respublica

Hot Dog!

Dale came across the Oscar Mayor Wiener mobile yesterday at a car wash. It's a humorous sight and he took a picture. There is no way we could figure that vehicle could fit into the car wash system, but there must have been an outdoor cleaning set-up. Men with hoses, scouring down the hot dog.

A surprising place to clean

This tip came out of no where this morning, a way to clean the part of a toilet I'd bet none of us knew. This place is under the top seat at the hinge. When you lower the seat you see at the back are the two seat hinges usually with a plastic cover. These covers open.-who knew,-and you can just slide the lid back toward you and get any grime under there cleaned off. Slide it back and snap the covers back on. Our covers open by moving the plastic sideways.

If you are like me you are tempted to get right up and see for yourself in your own bathroom. What I found was the little covers open but the seat does not move back. This disappointed me and it could be I did not pull back forcefully enough but I was not about to take a chance on making botch all with this and never being able to get the seat back correctly.  However opening the covers allows a bit more cleaning than with them closed.

Maybe your seat is different and the seat will move easily.

Yes we have potatoes

For weeks I've babied our potato plants, especially those in the pots sitting on the deck. They grew lush branches and leaves so I'd hoped that meant there would be actual potatoes at the end.

I did notice just before we left for the river that the time was getting close to harvesting them because the stems were turning yellow and falling over. When we got home the first thing I noticed was that almost all the stems on one pot were fallen over and mostly yellow which had me deciding to get them out of there.

First I cut back the stems and then after moving some dirt out, we carried the pot to the yard and tipped it over. Voila! we did have potatoes, pretty red ones in perfect condition. Not scores of them, but pretty good for being in a pot. I have another pot to do, but it is not ready quite yet. There are also potatoes in the ground in back and they are not ready, but soon. I just love this.

These new potatoes are usually really good, creamy and tasty. I have them drying in a cool place in the dark in a cardboard box for now.

Looking at the rest of the vegetables on returning yesterday I was amazed at how lush everything was. I picked beans and praised the tomato plants full of green cheeries, plum, slicers.

 

Images from downtown Steelville

Steelville Missouri is not a big town, maybe 1400 or so people, but it is a hub for floating the rivers nearby. There are a few interesting stores on the main drag and we went into a couple on our way back from church in St. James Missouri.

One is the Lange General Store, a place filled to the brim with fun things of every variety. We've been in there before and always find something to buy, including great candy from large glass jars.

Also a real meat market with great looking and tasting, cuts of meat, roasts, chops, ribs etc. It is named the Singing Butcher Shop for reasons we haven't been privy too, but twice now we have bought great meat.

There are places to browse as well.

 

This is a cleaning hint I am going to try

We have glass shower/bath doors on both of our bathrooms. They make each room look brighter and larger. But, showers do tend to leave water streaks, often drying and hanging on. A woman who may be a housekeeper, shared a hint which will keep those streaks away.

Spray the glass with Rain-X for Showers and wipe off with a microfiber towel. Essentially this acts as a barrier between the glass and water. Rain=X has been around for some time and used on car windshields. This version is specially made for showers since the regular can be troublesome if inhaled. There is also a product called Scrub Daddy which will take off those annoying existing water marks.

Hot? But not unusual

This is a hot week and the next few days will be even hotter. Hopefully things will moderate as they often do, but here is a temperature picture I copied from 2010 on the same July week as we are in now.

Hope everyone's air conditioning is up to the task.

Huzzah Cottage

Around these parts we've learned that the locals have named our place, the Hansel and Gretel cottage. I'm not so sure, but it is unique opposed to the modern cabins built along the Huzzah. This one is from the 1930's.

It's way to hot today to do much more than fool around on the computer, but at the end of the day we are going to go sit on lawn chairs with our feet in the water. And wine.

Antiquing

Yesterday's trip into Cuba was fun. The Meal at Frisco's was ok, but not a place we will hurry back to. But, the Two Old Crows antique mall was fabulous and we could have stayed in there for a much longer time. Here are some photos I took as we strolled through. I was actually looking specifically for an old cast iron cooking pot, the kind which would have hung in an outdoor fire place or campfire. There were a few that were close to what I want, but not quite and very expensive.

I did buy the t-shirt and Dale bought two old glass milk bottles which is a habit he has. We also picked up an old crock/jug which we are using to hold our new solar lighted house numbers.

We are in a friendly place

Today in Davisville Missouri we had what was the last of the tradesmen who have been hooking up Satellite TV, Internet, and today a landline phone. Each man was very congenial and knowedgeable as well as good humored. They were all willing to talk and give us information on all sorts of things we didn't think we needed to know, but actually did.

We have been very impressed.

The landline telephone man, John, gave us a lot of advice on using the internet. We thought we'd been all set in that area, but he told us how to us things much better. But the best part of John's information was where to go out to eat. Today is our anniversary and we plan to go somewhere. We'd pretty much decided on Rich's Famous Burgers in Steelville since so many have raved about the burgers and it's the closest. But. Dale asked if Rich's had a bar menu and John said no, no liquor of any sort. All of Steelville is dry. He said this is due to church people. Ha. It seems to get a beer or anything else in Steelville we have to go outside the city limits to the Steelville Country Club.

Not much in the way of golfing goes on, but the over 800 members do spend a lot of time there taking advantage of its liquor license. Most get a membership just for that reason. So we wondered, how many church people who don't want liquor sold in the city limits, still go out to the club?

What John recommended very highly to the point of almost having the entire menu memorized, was Frisco's Grill and Pub in Cuba's historic district. Frisco's has great food as well as any type of drink from the pub. They have an old railroad motif and is a train lover's dream.

That sold us. There is also a fantastic looking antique place named, Two Old Crows Antique Mall. We will walk around there before dinner. It looks very interesting.

 

We are on our way south again

Heading back to the Huzzah for a few days of nothing as well as getting to know the property. If my computer works, I will probably do some updating.

At last! A great description of camping

KMOV's Doug Vaughn perfectly put into words and pictures my feeling about camping. I have never been a fan of this and laughed all the way through his rendition. He won't do it and neither will I.

Also, I despise ads.

All the updates

Does anyone else get weary of all the programs wanting to do an update? Lately every device I own wants to update. And, if the past is any warning, any update will totally mess how we use our programs.

Basically I ignore these demands for update until the device just goes ahead and does it on its own. And I'm ticked when I find this out. Everything wants user names and passwords...again. Like they don't know what they are.

It's annoying and irritating.

Sweet Corn season almost here

One of the memories on Facebook which popped up today was an announcement that this was the first day of sweet corn sales at Keller Farms. This was in 2012. Last year they had sweet corn nearer the end of June. This year Keller's posted their stand would be open around mid-June, 7 days a week.

Can't wait.

A big price difference

Dale wanted to take an in home water cooler to our new place in southern Missouri. We have long had a 5 gallon water cooler in our kitchen because he drinks a lot of water and prefers these delivered bottles to the small 16 ounce 6 packs. It is better than tap water although Collinsville's water is quite good.

So rather than haul cases of bottled water each time we go down there, it seems easier to get a second cooler just like the one we have here in Collinsville. What's great about this cooler is the jug goes into the bottom as opposed to the more typical top loader.

It was up to me to find one and get it ordered for pick-up. What was perplexing was this: I found our same model at Lowes in Fairview Heights for 164, but they mention there are only 4 left. That is always tricky, it's possible their numbers are not up to date. So I looked at the Maplewood Lowes since I will be in that area today and they have the same model and 7 left. But it's price is 189.

The same exact model. I had a conversation with Dale about the two choices because a 25 dollar difference seems a bit much. But, he said, which one would make it easier for you? I have a great husband! Selfishly it would be much easier to go into the Maplewood store since I will be right there and they have more in stock which makes it more likely we will actually get one. I mentally made the trip from Maplewood/Clayton to Fairview coming and going, but wasn't thrilled by the drive.

So we may have splurged, but in the end we will have what we needed with little hassle.

Some days it's the little things that make me laugh

Saw this. I especially got a kick out of the Q block.  Click to enlarge to see better.

 

Onion Scapes

I went out to our little vegetable garden this morning and was surprised to see some of the onions had grown tall scapes. Now, I am familiar with garlic scapes, but have never had onions with them.

A scape is a stalk from the onion which grows a flower bulb. The scape can be eaten in cooking as can the flower just as garlic scapes can. I knew people who loved using garlic scapes, but not onions. The stalk is a bit tough, but if chopped up in small pieces can add a lot of flavor to recipes.

I cut the scapes off because leaving them would take away a lot of energy for growth from the actual onions. It wasn't long before our whole back area smelled wonderfully of onion.

I also noticed for the 100th time that the back of our garage needs painting really badly.

Now it's clover's turn to pop up

Recently I've been noticing many lawns becoming filled with clover. This often happens around this time of year and the clover does not discriminate between lawns which are meticulously tended and those which are not. Often the most cared for lawns get more than their share of clover.

Some years ago, actually many years ago when I was regularly doing four or five of our neighbors' lawns, the issue with clover came up. I did some research and learned that putting down a high nitrogen fertilizer will take care of the problem. Being a skeptical person by nature I remember thinking anything that easy would be too good to be true. But after picking up a bag of high nitrogen fertilizer and using it, we found it was not long at all until the clover was gone.

The best part of learning this in our first Collinsville years was I got to take that information and use it at the seminary. There were times when the clover was just taking over and many things were being tried to get rid of it to no avail. Then I remembered the high nitrogen business and asked if I could use it as a test in one area. The clover again cleared up. A big win.

Most bags of fertilizer will have three numbers on the front of the bag. The type for clover will have the first number much higher than the other two. Like this:

There are others which have varying numbers, but if the first number is higher than the other two, they will work.

Many like this Milorganite which is a slow release nitrogen fertilizer.

Either way, these take care of clover and green up the lawn. Now is a good time to do this since it hasn't gotten awfully hot.

Now if only there was a quick cure for getting rid of violets. We are inundated with them in front. Supposedly this will do the trick along with that darn creeping Charlie, but I'm hesitant to try it.

Fly bag update

In the post below I was moaning about all the flies we've battled on our front porch. Well, this morning we took the bag down and it was grossly filled with tons of dead flies. We decided we can't live with this sort of thing anymore so what to do?

As luck would have it I came across a garden article on Venus Fly Trap plants. It seems this live, rather pretty and interesting plant, will eat flies. And, a quick google search turned up the information that our local Walmart has some in stock. This will be my first item of business today, go get one.

Update: And of course Walmart did not have any, either did Home Depot, Creekside. These plants must be very hard to get.

Flies!

For the first time that I can remember we have constant flies on our front porch flitting around the ceiling porch light and around the front door. We do not know what is attracting them, but it has become super annoying.

I went to Home Depot to get something that might get rid of them and the choices were many and unfamiliar to me. I hoped to get one of the old fashioned fly glue traps which had a cardboard frame and some sort of sticky substance in the middle. But those days are gone it seems. I looked over any number of choices and settled on a weird product. It's a plastic bag with some sort of powder inside which attracts flies but then kills them. I had to cut a circle off the top pull a plastic tube thing up and then fill with water. The water dilutes the powder and the tube has small opening flies can get in but not get out. So they are attracted to the watery powder, climb in and then eventually die.

This works, the flies that get into the bag each day are many. Problem is, they never stop coming, but at least, as Dale said, they don't fly into the house anymore.

Here is the hanging bag and a big old fly is at the top of the tube ready to climb in and two others already inside. click the pictures to see better if you really want to.

MidAmerica

MidAmerica Airport near Scott Air Force Base schedules some commercial flights with Allegiant Airlines, a company I'm not really familiar with. It seems their main focus is on flights to and from Florida, Georgia (Savannah), Charleston,Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Punta Gorda. I have no idea where Punta Gorda is but people must want to go there.

The main draw for many, and would be for me, is the ease of getting there and the ease of parking and getting into the terminal. I just don't know enough about Allegiant to feel comfortable. But we aren't going south anytime soon anyway.

Where we live we get a clear view from our back deck of the planes flying into MidAmerica. A few minutes ago, one went fairly low right over our garage. There aren't many each day, though.

And, we also get a good view of Air Force planes coming into Scott. My impression is Tuesday and Thursday are the busiest days for them and we can almost read the markings they fly in so low.

Kind of cool.