In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 46 of 1154
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
I want my allergies to go away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also would like to be able to heat this azzhat place without my idiot landlady flipping out.
Man.... I can't wait to hear that you finally got out of there. I've had some pretty terrible apartment management in my life, but I couldn't deal with what you're going through right now. I said I'd never rent again after I got out of my last apartment and they weren't half as bad as yours are. :(
It's still cold up by you?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Neither can I Jack. Neither can I.
That's why I want to move into an apartment so I am not under someone else's thumb. I can heat and cook and whatever how I want to.
It's Spring in BC which means on the Lower Mainland where I am rain. Which is what we got today and it is not a warm rain but cold. So, yeah I am still cold in this place.
Environment Canada is predicting a long dry, hot summer. Which will be a welcome relief to me. Bad for forest fires in my province and possibly other parts of the country. But I will welcome the heat as my allergies will go away.
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Well either my landlady or her husband decided to take it on themselves to deliver my mail and my neighbour's. He meaning my neighbour leaves his for days on end. I would have probably picked mine up tomorrow after I got back from doing my washing.
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Quote:I'm sure someone has told you this already, but if your allergies are worse in wet weather, it's probably due to mold, and not pollen. Possibly cherry blossoms just signal weather that's warm enough for the mold to start sprouting!
Environment Canada is predicting a long dry, hot summer. Which will be a welcome relief to me. Bad for forest fires in my province and possibly other parts of the country. But I will welcome the heat as my allergies will go away.
Yanno BRENDA, I feel that Vancouver is just not going to be the place to find reasonably-priced housing, at least not until Chinese buyers stop bidding up real estate prices so ridiculously. I know that you used to live in Edmondton, but with rising oil prices, home prices are going up too ... altho not anywhere near as ridiculous as the Vancouver area! Is it possible to move someplace else? Do you have a friend that you can stay with for a few months? Because with RE prices are they are, I think that with you trying to find decent affordable housing where you are, you're just swimming against the tide.
*******
In the meantime, "Dave" called me up from his new home in Idaho, and he sounds like a different person! Living as he was in LA .... where life is difficult at ANY income level! ... he was just being swirled around the temporary-housing bureaucracy, and in a situation where it was difficult for him to know what to do because, well, frankly ... most of the factors of his life were out of his hands anyway.
He sounded happy and confident, whereas before he was always so very, very careful not to offend, to be meek and grateful no matter how much he was kicked around. So he has a job, he knows how to do it, and it's clear to him what he needs to do to survive decently. The differences between "here" and "there" - more work; housing much much much cheaper; and wages not depressed by a large population of illegal immigrants. Plus, the intangibles: It's pretty and peaceful. I DID warn him about winter, tho! That's something he has yet to experience!
As I gathered from conversation he had never been out of LA before and was hesitant to leave, but the beauty of Idaho just blew him away. There's a place where I mow the lawn, and there are two horses there just waiting for me to feed them. _____, it's just so beautiful he said. I'm so happy for him, I hope things will continue to go well. He always has a job here, but honest to god, why would anyone move back to LA if you can go someplace else???
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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It probably is mold now but it does start off as pollen allergies.
It is not possible for me to go back to Alberta financially.
And no there is no one that I can stay with until I can find another place. I've already mentioned that to people and they just turn me down.
I can't move out of the area as I need transportation. I do not drive and bus service is not good when you get out into the valley also that would just isolate me. Not good for someone who suffers from mild depression.
I'm glad Dave is doing good though. I'm happy that is on a better track and happy.
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Well, yes, I thought of some alternatives for you then canceled them out because of your need for transportation. (Long story but if you're interested I'll tell you what they were.)
You also mentioned that you work for a lady somewhere? Is your job of critical importance also? Or do you think it can be replaced readily? Are there any other factors - like (a) doctor(s) who know your history - that tie you to that specific area? Because right now, you're facing a human wave of Chinese billionaires competing for living space, and until that stops (and that will only stop when you have a real estate crash) it will be very difficult to find affordable housing alternatives.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Well, "Dave" worked for us for about 4.5 hours one day a week (from 9-2, with about 30 minutes for lunch), and he kept the place in pretty good shape. I figure if I work about a an hour a day (in the AM, when it's cool) I can keep it up, and even make some progress.
So far, the plan has been working OK, but I'm definitely going to have to hone my handyman (er, "handywoman"?) skills. Some ahole broke off an irrigation sprinkler, and unfortunately part of the "riser" thread was still stuck in the threaded "T". I tried turning it out with pliers and then making a sort of home-made easyout with a chisel which didn't work, but fortunately when shopping for replacement parts (couplers, riser, T, and glue) I found an easyout for irrigation risers, yay! That little piece was really stuck, I had to get s small piece of pipe to extend the handle of the easyout and kinda bent the handle a little, but come out it eventually did. I have a feeling that by next month I'll know everything there is to know about irrigation systems and how to fix them.
I managed to lever some 3' X 1' X 4" slabs of concrete over into the veggie garden as walkways, designed and installed some "rose trellises" from heavy-duty shelf supports attached to the block wall and 6' posts attached to the supports, and sprayed the avocado trees with Neem oil (first time they've ever been sprayed for persea mites; I used a pump-sprayer but before next weekend I'll have to fix the hose end so I can use a hose-end sprayer).
Planted four tomatoes, four eggplant, two basil, one bu chives, two zucchini, and one cantaloupe. Oh, and I trimmed and picked my Christmas lima beans (planted last winter) and gathered about 1.5 pounds. If we had to live off the garden, we'd starve, but I'm developing my "farmer" skills.
One of the things I realized is that - despite my age, aches and pains, and health issues - I still LIKE "doing things"! My happiest times as a chemist were in the lab, fixing/tweaking instruments and attempting new methods. It was something I missed when I was promoted and got buried in endless reams of paperwork and data files. I had to learn to work THRU other people .... no matter how good a person is, they can never do the work of a dozen other people ... and so the role of a supervisor is to make those dozen other people more effective and then pick up a big broom and follow the elephant parade. Still, I guess I would rather "do things myself"; it's more fun.
There are so many things to fix/ modify this summer, starting with the irrigation system and doing some major pruning on bushes encroaching on the driveway, then somewhere in the middle repairing and washing windows and ending towards winter with cleaning off the roof, cleaning out and repairing the gutters. I realize it's "low value" work, but that's the beauty of being retired ... I don't always have to be so careful with my time; I can do some of what I want.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, yes, I thought of some alternatives for you then canceled them out because of your need for transportation. (Long story but if you're interested I'll tell you what they were.)
You also mentioned that you work for a lady somewhere? Is your job of critical importance also? Or do you think it can be replaced readily? Are there any other factors - like (a) doctor(s) who know your history - that tie you to that specific area? Because right now, you're facing a human wave of Chinese billionaires competing for living space, and until that stops (and that will only stop when you have a real estate crash) it will be very difficult to find affordable housing alternatives.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
Doctors are of importance. As I have to medical clips in my left breast from mammograms finding calcifications and they needed to do a biopsy. I am clear on that but still need to go in and get that done at my local hospital every so many months. I need to be near a neurologist if my seizure meds stop working. My family doctor knows my history.
As long as I am living where I am I do need this job. And jobs are another thing that is hard to come by when you have limited work skills. I can walk to my job.
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SIG, I like doing things too. Which is another reason for staying in this area. My mah jong group meets at least 4 times a week. That I enjoy.
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Since our gardener left for bigger and better things (Gosh, the pix he sends me of Idaho look so pretty!) I've been a lot more involved with the garden!
Right now, my poor avocados look like they're being devastated by the dastardly persea mite (Again. This is a recurring problem as the persea mite has become established in southern CA). So I did a quick spraying with Neem Oil last week, and bought some live predatory mites (Neoseiulus californicus).
Well, they arrived today and I was left puzzling over how I would distribute the damn things. First of all, they are TINY ... almost microscopic! I know because I wanted to check the delivery, so I poured it out on a piece of paper (they come mixed with vermiculite and finely-ground corncob) and saw these teeny-tiny specks running around, much MUCH smaller than the period at the end of a sentence!!
They came with small french-fry bags and the instructions say ... distribute them among the bags, staple the bags to leaves, so that the leaf reaches the bottom of the bag. This will allow the mites to crawl out of the bag.
RU effing kidding me? These are backyard avocados, not "production" avocados ... they're at least 30 feet high, and the lowest leaves are well out of reach, even with a ladder. I'm not about to reach any of the leaves, let alone staple anything to them.
Hmmm.
So I wet the tree leaves, xfered the critters (and their media) to an empty spice bottle with a "shaker" top, and taped the bottle sideways to the end of my very long avocado-picker. That way, I could hoist the bottle into the tree, rotate the picker so the bottle was upside-down, and bang the picker against a branch/ over a bunch of leaves until I saw media falling out. I'm sure I xfered SOME of the critters into the trees, I hope it was enough. I'll just have to keep checking the progress of the trees. Fingers crossed!
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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The ants, I do believe, are finally gone. :)
Amdro ant block is probably the best thing I've bought since I bought my house.
The little indoor bait traps did eventually get the ones in my living room gone, and I had even thought they were successful in getting them out of my kitchen too, but then the weather got warm there seemed to be no stopping the hoards of them coming inside. Every time I'd make a pot of coffee go back for a refill, I'd lose 5 minutes killing about 100 of them with my fingers, only to come back later and kill 100 more!
I was out on the front steps taking a break in the middle of mowing my lawn when I saw what was happening. Along my front concrete patio there were 8 trails of ants marching back and forth between the front of my house and the hasta beds. Not just a few here or there, but a constant progression of armies of them!!!!!
I took my bottle of Amdro ant block that seems to have been successfully killing the ones on the back paver patio to the front and sprinkled just a little bit at the front of the lines where the dirt met the patio and even more along side of the house. The next day there were literally thousands of ant carcasses surrounding each pile of the bait. There was still some residual marching to and fro, so I put a second application down, and by the next day there was no activity at all outside. I haven't seen a single ant in my house for days now either.
Even on the back patio where the activity was the highest and they totally decimated it by pulling up all the sand from under the pavers, the activity has slowed to a crawl. Most of the ant hills have died (the telltale sign being the holes are closed up), and all it takes is a small sprinkle of the stuff when a new one pops up and they're gone.
After two years of trying different types of poisons and even considering paying big bucks for the Orkin man to come around, a single 7 dollar bottle of the stuff was all it took. :)
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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