Monthly Archives: April 2007

Water Heater to be replaced

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Our hot water isn’t so good lately. Actually it’s been declining for awhile, and recently took a big leap downhill. We have a new water heater scheduled to go in on Saturday — and if that takes place … hot showers again (I mean “just hot enough” for “as long as one likes” within reason.)

It also means, enough hot water to wash out three cast iron pans in a row in the kitchen.

As well it means that we can run hot and sanitize type loads in the washer again.

Running the dishwasher will be better too, it needs hot water and when that is running, you can forget about having any hot water from any other room. I do not mean you can’t get any hot water in any other room, but if there is any, you’d be stealing it from the dishwasher if you did use it.

As it is there is some hot water if nothing has accessed it for a bit. Here’s the deal, in garden tub terms: to fill up my tub it should be that I could load a nice warm bath as deep as it can go and not run out of hot water, even have a decently hot bath — at least a totally soakable enjoyable experience right away. It should be possible for something else to be using hot water from the tap at the same time, within reason.

Now how it is: Turn the tap on and the hot water starts, and it’s hot, no doubt, but it’s not too hot to stick your foot into. Let the hot water run into the garden tub by itself until the water turns to cool. What you are left with is a few inches of water that you can sit in. (Ladies who have given birth particularly will know this as a “sitz bath”)

It’s purely not much fun, being pregnant and wanting a nice warm bath takes over a half-hour to attain soakability beginnings. One must wait about 15-20 minutes, if no one else is using hot water, to get enough warm enough water to fill the tub the rest of the way. At no time is one even having to use the “cold water” tap in the tub, the water is never “too hot”

Like in the kitchen sink, the furthest faucet from the water heater, one turns on the hot water and waits a bit for it to come and when it does, it’s just straight from the hot water tap to rinse out something, wash ones hands, etc. No cold water is used except for when one wants plain cold water. Warm water is attainable by running the hot water for just a short while.

It’s like we have a “5-10 gallon warm to very, very, very warm water heater” :rolleyes: .

Our current tank is going on in age, it’ll be 10-years-old near the end of the year. It’s a 40-gallon tank, which isn’t quite enough for our family size. A much bigger tank would be preferred, but just some bigger is better by far. We are getting a 50-gallon tank installed.

Both hubby and I are interested in tankless water heaters, but we don’t get gas service here, don’t have a propane tank for the house. :( I sure wish we did have that ability, then we could have a gas stove as well. :)

So when I speak of stoves and water heaters, I am talking “electric” from the “no choice” arena, not the “preference arena” nope.

April Freeze Damage

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I posted the other day about the “freezing weather” and wanted to post an update on the situation.

When I looked at the back yard after the sun came up Sunday mornig it was obviously “frosty” out — the grass was not the bright verdant color that is usual of late. I waited awhile for things to warm up, then waited longer … and finally set out to spy the damage or not.

The apple trees are in a sad state of affairs. They did not have that blooming pink look from afar, and getting closer it was obviously brown droopy looking, the blossoms that had opened mostly all were affected from what I could see. There are many blossom that aren’t opened yet, and I don’t want to disturb any of them yet to check for damage.

The white dogwood (in the back yard too) looked sad, the blossoms just hanging there, the leaves mostly looked alright.

The Eastern Redbud tree is close-by the dogwood, and it was totally drippy looking, the blooms had already faded before the freeze, and it was leafing out so nicely, but the leaves were so delicate, they were black and drippy looking, gooey, icky. The whole tree is full of that black sludge which used to be sweet spring leaves.

We have 3 Autumn Flame Maples in the back yard, and they are done with their bloom and have been leafing out. They are not fully leafed out yet, and the leaves are fairly small. From what I saw they look a bit droopey, but not totally affected –maybe.

We have 2 Paperbark Maples as well back there, and their little fresh leaves that have been coming out lately are super-droopey.

We have other trees that are fully leafed out already and they faired fine.

Out in our front yard the 2 Cherokee Chief Dogwoods we have faire alright, their only blooms are high up and seem pretty much unaffected.

We had planted a new tree a few weeks ago, and it began leafing out just in the last week or so. It’s leaves are pretty much like the Eastern Redbud that I described above, drippy and black-ish. :sad:

My Hostas were coming up, quite large and lovely, and they are brown sludge now. :sad:

The peonies have been putting out growth and they seem alright, we’ll see later. There are a few buds starting and time will tell.

The little irises I have have been growing up, but they look a bit dippy, it’s just the “leaf” part, no buds or blooms started yet.

The Japanese ‘Bloodgood’ Maple is fully leafed out, but the leaves aren’t as big as they’ll eventually get, and they look a tad relaxed. Time will tell whether or not they rebound with strength this week.

That’s most of the damage.

The weather was forecasted to be very much below freezing last night, but I didn’t check the forecast as nighttime drew closer. We did not have freezing temps, probably 39 in reality as a low, if not a bit higher. So there shouldn’t be any further damage to what’s left.

I haven’t seen a Spring Freeze like this since being in GA, and before that I was in S. FL for many years. So I don’t have any experience regarding what will occur. I have seen trees drop their leaves in Summer from drought, and re-grow some later on, FWIW. We had long drought conditions in past years on this property, but that’s not been the case for a little while now. I was looking forward to a vigorous growing season all around, trees, flowers, garden, and it’s the phrase of April now, “time will tell” — time being “the progressive movement of the season” –not the ‘clock’ sort of time. :)

April Freeze and Gardening 2007

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From Friday night to Saturday morning it was supposed to be really cold, just below freezing. I don’t think that actually happened on our property … yes it was cold, but not quite to freezing, from how the grass and blooms and herbs and such look in our yard(s) as of Saturday afternoon …

Now it’s the Saturday night to Sunday morning freeze warning time, and temperatures are supposed to be even lower, in the 20′s tonight/morning as well as tommorow night (Sunday to Monday AM.)

One clue for “how cold is it right now” that I employ to reason about what’s going on outside is the heat pump, which sits outside on the ground with pipes going into the house and up the wall into the attic space … and that’s right behind our master bedroom, right where the bed is situated, of course (the only “real placement” for the bed, unfortunately.) When it’s really cold the heat pump doesn’t do a good job, the closer it gets to freezing, there isn’t enough “warmth” in the air to pull it into the house for warmth inside via the houses air system. It makes a horrid racket when it’s actually freezing or lower and the heat pump is running.

Friday to Saturday it sounded similar to how it sounds right now. It’s the Saturday to Sunday time currently, 5:30am approx. and accuweather “says” right now it’s 28 degrees. Well that’s not exactly right, since our property doesn’t have a weather station nearby, and when I have had a decent temperature gauge for outdoors I was able to compare and know for sure that our temps here are not the same as what ‘they’ say (nor actual weather, like clouds, rain, snow, etc.)

So we are waiting for the daylight hours to see what it’s like outdoors, and I hope things will be alright. We have three dwarf apple trees that don’t always bloom so nice. Guess what? They sure are THIS year, ALL THREE of them at the same time. So it does figure that we have the first late cold snap ever since living here … this late, April.

Not only that, usually the two trees that are alike, Liberty variety, don’t actually “bloom” with their opened blossoms until later in April, and the third tree, MacFree variety, blooms after that (which isn’t really helpful since two varieties are needed to fertilize for apples.) There was definitely something funky going on with the MacFree and I was finally able to prune out major parts of it last year, when they suddenly got such long branches growing, it was obviously the root stock trying to take over. What’s is left untouched now is the real MacFree, as far as it seems, and this Spring 2007 is the first time it’s actually produced masses of buds.

We planted these trees in early Spring of 1998, and then did move them to another area a few years later. In any case, the Liberties have blossomed well in the past, but given us few apples. The MacFree never did blossom very well, though when it did better it was not of use to the Liberty trees. Last couple of years there were a few apples on the MacFree (so there is something else in the area that bees are using to fertilize my trees, obviously.)

Such promise I put in the apple trees this year, and then the Spring was so warm, and the trees started to form buds in March. That is not usual. We didn’t have a freeze in March really, it was regular last freeze around March 15, but nothing major, and temperatures were very warm most of the time, very warm indeed. Last (2005/2006) winter was a warm one, and things were so very mild, but the apple trees still didn’t set blooms until into April in 2006. This past winter (2006/2007) was fairly mild overall, and we didn’t have much “weather” in the way of ice or snow, no major storm at least. We did have rain more often than usual, though not so much overall. In any case, everything has been blooming so nicely this year, and that includes the apple trees, and unfortunately for them it’s not a good thing this year. :sad:

Dogwoods are blooming right now too. The Cherokee Chief variety we have in the front don’t have a lot of blooms, but where they do is at the top and they are lovely (we need to do some work on those trees, pruning.) We have a white dogwood in the backyard and it’s in full glory of bloom. It’s gorgeous. Driving around the area, Dogwoods are bursting forth in massive color and bloom. It’s a grand year for Dogwoods. Or it was. We’ll see later on. :sad:

So many other plants are past bloom already and in the process of leafing out, some leafed out in full already (like our Japanese ‘Bloodgood’ Maple tree, our Weeping Willow tree, and our wild Blackberries are in full leaf and actually setting blooms and some are opening already.)

As I write this the heat pump is starting to struggle for the first time this night-time. It’s not super bad, but does sound bad enough, so it’s near 32 or below a tad … but doesn’t “sound” like it’s in the 20′s, while currently accuweather says right now it’s 28, oh I just loaded the page again and now they say “30″ but that’s where anyhow? Miles away.

Hubby did put a blanket on my herb garden (which doesn’t have much in it, but does have a super-duper verdent perennial Chives that is just about ready for harvesting — already!) — it’s the whiskey barrel garden. I have lots of new herbs to plant in it, we got them last weekend, but I didn’t plant them due to the weather outlook. So they are in the garage awaiting their time to transplant.

I have lots of seeds to start and since it did snap so cold I’m fine with the fact that I haven’t even started my seeds yet –it is something I do need to do in the next couple of days, though.

Cloth Diapering #2 (baby)

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I wrote about diapering baby and my supplies not being known if they were OK or not, basically.

Yesterday DH cleaned out the garage. It was really clogged up due to many different reasons, and it was a known thing that IF any diapers were in there, they were in the corner, which was not accessible until many things were removed from the space, starting at the opening of the garage and working backwards into it.

There were old clothes in boxes, bags, and various containers, and so many had been gotten into (those dratted country mice) –but not everything was attacked. Under one horrid bag of clothing was a basket and when we got closer to it I just “knew” it was some of my diapering things. Finally it was get-at-able and sure enough it was alright, just had to peel that horrid bag off of the top of the basket and there were my diapers, pretty much pristine, in that there was no pee-pee smells, no mousie poop at all. :)

The diapers were some newborn Chinese DSQ green prefolded, a few larger ones, and then my dearly loved Mother-Ease One-Size (Popolinos) and some Sandy’s. Also several ME diaper covers.

(I put all that in the washer and ran a huge cycle first, and then took out the covers, and have run the diapers alone on the Sanitary Cycle two times now, and will be checking them over before I put them into the dryer in a few minutes.)

Later we found more diapers, in a bit more rough shape, but I was able to save out several things that are cleanable, not chewed on at all, the higher quality things. Aussie Terry Cloth Nappies, Nappy liners (triangles of a stay-dry fabric to go between baby and any diapers), and some other things.

(I’ll be washing these things today at some point, first a heavy cold washing, then hot and sanitary at least 4 times.)

So what’s in evidence is that I do need some more diapers still, and definitely some new covers. I’m interested in the Stacinator wool covers, they come in different sizes and are a snug style, and can go over even prefolds without pins of any sort. :) I like using prefolds on newborns, and also use them some all the rest of the time of diapering, but prefer snap terry diapers over all, and also those Australian Nappy’s which are really just large square-ish terry towels that you can fold into various configurations and work on most babies as they grow and grow and grow.

I have had Aristocrat Wool Soakers in the past, but know that DH ran them in the washer wrongly and shrunk them, and if I can find them, I’d be at least one is good for a newborn now … just not the larger sizes that I had purchased so long ago.

I love those soakers, and will either get some more of them over time, and/or make my own with old wool sweaters (there are directions for that online.)

I’ll make a resource post for whatever I do use soon.

Garden 2007 #1

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We are planning our garden for this 2007 Growing Season. I have 4 Red Pepper (Sweet Bell) plants to install, but still need to get the actual garden space ready.

I have some peat starter kits to start the rest of my garden from seed. I hope to get those going today. I’ll make a list of what I’m doing and then also post updates as things progress.

We were planning on having 4 to 6 4×4 raised garden beds, and DH bought a bunch of landscape timbers from HomeDepot this morning to get started on the project this week … but when he got here, delighted with them I was, at first, but then saw they are pressure treated and that’s not the “old” way, but it’s still not “organic” so … back to HomeDepot they went.

We are now considering using Red Cedar posts that they have, pricer –but a better solution. :)

Our process for the garden will be to take off the grassy layer, use the Mantis tiller we have to loosen our clay “soil” ;) and then put some organic garden soil on top with the posts two-high surrounding the raised-ish bed. The posts are 5 ft. high, so that will make the squares we have bigger than we originally had planned, but that’s all part of it, being flexible!

We’ll have about 2 ft. between each of the squares, making first one or two, then more as needed, preferably at least four, but maybe six eventually. We might put down a pea stone surface in the 2 ft. space, with landscape fabric beneath. We have the fabric, but not the pea stone, yet.

I will have green beans on corners climbing bamboo “teepees” … and then the other veggies will go in when they are ready to be transplanted. Some of the seeds I got are “organic” but not all of them are, the others being just plain conventional. I’ll try to recall what I picked out: snow peas, peas, carrots, lettuce, … I’m blanking out now. I had many things in mind and couldn’t find representitives for everything. I’ll see what Whole Foods Market has next time we go, they had a nice selection of Organic seeds last time we were there, but I didn’t get any, unfortunately.