Sugar kills
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| Marshmallows and Strawberry Twizzlers for bait. We are over-run with raccoons. |
Dog walk
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| I could only find one leash. I made do. |
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| My arms are significantly longer than they were this morning. Three miles is NOTHING to those dogs. |
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| All bow down before King Joe. One nice thing about 2,4-D is that you can quickly tell where you sprayed and where you missed. This is five hours after spraying and it was a cool day. |
Sun intensity
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| Mayapple |
Springtime ephemerals (flowers) don't grow in the shade. They grow in the sunlight before deciduous trees' leaves come out.
I downloaded a free light-meter app on my phone and measured some light levels. Using a horizontal, white sheet of paper as a target I measured 230,000 Lux on a slightly hazy day at 2:00 EST. I got 150,000 Lux under the Northern Red Oak and 11,000 Lux in the shade of dense evergreens.
Some gardeners put a huge amount of effort into having four layers of leaves intercept sunlight. They model after a forest with a canopy, short trees, brush and then ephemerals.
My gut feel is that much of that is a waste of time. 11k/230k tells me that only 1/20th of the solar energy is available beneath the canopy after the tallest trees leaf out.
What lower levels can do, however, is they can speed recovery when one of the canopy super-trees dies or blows over.
Wood
There is a government funded construction project going on in town.
This ten-yard dumpster is almost full of treated 2X6 "shorts". My guess is that they are 42" long. They would make fabulous stairs.
Women
Casa ERJ will be bereft of feminine influence for a week.
Mrs ERJ is still in un-named state continuing her tender ministrations as an angle of mercy.
Belladonna is flying (on a plane) down to Florida for the week she has between classes.
Kubota and I will be bachelors for a bit.
I hate to see a bunch of drops like that. Read 96", rounded to 10', couldn't source 2x6x10, so got a shitload of 2x6x12, is my guess. Idiots.
ReplyDeleteAren't you concerned about your dogs getting into that Connibear ?
ReplyDeleteThe only time the dogs are not under "control" is when I walk them out to the kennel in the morning. I let them both out and I issue "Kennel" as the command.
DeleteWe have gotten into the habit where they run past the kennel and check out a woodchuck hole twenty yards west of the kennel.
At night I bring them in one-at-a-time on a leash.
We also have a 100' line stretched from the door to a post and they get clipped to the line, one at a time, to make one last nightly piss break.
I do have a couple of barn cats. They are not mine, they just live there. I tolerate them and they tolerate me. If they want to eat marshmallows and twizzlers then they deserve what they get.
I didn't use to tolerate barn-cats but ticks have become a problem and I need something to keep a lid on the ground squirrel population.
Barn cats are extremely useful. Just spay and neuter. Your dogs are gorgeous. I've had shepherds my whole life. They're the only dog for me. I like my friends dogs but there's something in a German Shepherd that other dogs ain't got.
ReplyDelete99% of the barn cats we had were 100% feral and could (almost) never be caught
DeleteI always get the angle of Mercy, what I wish for is the Angel of Mercy...
ReplyDeleteproject dumpster~
ReplyDeleteI drop by during business hours- ask first person I see, can I have those off the top?
If yes~ proceed. If unsure- ask for job trailer. Point out you just want what's easy to grab (not jacking around with the "unsafe digging"). Never been turned down.
Also consider Never hurts to have a handy $10 or $20 as sweetener and/or Thanks!
Good Luck :)
C.M.Spiffy
Would you have another angle on the trap? This suburban guy doesn't quite recognize the mechanics. (or a link).
ReplyDeleteFor our raccoon problem, I used a Havahart live trap baited with those Jet Puff mini marshmallows. Caught and released 8 of the critters in forest service land 20 miles from home. Also caught several Possums the same way, same outcome.
ReplyDeleteBad thing with killing them is then ya gotta git rid of the body. I'm too lazy and the shape of a shovel handle doesn't fit my hands anymore.
Thanks, they were too smart (or experienced) for my live trap but now I'll try marshmallows.
DeleteThat's a LOT of good wood getting wasted...sigh And yes, Shepherds HAVE to be under control or leashed.
ReplyDeleteAs a site superintendent before I retired, I've had many people ask me to go through my site dumpster. My reply has always been #1, don't make a mess and #2, we're not responsible for any accidents. Most of them were scrapers looking for metals. Couldn't give pallets or demoed cabinets away.
DeleteHummingbirds are back in zip code 49112
ReplyDelete