Wanted - White Lamb's Ear Plant

I believe this is a White Lamb's Ear plant, however, my Google searches are not finding this plant nor is it finding the Pink Lamb's Ear plant, of which we have oodles.

This lone plant pictured above is growing all alone in a garden not too far from our house. It would make a nice addition to the same pink plants we have.

So, if you or someone you know has any of this purdy flower available, for sale or trade, we'd be interested. Also, if this is not a Lamb's Ear plant and you know what it is, enlighten me please!

BP96-01795A (P132W)

This is the lamp (bulb) from our Samsung HL-T5676S DLP TV. As you can see half of it has a foggy gloss on the inside of the bulb, which doesn't make for a clear picture.

"Apparently, lamps used in DLP TVs have a limited lifespan. SO, for the best screen quality it needs to be replaced periodically. It should be replaced when the screen becomes darker and less clear. After replacing, the screen quality will be bright and clear as new."

The above it all true, I've experienced it.

Of course the lamp decided to let us know it needed replacing during the Boston Bruin's playoff run. At the time I just thought it was really, really dark at the game, DOH!

Google and the Internet are my friends, and I was able to find a replacement bulb with USPS first class shipping for under sixty bucks. It arrived yesterday and I installed it in short order and as Samsung claims, the screen quality is now bright and clear as new. Sadly, hockey season is over and I don't need to see a clear picture of Dr. Oz but we're ready for hockey season to begin come the fall...

Looking For Loving Homes

Hi All,

We're looking to find loving and caring homes for the following lovely, cuddly, cute, adorable, friendly 2011 youngsters!



The Mini Lop bunnies above are four weeks old today, and the Buff Orpington chicks below are two months old.



Also available are (2) Americana "Easter Egg" hens and (4) adult Mini Lop rabbits all females.

Need to rotate and make room for the newbies, not to mention that we're getting eaten out of house and home! After all, 16 chickens and 12 rabbits is just too much, right!

First Bunch of Radishes Picked

Our radishes are ready. These little fellers don't take too long to grow, about 20 days and we have oodles of them. The rabbits love the tops too, so we're all making out with some fresh veggies!

Sweet Potato Vine Pest

As I indicated in an earlier post, JoAnne and I got creative this year and made our own menagerie of flowering pots. I don't have the exact number but it was somewhere in the area of 15 - 20, that are now spread around our yard.

One of the plants that we really like, along with the licorice plant, is the potato vine. The golden color along grabs your attention, not to mention how the vine grows and spreads with ease. These make super accents to any flower pot, even stand alone.

This year, however, I noticed that something was eating and and leaving small holes throughout the leaves. Well, upon further inspection I came across the beetles in the pictures below, which are Tortoise Beetles. These are pretty handsome little beetles, as far as beetles goes. This, along with the fact that they really don't do too much damage, means that I can't let them be and enjoy them rather than spend time catching and squishing them.

Looked like these two were getting to know each other a little bit, wink wink...



This particular beetle flew off during our photo shot but I was able to track him onto the leaf of our honeysuckle vine plant.

Happy Birthday JJ!

Happy Birthday My Dear!

You're getting better with age!

Find The Critter

Can you find the critter in the above picture?

And We're Off, Finally...

Our deck remodeling project has finally begun, hooray!

Since the floor joists and support posts are still in great condition, we decided to simply replace the floor decking. JoAnne got a fantastic deal on the grey composite decking. This was a couple seasons ago and we've been storing these (14) 20 footers in the garage since. It is SO nice to have these removed finally!

The picture pretty much shows where we're at. Not much progress has been made since 06/14. This is large part due to my building partner taking off to go back home to Miami...

Half is better than nothing right?!

Stay tuned...

I Have A Conundrum

OK, what's the deal with woman's panties?

Now, hold on one second here! It's not what you're thinking, so DON'T go there! Let me explain...

I have the darnedest time trying to figure out right-side-out versus inside-out and which of the three holes is the waist band when trying to hang or fold them after being laundered. I don't have this problem with my tighty-whities. Is there some sort of secret or am I just clueless?! Do woman experience these same frustrations with their own skivies? I'm SO confused...

One VERY important thing to note here - I'm referring to my wife's knickers!

Crown Me!

I received a call from my dentist a couple weeks ago letting me know that my permanent crown was in, hooray!

We scheduled an appointment, which was yesterday morning at 9:30AM, to have the sucker installed, hip hooray!

I was in and out in 20 minutes sporting my brandy new and of course, expensive, crown, hip hip hooray!

I can now chew on the right-side of my mouth, finally! You try going 3+ weeks without chewing on one side of your mouth! I bet you can't do it. However, you'd be able to if your temporary crown was bitten off and the exposed tooth (what remained of your tooth actually) was a tad (!) sensitive to hot and cold.

Go ahead, give it a try. I dare you! Better yet I double-dog dare you!!

DITTO!

Ah, it sure is GREAT being a Boston Bruins fan!

Actually, it sure is GREAT being a New England sports fan.

We're living in title town folks, see -

Find The Critter

Can you find the critter in the above photo?

Pool (Birdie) Poop, What Else...

Our pool, with it's new liner, is up and running and looking great so far this season! It's far too cold for me but Emilie has already been in it at least a dozen times now and loves it!

This year, however, we're having a rather strange and nasty issue, which is shown in the photo above. All along the edges of the pool is bird poop. It's the weirdest thing. I've yet to figure out what type of bird(s) is responsible for this yucky, mess but am leaning towards the "Common Grackle", and why along the pool edges only. Perhaps, they're after the insects that fall into to water, dunno I'm puzzled.

Seems like I wash it off, they see it clean and return to deposit more. Not sure what to do at this point. If I only had a pool girl, she could keep watch and shoo em away while sun bathing, oh er I mean while she's tending to the pool...

STOP THE PRESSES, STOP THE PRESSES!!

Anyway, I just did a quick Google search and came across a pool spa forum that had many, many pool owners complaining about the same problem. Turns out the poop is actually what's called a "fecal sac". A fecal sac is a mucous membrane, generally white or clear with a dark end, that surrounds the feces of some species of nestling birds. It allows parent birds to more easily remove fecal material from the nest. Pretty interesting huh, who would have thunk?!? Apparently, the young birds will stop producing this fecal sac shortly before they leave (fledge) the nest, which can't be soon enough!

Oh, It's On Now!

Wednesday June 8th was the first time this gardening season that I saw a Woodchuck milling about at the edge of our backyard. He was bold enough to venture just a few feet from the cover of the wooded over growth and onto a patch of clover where he nibbled a while. Of course the bugger ate two of our Queen Anne's Lace plants on his way to the clover patch, of which there are very few this year - STRIKE 1!

Friday June 10th I received a text message from JoAnne with an attached picture (see after picture below) that read, "Oh Uh...". The sumbeach got the courage to venture approx 50' into our side yard and helped himself to a beautiful, softball size head of broccolli that we were just days from picking - STRIKE 2 and STRIKE 3!!

Before -

After -


That dude isn't gonna know what hit him...

Peep, Peep, Peep - Update

Well, here are the Buff Oprington chicks that I purchased back in May. They're almost eight weeks old now and doing just fine. These were supposed to be ten little ladies (pullets), however, there appears to be a little boy (cockerel) in the bunch.

Bad, Very Bad...

Rather worn, very worn!

We're talking about a steering shaft assembly and a sector gear for a 2000 Craftsman lawn tractor.

The "teeth" on these parts were pretty worn out, so much so that the I was unable to steer the tractor. The steering wheel just spun round and round and round. The timing was good, sort of, in that my brother was up for a visit and helped removed these old parts. However, the replacement parts arrived after he returned home but in the end I was able to install the new parts and reassemble all that was removed with only one "extra" part, a washer. Let's hope it wasn't too important...

My reward for fixing the lawn tractor was 3+ hours of getting to sit on it while I mowed (3) lawns, UUGH!

Scrap Metal Recycling, #5 - NOT The End

Truck load # 5 - These items again came from all over - basement, shed and the yard. Surprising what you find in the nooks and crannies; items stored many years ago.

The total weight of said scrap metal was 580 LBS!

Remember the following statement of mine back in my August 08, 2010 posting - "That's it, this was the last trip. Although, I'm sure thare are more metal items lying around just not enough to justify a 5th trip." Well, I was wrong about not enough to justify a 5th trip; 580 lbs wrongs!

The grand total weight for all five trips is - 3720 LBS!

The Cat Must GO!

Our cat Gracie does this ALL the time, YUCK!

Of course it's never in the same spot twice and never when she's outside. She appears to prefer and wait until she's back inside before ralphing all over. Damn thing even jumped onto my work bench and barf'd on my Royobi cordless drill (actually it's really my brother's drill :-0 but please don't tell him...)

Anyway, I'm getting tired; sick and tired actually, of having to have JoAnne clean this mess up all the time. It's really unfair to her.

The cat must GO!!

Baby Bunny Time of Year

Our Moe and Jasmin both had a litter of bunnies the beginning of June (1st & 4th). Moe, who is 2-years old and the mother of Jasmin, had (5) plump babies. Jasmin, who is 1-year old and a first time mother, had (6) tiny babies.

Moe is the bunny that JoAnne and Emilie hand raised when her mother (since rehomed) refused to care for her litter. She is the friendliest and calmest rabbit I've ever encountered. I can only guess that it's a result of being bottled fed and held constantly when she was tiny. She has all the natural instincts when it comes to rearing a family and is a fantastic mother.

Moe with nest in background -


Moe's babies today (approx 2-weeks old) -


Sadly, Jasmin on the other hand is NOT a good mother at all (to be rehomed soon). She didn't pull any hair to make a nest prior to giving birth and the babies were scattered and looked to be laying where she delivered them. She did try pulling some hair at one point afterwards but she'd sit or walk on them and wasn't feeding them. Unfortunately, and as a result, five of the six babies didn't make it.

The good news is that we were able to sneak the sixth one in with Moe's litter. She either couldn't tell (unlikely) or didn't mind and accepted the little fella as one of her own. Although much smaller than Moe's babies it's doing just fine.

Jasmin with a mouth full of hair -


Jasmin's litter -

They Did It and I Never Doubted It!!

Congratulations to MY Boston Bruins!!

Doubled My Donation!

Pumped out another Double Red Cell donation last night.

16 weeks and I'll be ready to go again.

Flowering Rhubarb

It's been a couple months now since I divided our rhubarb into three separate plants and relocated. All three are doing just fine and growing as if they've been in their new locations for years now. I'm convinced that you can't kill this plant.

Today, two of the three plants are flowering, which is a first for this original and these newly divided plants. Since I'm not a big rhubarb eating fan, I'm gonna leave the flowers alone as they're quite impressive. I've read that doing so reduces the vigor of the plant and shortens it's stalk producing season but, again, I'm really only growing it as an ornamental, so no worries.

Find The Critter

Can you find the critter in the above picture?

I believe this is a Song Sparrow.

We had a pair nesting in one of the scrubs in our front yard. Never could find it but once the babies were old enough to move out of the nest the parents were always nearby and talking up a storm. I'd see them all the time carrying some insect meal to the babies. They have a melodious song that is wonderful to listen to.

These beauties are always welcome at the ole homestead! However, their counter parts, the House Sparrows are NOT but they won't listen to me! Talk about from one extreme to another. I don't have a single good word to say about the later. They're dirty, scavengers that nest in colonies, make a racket and are nothing more than pests.

Funny, as I write this there is a Song Sparrow sitting in one of our front shrubs singing away. Do you think they know I'm writing about them, HMMM?

And So It Begins...

We opened our pool this past Memorial Day weekend. Well, opening really isn't accurate, as it's not yet swimable. We did get the cover removed, washed, folded and stored for the season. The water is a tad green, as you can see, but just a tad... Some of the chemicals have been added, so now we wait for them to take effect and kill off most of the algae before turning on the pump and filter. Soon, very soon, it'll be ready for swimming.





Of course I now have additional chores to take care of with the pool opening, i.e. skimming, vacuuming, chemical handling, testing, aka mad scientist, etc. The work never ends but at least these chores bring a HUGH smile to Emilie's face, which makes it all worth it!

P.S. Please don't pay any attention to the pool fencing. It is a mess and in dire need of replacing, just waiting to hit the lottery...