Vole Control

     A couple of years ago, Mike and I planted a row of shrubs along our back property line.  The next spring, about half of them were dead.  We replaced the dead plants and noticed the originals and the new shrubs didn't seem to be doing well as summer progressed.  By the next spring, all but one shrub was dead or near dead.  When we pulled up the remains of our plants, we noticed the roots were gone and the base of each plant was gnawed.  We blamed moles, but after some research, we learned we had a vole problem.  Moles eat bugs; voles eat vegetation.

Mole

Vole - http://www.littlerascalsbycowleys.com/voles

     What to do?  We have a mulched bed and seven holes.  There are virtually no vole resistant plants.  They like almost everything.  We searched various articles and garden forums to find solutions.  We learned there are above ground voles and subterranean voles.  The damage on our shrubs indicated that we have the subterranean type - the Pine vole.  Our options are trapping, poisoning, and thwarting the voles' attempts to feed on the roots of our plants.  We rejected poisoning because we don't want to accidently poison any neighborhood pets.  We plan to trap as soon as I can get to the store and buy several mouse traps.  For the past two days, we have replaced the shrubs using vole proof barriers around the roots.
     Here's what we did:

We used 1/4 hardware cloth to make cages.  Wear gloves if you don't want a bunch of bloody cuts.

Below ground barriers should be sunk 6"-10" deep.  We put 10" under ground and left 2" above ground.  We also put hardware cloth on the bottom, just in case we get a really determined vole.

    

We left some hardware cloth above ground.

They say the third time is the charm.

One Woman's Trash...

     I love seeing the things people create from garbage.  An Australian bride made her wedding dress from fabric scraps and bread tags.  It looks pretty, but she says it was heavy and uncomfortable to wear.  The dress didn't flex, so she had trouble sitting, and it clicked when she walked.  For all the drawbacks, it might have been worth the discomfort considering that the dress became international news, and it cost only $38.00.

Read the article: http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/bride-wears-dress-made-10-000-bread-tags-170739436--abc-news-Recipes.html

     Here are some other recycled gowns:

Your Basic Black Trash Bag

Made From Pop-tops - Reminds Me of  Chainmail 

I doubt this would work at a pick-up bar.

     These dresses are extreme examples of recycling - just novelties.  I'll bet you have enjoyed recycled items throughout your life, but you didn't look at them as having come from trash.  What mom hasn't handed down clothing to the next child in line?  My mother salvaged buttons from clothes that could be recycled no more.  My grandmother made pillow cases and doll clothes from cotton feed sacks.  Diapers made fantastic cleaning rags once babies were potty trained.  You can't say that about Pampers!  Crazy quilts came from any old rag or scrap of lace.     

          

  Recycling is a beautiful thing.             

Blood Suckers

     Hainesport sponsored its semiannual clean up this past Saturday, April 20, 2013.  Residents were encouraged to bring paint, car batteries, up to four tires, propane tanks, furniture, wood, appliances, computers and peripherals, and other household junk to the Broad Street Community Center.  Everything collected was either taken to the dump or properly recycled.
     My friend, Claudia O'Malley, Principal Biologist at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, has reminded me on a couple of occasions that outdoor clean up is a must.  She points out that having junk lying around provides places for water to collect.  Stagnant water is a breeding ground for mosquitoes.  Besides being incredibly annoying, mosquitoes transmit parasites and disease to humans and animals.  The Asian Tiger Mosquito is the baddest of the bad because its preferred habitat is not low, wet areas but areas where humans reside, i.e., back yards.  Unlike other mosquitoes that are active and biting at dawn and dusk, the Asian Tiger Mosquito attacks 24/7.
     Here is the information Claudia sent to me:  
   
     The Asian Tiger Mosquito (Aedes albopictus) is an invasive species.  As the common name suggests, it is a native of Asia, specifically Japan.  It was introduced into the U.S. in 1985, in Houston, Texas.  It probably came into this country in the egg stage, in used tires slated for the retread industry.  Since then, it has spread significantly (it has been present in NJ since 1992) and is quite a problem.  Originally a tree hole mosquito, Aedes albopictus has adapted and utilizes artificial containers as well as tree holes in which to deposit its eggs.  These eggs must undergo a period of drying before they hatch, and can remain dry and dormant for years.  When the receptacle in which the eggs have been deposited floods, usually as a result of rainfall, the eggs hatch.  During the heat of summer, it only takes about 5 to 7 days for the life cycle of egg, larva, pupa, and adult to complete.  The problem with Aedes albopictus is that it will utilize any container capable of holding water – even something as small as a discarded bottle cap.  Saucers under plants, tarps covering woodpiles or boats, clogged rain gutters, children’s toys, trash such as bottles and cans – all of these can and do serve as sites of larval production for this species of mosquito.  This is an urban/suburban mosquito, and once it is established in an area, it is exceedingly difficult to eradicate.  It requires extreme vigilance on the part of everyone in a neighborhood in order to attain control.  If any kind of receptacle is left lying about, the Asian Tiger Mosquito WILL use it as a breeding site.  Unlike most mosquito species, which are active at dawn and dusk, the Asian Tiger Mosquito is active during the day.  It’s a very aggressive biter, and mammals are its preferred source of blood meals.  They tend to go for the ankles on humans.  In addition to being a plain old nuisance, the Asian Tiger Mosquito can serve as a vector of several diseases, including West Nile virus, dengue,  and St. Louis encephalitis, and it can also transmit Dirofilaria immitus, the parasite which causes heartworm in dogs.

Aedes albopictus

     The old joke says the New Jersey state bird is the mosquito.  Keep things clean and dry and maybe, when the jokesters again refer to our state bird, it will be a creature with a beak instead of a proboscis.         

Put a Little Love in Your Heart

     After a day of following the pursuit and capture of Dzhokar Tsarnaev, I need to change my frame of mind.  This article about a loving dad who draws a daily cartoon on  his kids' lunch bags did the trick.
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2013/04/19/dad-illustrates-kids-sandwich-bags-with-imaginative-drawings/
     David LaFerriere says he is the parent designated to make school lunches.  One day he saw a Sharpie and impulsively doodled on the sandwich bags.  The kids were so excited by what they found at lunch time that LaFerriere decorated the bags each day thereafter.  He says, as a graphic artist, the cartoons get his creative juices going in the morning.  Eventually LaFerriere began posting photos of his lunch bags on Flickr.  Use this link to check out over 1,000 sandwich bags:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlaferriere/sets/72157605053629580/  I can't show examples here because Mr. LaFerriere has coyrighted all his bag art.  My favorite bags include the sandwich stamped and addressed as a letter, the sandwich sliced in half that is sutured back together, and the sandwich with the tree growing out of the top crust and the root system below, running all through the bread.
     So, let's all feel the love and share the love.  If you can't love, try just tolerating.  Maybe Jackie DeShannon will help things along - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMj7UcjPZ0U   
   

Déja Vù

     I was watching some "Mad Men" DVD's yesterday, and I was transported back to a time when men were jerks, women hadn't been liberated, and we mostly listened to British popular music. Dusty Springfield's "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" ended one episode of the show.
     Dusty was a white Supreme with her big, blonde hair, eye liner, and evening gowns.  She was most popular during the mid-1960's.  I remember a handful of hit songs, then Dusty seemed to disappear.  Actually, she continued working until 1995, recording with Elton John and the Pet Shop Boys.  She also lent her voice to movies and television commercials.  She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1994 and died in 1999.  Her life was a tempestuous one.  She developed addictions to alcohol and drugs.  She resorted to cutting herself and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She came out as a lesbian but said, "I basically want to be straight ... I go from men to women ... I can't love a man.  Now, that's my hang-up ... They frighten me."  Her relationships with women were never stable.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dusty_Springfield
     As I listened to the "Mad Men" closing, I sang along with "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me."  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9NY3P1QwWw  That voice.  Wait a minute.  That voice made me think of another voice - Adele's voice.  Are Dusty Springfield and Adele just singers in the same genre, or is there something more?

Adel's "Someone Like You" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbXnLn5-7MA

     Though Adele says the Spice Girls were her biggest influence along with Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald,  I hear someone else.  Does anyone else hear it?

Free to a Good Home

     I am extremely handy.  Unfortunately, I am also extremely eager to get a job done.  The combination of these traits is sometimes a recipe for disaster.  Yesterday, I got a message from my aged Epson RX500 printer that said, "Parts inside the printer have reached the end of their service life."  Never believe a message from Epson.  They are notorious for warning customers to buy new stuff when the old stuff will soldier on for ages.  I started researching the cause of the warning and the fix.
     I learned that printers discharge ink during start up and cleaning cycles.  The excess ink is channeled to an absorbent pad in the bottom of the printer.  Once the pad is full, it can overflow and leak outside the unit.  Beside making a mess, leakage could do some real damage.  Epson has determined a specific number of pages they will allow their units to crank out.  When the page counter reaches the magic number, the printer shuts itself down.  There are free programs "out there" for resetting the counter and restarting your printer.  A reset is only half the fix.  The pad also has to be cleaned or replaced.
     This is where I got into trouble.  I looked inside my printer, in the area of the print head, and saw a reservoir of ink with a spongy pad.  I assumed this was the pad that should be cleaned, so I grabbed it with a pair of chop sticks (damn, the Asian friend who taught me to eat with those things).  As soon as I grabbed the pad, it broken into pieces.  Also, some plastic stuff, that edged the little well in which the pad sat, had come loose.  I picked it up as neatly as I would pick up a single grain of rice.  Then I swabbed out the reservoir with paper towels until it was as dry as a bone.  That was when I started to wonder if I was "cleaning" in the proper place.
     I googled "where is the ink overflow pad located in Epson printers?"  It isn't near the print head.  It's on the floor of the unit, accessible (barely) by going through the back of the device.  Instead of cleaning the overflow pad, I had destroyed the capping unit that keeps the print head moist.  Oops!  I wish I had found this tutorial sooner:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwylF5dHgY4  This YouTube video demonstrates how to extend the ink overflow tube with aquarium supplies. Once the tube is lengthened, it is attached to a plastic bottle.  That bottle can be emptied, and the page counter can be reset on into perpetuity.  If I hadn't been in such a hurry, I might have been able to rig up my printer to spue ink harmlessly forever.
     My Epson 500 is headed for proper recycling .  The really annoying part of this whole episode is  I have lots of replacement ink cartridges stashed away.  Guaranteed, they won't be compatible with any printer on the market these days.  If anybody out there could use some T048 series cartridges, they are free to a good home.  Contact me at happyinhainesport@yahoo.com.
           

A Very Specific Shade of Gray

     I just painted up a batch of four trash picked chairs.  I've noticed a lot of gray shabby chic furniture, so I mixed up a batch of gray paint.  There's nothing scientific about it.  Just dump a little black paint into the white paint.  I also added some black paint to the primer.

Here they are, sanded and ready for primer.  Some of the seats had slight splits.  I took the easy way out and filled the gaps with wood glue.   This led to a happy accident.  The glue caused the primer to crackle.  I've been paying top dollar for crackle medium.  Does glue do the same thing cheaper?  Sort of.  The glue does an okay job, but real crackle medium does a superior job.  If you use glue, use a heavy layer of glue and paint over the glue while it's still wet, painting over the glue with one brush stroke.  The results are not as good if you brush over the glue multiple times.

After priming, I painted glue on the chairs in random locations.

It's hard to see the crackle detail because the paint layers are gray paint on gray primer.  Crackle works best when the underlying layer is a contrasting color, or if it's bare wood.

I hammered a nail into each leg to raise the chair.   That allows you to paint the bottom of the legs. 

The rose stencil was free from this site: http://www.fashionfrog.com/free-stencils/stencil-053/

Here is the finished rose.  That's a little crackle on the edge of the seat.

Yard Sale!!