respublica

Getting eaten up by tiny gnats?

This is the time of year when the mean and tiny gnat-like bugs swarm around as you are outside. They bite and leave a terrible itch behind. We've been hit with them every time we go outside and everyone you see outside is waving their hand across their faces to get those bugs away. The problem is the itch, it lasts a long time and is really miserable, often leaving a welt.

But help is on the way. Last year around this time the same thing was happening with these biting gnats and a man from up near Springfield happened to be on the seminary campus and told us the best thing to do to keep them from biting. He said, go out and get some vanilla body spray and spritz it on your exposed body parts and even clothes if you want. It seems these bugs do not like the vanilla scent and will leave you alone.

So we tried this and believe me, it works. If we have that Vanilla spray on, we do not get bit. Some of our guy sem students who work on grounds just laughed when they hear this and had no intention of putting on body spray. But they weren't out helping on landscape for long before getting bit up while those of us with the Vanilla were not, that they changed their tune.

So if you're in the same boat, go get some vanilla body spray. Dollar General has had it, Walgreens, maybe Walmart, Target does. You may have to re-apply if you are outside a long time, but the bottle lasts a long time. And the good thing is, these monsters go away in a few weeks.

A question about Memorial Day

Why is this weekend so big on mattress sales?

End of the week count

We end the week like we began, mattresses and ladders on the highways

Mattresses 55

Ladders 51

Stressed? Eat Blueberries

Another study. Research at the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies found 1 cup of blueberries a day helps fight stress and reduces anxiety as well as many anti-anxiety medications and without the annoying side effects. Why? Blueberries contain high levels of the antioxidant ellagic acid and soothes the brain like valium.

It doesn't matter whether the blueberries are fresh or frozen.

Matters of size

Look at this old 1940's era Chicago trash truck-

At first glance it's just so cute. I am almost positive Dale has an old toy truck like this.

But a more serious look at this truck says a lot about how we are today. Trash hauling trucks are much much bigger than this one. There are probably many reasons why we need bigger garbage trucks today, but at the top of the list has to be how much stuff we waste. And, how much more stuff we buy we don't need which has more packaging and shorter life span before we toss it.

Ever tasted a real tomato?

A big YES! to this story on tomatoes. It should not surprise too many of us that tomatoes just do not have the flavor and texture of tomatoes from the past. Ok Ok, kids and young adults are pretty tired of hearing about how good the old days were, but in the case of tomatoes, it is true.

A traditional tomato was "big, soft, juicy and sweet." They were seasonal and came around in summer. When food scientists found a way to grow tomatoes year round and inside, the tomato came to be kind of hard, and as tasteless as wet styrofoam. I normally just shove the tomato slice off any sandwich I buy, it does nothing for the meal.

But the best way to see the difference in the traditional tomato and today's grocery store tomatoes is to grow a couple of plants yourself or go to a farmers market later this summer. The heirloom tomatoes would be a good choice to start with if you want to grow some. Such a difference.

 

Favorite picture of the day

This is so great for St. Louis. And, I'm not convinced there is anyone around here who is talking about anything else.

Gardening with landscape fabric

We have a rather sizeable vegetable garden in the lot between our house and Sieck Hall and this area is like a lot of areas on the campus, rather virgin land on which nothing but grass and weeds have taken root over the decades. It's hard to get rid of all these things, we think we've cleared them and 3 days later here they come again.

Earlier in the spring I began planting nice rows of tomatoes and peppers and squashes and onions and potatoes and covered the ground around them with straw. This helped quite a bit in keeping the weeds at bay. Now, though, that darn nutsedge grass has just filled every space it can find. Nut grass is the worst what with it's roots filled with round nuts which we can never get to the bottom of. We can pull the grasses out, but there is always some nut root left.

So yesterday when I rototilled the second half of that area, I finished by putting down black landscape fabric. The science dealing with weeds supposedly believes that weeds and grass and anything else won't grow in the dark. Weeds need light. We'll see. After laying down the fabric I started planting by cutting an X in it and sticking a plant in the opening. I did that for each plant. Then it was necessary to secure the fabric so it didn't blow away. There are several ways to do this, cover it with mulch or some such or use fabric stakes.

When Dale bought the fabric he didn't buy the securing stakes so until I get out to get them I put wet straw on top and also used a few tomato cages to hold it down. I was glad I did this when I woke up during a loud and windy thunderstorm last night.

I just hope this helps the weed issue somewhat.  With this area almost done we have Okra, baby watermelons, cantalope and acorn squash, all things we know students like.

Two road things this morning

There is a shovel in one of the lanes of 255 near Collinsville road and another ladder hit the highway on 270. The normal tallies take into account only mattresses and ladders since they are the most common items to fall. But it's often interesting to hear about other things which could be just as detrimental to your vehicle if you run into them.

Mattresses 54

Ladders 49

I'm behind in the tally

With all the graduation events we've had to be a part of in the last week, I've lost track of the number of mattresses and ladders which fell on St. Louis roads. Today I've caught up.

Mattresses 53

Ladders 48

It's moving out of college time people, mattresses are falling. It's also construction time and so down go the ladders.

More fyi on sell by date

If you should be buying snack food, or anything else for that matter, the sell by date is far far off. For instance the freshest Cheddar Chex Mix has a sell by date by March 2020. The freshest Triscuits sell by date is October 2019. So if you should be buying these kind of things with a sell by date a month or so off, they're really not fresh at all. This shocks me. The shelf life of so many things is long and I make an effort to choose things which have a long in the future date. It's worth it to pay attention to this.

The conclusion of graduation week

Graduation week is always cram packed with events, lots of coming and going. This year the weather was perfect, the constant rain stayed away, the temperatures were warm (some would say hot) but so much better than the endless chill we've had. The grounds were green and in bloom, the students in good spirits, the parents proud.

Our daughter Katie came in from DC for these days partly because she'd never attended a seminary graduation, but mostly because her church will be getting one of our graduates and a member of her church was the speaker this year.

 

This is pastor to be Nick Gonzalez, his wife Lauren and Congressman Buchon at the reception in our yard the night before.

The next night she couldn't wait to see Dad in his gown and funny hat and medallion.

In his office surrounded by his extra people things.

At the end of the ceremonies, there was lemonade and Kruta Bakery cookies which go very fast.

The worst thing I've seen all week

This story from the Smithsonian: Cheese Made from Celebrity Belly Button and Armpit Bacteria Goes on Display

What the heck?

So how does one turn the human microbiome into a chunk of cheddar?  "milk is transformed into curds by a unique starter culture or bacteria, which determines whether the cheese will ripen into a nice cheddar or a bit of gouda. It turns out that many of the bacteria used to make cheese are similar to bacteria encountered on human skin."

"Scientist and cheesemakers at the London biolab Open Cell collected bacteria from celebrity armpits, ears, noses and bellybuttons. The bacteria was then grown in the lab until suitable strains could be selected for cheesemaking."

 

And there is nothing else to say about this but, what a waste of time.

Painting the flowers yellow

Tomorrow is graduation here at Concordia Seminary and everyone has been working tirelessly to get the outdoors and indoors looking its best. Seriously, the way the staff works is just amazing. And they do it cheerfully. The grounds/landscape people which includes Gayle as the director of operations, and any number of seminary students to help her, have been going great guns.

We had the flower beds up by the chapel entrance filled with purple Alliums. But as we were standing around up there yesterday it was pretty obvious their day was over. So the question was, should we pull them out before graduation. They still had their big round ball heads on top of 4 foot tall stems, but no color. It was pull them and leave the area with nothing or....or what.

One of the students who works with Gayle is Zack Saurralt who also happens to be assigned to Holy Cross in Collinsville as a field worker. He mentioned that when he was in undergrad at Concordia Ann Arbor, a professor went out the night before graduation and spray painted spent flowers in red which is one of the school colors. We tossed that idea around and thought, why not try it. I went to our tool shed and found a can of yellow spray paint and we tried it.

It was perfect! I mean who knew? The color held up and the big flower head looked like new, just a different color from it's original. I jumped in the car and went to buy more yellow spray paint and a second student, Alarik Morris, who is also a field worker at Holy Cross did the painting. He stayed at it until he finished all four big beds. Today people who have gone by there were talking about how cool it was the Alliums changed color.

Holy Cross field workers for the win.

Who knew this would work? So fun

 

A news story I just can't deal with right now

Some of you may remember the issues we had over the years with raccoons in our yard in Collinsville. It got to the point where we had Critter Control out every year to trap and remove them. The worst year was 2013 when Critter Control took away 19 raccoons and could have been more except that we were going broke and had to put a stop to it. The last Control guy who took away the final animal told us jokingly that we may just have cleared out all the raccoons in Collinsville. This post was 2018 when we had Critter Control back and they trapped at least 7 from our yard. If you've ever been up close to a raccoon you know they aren't as cute and cuddly as cartoons and movies make them seem. They are scary.

So this story from KMOV with a headline: "Police warn dog owners about danger of 'zombie raccoons' carrying the distemper virus" is just what I think when I think about raccoons. Especially the picture accompanying the story.

The beginning of the end of the school year

This is graduation week here at Concordia Seminary and most events happen on Thursday and Friday, but some things wrap up things are being held each day. Also it is all hands on deck with our campus services, maintenance, grounds, food service and communications. Grass is being cut, trimmed and more flowers planted, buildings are being cleaned, programs printed, last minute details put to rest. It's go go go around here by everyone.

We host a reception in our side yard for graduates and their spouses if they have one as well as their parents/grandparents on Thursday night. The guys from the shop hung the over head lights a couple of weeks ago and last night Dale and I walked out after dark to see how well they shed light. It's always difficult controlling light because in the area the reception is held is lit up, but the walk up to it and the periphery, get really dark which can make it difficult to walk to and from.

We debated how to handle this for a while, but in the end we were just thankful it would be still fairly light for most of the allotted time. I took a couple of pictures and we are puzzled by the strange green lights which filled the image on everyone I took. It's like we had one of those Christmas spot lights that shed lots of star like dots into the night or against the wall of a house. But there is nothing like that out there now.

See green dots?

Not in this one above, but the Alliums are spectacular

Regional accent survey

A recent survey done by a travel agency  just published their official ranking of the 50 sexiest – and least sexy – accents in the USA.  Seriously, there is a survey for everything. However St. Louis came in 9th out of 50 which is some interest (and surprise) to us.  Here is what is said about St. Louis accents and why they ended up on this list.

"St. Louis, Missouri has some unique features of its own that make it different than the rest of the Midlands. Native speakers swap the ”ar” sound for “or” (as in “farty” for “forty” and “carn” for “corn”), so get ready to make the joke ‘I Farty-Far’ a lot."

Ok St. Louis area people I need to know if I'm alone in never ever having heard a St. Louisan say, 'farty' for forty. I asked Dale if he'd ever heard anyone here have that hard 'ar' sound and he said he'd never heard anyone with that accent either. This seems to me an urban myth that pops up now and then but isn't real.

 

When will they stop this kind of packaging

We live in a consumer world which constantly emphasizes safety. If even one person reports a small scratch or trips on a wide rake rail, things change. The products are altered so no one else gets hurt or sick. Warnings go out, blah blah blah.

Big brother wants to protect us from every danger. But, for some reason there are still too many products being packaged with the hard, stiff, plastic. It's close to impossible to open these things with a scissors or even a utility knife. If you get it partly open you run the risk of being cut and badly.

Most everyone knows how bad these things are so why are they not taken off the market? I had to get a couple of outdoor landscape lights today and sure enough, the darn things came in that crazy hard plastic.

Someone I talked to about this packaging today said it is done to discourage shoplifting. Here's the thing, though. These lights cost $9.99, not much really. The cheaper the product the more likely to have this plastic. Do thieves go for cheap?

It's amazing to me some grass roots safety group doesn't take this on and get it made illegal. Save a lot on bandages and stitches.

Stuff that drops onto highways

A motorist video posted by KMOV's reporter, Alexis Zotos, with the words: Pre-empting a MODOT alert...there's about to be a tv on the interstate.

Unbelievable anyone would drive with a huge tv and a big fireplace surround unsecured in the back of a pickup truck.

What to do when there is nothing to do

This was weekend we learned what it was like to not have television, computer and wireless anything. While planting some flowers early Saturday morning, Dale shoved his shovel into our buried cable line. Everything inside the house stopped.  Well, not everything, the washer was still going, but the things we count on went out.

I went around checking things and hoping this was going to be an outage area wide so that the cable people would send someone out. But finally after an hour I realized it was just us. I knew this by going out to the yard and saw where Dale had been digging. The ground was exactly above where the cable line was buried as it was laid from the back of the house to the pole at the edge of the property. I asked him if he'd noticed an orange cord and he said yes. It never occurred to him that this may have been our cable line. He did admit to moving it as his dug, but didn't think he'd actually cut into it.

But he did.  Calling Charter or probably any cable provider is a pain. You get the automated answer which will require pushing one number or other and answering "yes" or No" to a mechanical voice for any number of questions. I gave up the first time since none of the choices met out situation. I tried again later and again was frustrated. Finally I decided to just press 0 when the voice came on and sure enough I got a real person finally.

She set up a time for a service person to come out Sunday morning. So we had all of Saturday and Saturday night to pretty much sit around and try to find things to talk about in a very quiet house. We both found our cellular data almost used up by the time we headed for bed. We've never been in that position before and we both wondered what it would mean if out cellular allotment ran out before the cable guy got here. Would our phone just shut down and be useless?  We did not find out because we managed to squeak by.

I spent some time during the boring Saturday giving some thought to getting one of the Over the Air antennas. They are pretty inexpensive and at least we'd be able to watch local things that night. So I did it. I went out to Best Buy while Dale was out running other errands and bought an over the air antenna. It sounded so easy.

But like all tech things, easy is in the mind of the beholder and in the tv's they own. Turns out we have a TV without a built in tuner which you must have in order to make the over the air antenna work. Who knew? Lots of tv's are being made without them these days. If your TV has a coaxial cable slot, you're good. If not you have to buy some other part to make it work. I will not buy another part. I may just use this over the air antenna on a different tv one of these days.

Technology! Always wanting you to buy one more thing.