter was installed, my rotten egg smell has just about disappeared!
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