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Growing a Venus Fly Trap Plant

Early last summer we had an issue with flies on our front porch. We had no idea why there were so many floating around, but it got to be a huge annoyance. Open the front door and in would come a few flies. They seemed to have made a home in our front porch ceiling light and kept reproducing. This drove me crazy enough that I was very interested in finding a Venus Fly Trap plant. No nursery or store which sold plants had any. In the end I ended up just spraying the heck out of them which did the trick but made a mess on the porch.

All of which made me very interested in this article this morning: Venus Fly Trap Care

After reading the whole thing I've decided to give up on this idea which is easy to do since they are never seen sold anywhere. But if you do find one here is the advice.

They can be grown indoors or outdoors but only in containers. Don't plant in the ground

Plant in sphagnum moss or a mix of peat moss and an aerating medium like perlite. Don't use potting soil or ground soil.

They need lots of sunlight so place near a sunny window and even add a grow light.

They love water and need to be kept moist consistently, but not sit in a pool of water.

They thrive on eating bugs and can feed themselves especially outdoors. But if indoors we have to feed them a fly or a spider every couple of weeks. How we do that is not explained.

All of which is just too much for me so unless we stumble upon one of these plants I am not going looking for any this year

Winter please leave

I am really weary of being cold, normally this area has periods of frigid weather which don't last all that long and give way to milder days. This back and forth goes on until spring takes over. But the past few weeks seem to me to have been constantly cold.

I'm tired of last week's snow not leaving our front yard. Some neighbors have been lucky enough to have all their snow gone. It's also  been very dry in the house which causes little snap like shocks when I touch certain things. This issue I took on over the weekend and went out to Home Depot and bought the Crane Cool Mist table top humidifier with sound machine. We have had a smaller version of this new one but the new does not need to be filled as often.

I am pretty pleased with how it's working and put it in the family room which has the gas fireplace and put the smaller one on the kitchen island next to that room. They are both working wonderfully.

This is the latest model, holds something over a gallon of water, maybe more. And it has 3 colors of light to choose from and various water sounds if you want to use that feature. Easy to refill, just take that cone-shaped top off and pour in the water.

Just one more backyard animal issue

As if this past summer's raccoon population wasn't enough, now comes a squirrel. We really haven't been bothered much by squirrels the past couple of months since we had 4 trees taken down. But for some reason a squirrel decided to check out our driveway yesterday and it did not bode well for him. We had our extension ladder laid down horizontally against the house because we have been waiting for a good day to get the leaves out of the gutters.

As I was in the house yesterday watching a football game I heard the ladder fall over and figured the wind did this. When I went outside later I found this:

If you click to enlarge the picture you'll see this squirrel dead but with a front paw still gripping the foot rail. He must have been running along the top edge and somehow it fell over on him.

The worst part is that Dale went to our Huzzah cottage yesterday to check on things and isn't home so I have to deal with a dead squirrel. When he called and I told him about this, he said, just get a snow shovel out and scoop him into a trash bag.

All I can thing of is how icky this job is going to be and do not want to do it.

It's so quiet

We are down at the cottage on the Huzzah Creek for a short couple of days. Dale was getting obsessed with checking on the bushes and plants he put into the ground a couple of weeks ago. We left yesterday afternoon when weather reports predicted rain, but very little ever came down, just enough to wet things gently.

In any event I was standing outside just now and realized how very quiet it was. No wind or breeze rustling the tree leaves, no traffic, just quiet. So quiet I could distinctly hear the single drop of yesterday's rain hit the ground leaves. The longer I stood and listened to the silence the more I heard a singular cricket off in the distance as well as individual bird sounds in various directions.

A very unusual experience.

An unsettling article for today

I started reading this article on how we are all doing housekeeping all wrong. Halfway through I was mostly grossed out. Seriously, everything thing in our daily life seems to be covered with dust mites, hair, dead skin cells, decomposing insects, dust mites and their excrement.

Also, "By applying disinfectant and then wiping straight away, nine times out of 10 all that you are doing is spreading bacteria. "There are some cleaning products only require you to wait two minutes but typically it's five minutes or more."

They also recommend doing one of the hardest jobs-washing pillows and comforters and the mattress itself. My feeling is attempting these things often makes things worse. Ever heard a washing machine while it is trying to wash bulky pillows? Supposedly 16 species of fungi can live on a pillow.

Kitchen sponges get filled with bacteria as do kitchen wash cloths. Actually this is one thing I'm obsessed about and never use a dish cloth or sponge. If I have to re-scrub a dish or pan before putting it in the dishwasher, I use paper towels.

 

More trees down

I have to say right up front that the Ahler's Tree Service is the absolute best. These guys were amazing yesterday as they took down 4 of our big trees and chipped the branches into small bits and blew all that into a big covered truck. They were extremely knowledgeable about how to go about all this even in tight spaces. I should also mention, very efficient with no time wasted at all. They got here around 8:30 and were finished and off by a little after 11:30.

To top it all, every one of the guys working were affable and good humored all the while never taking their eyes off of their work. I'd recommend them very highly. The most difficult and demanding tree was the big old Pin Oak in the front yard, but somehow they got that down, cleared out in maybe an hour. Then it was on to the last tree which was a Birch tucked into the side of our house with branches hanging over the neighbor's driveway, almost to their roof. That came down piece by piece very carefully and cleared out.

Here is the Birch before it came down.

The guys had to move our neighbor's trailer and that even went very smoothly over to the Legion parking lot. Afterward, it was put back better than before.

This was not easy considering all the things on our neighbor's driveway including a second trailer which was left in place.

Now it is cleared up

Clouds

I am sort of fascinated with clouds. Last week while we drove over to the seminary, the clouds were unworldly. I've never seen such clouds and while Dale drove I kept snapping away. They filled the sky 360 degrees around, from the horizon on up. It was amazing.

In any event as I was standing on our front porch this morning, I noticed different types of clouds over the back of the Legion. Not as stunningly bright, but still interesting.

The last two were taken within minutes of each other and in that short of time the sky had totally changed.

Birds!

We must be at the point in time when many birds are gathering together to fly south. Our street, especially our end with all the trees, was covered in birds this morning. They were also on the ground, all were making bird sounds and it was loud. I went out to watch a bit and noticed coming across the sky from the west were huge numbers of these big black birds flying together. This area may be a meeting place for their travels, it was quite a sight.

What will happen to all the old wind turbines?

While traveling around Illinois and other places we'd often see tons of wind turbines. These turbines were created to generate power in what was believed to be more environmentally clean. What we always noted was how cluttered the landscape looked with these huge things standing in fields. We also wondered what was going to happen to all of them when they broke down or lost their usefulness. I still wonder since the on going progression of mechanical things often leads from original huge to small.

These things are made of material not easy to recycle and many are wearing out.

What will happen to all of these when new things take their place? Well, Denmark is trying one idea. They are turning old wind turbines into bike shelters. The turbines form a roof under which bikes can be parked in cities. Well. that may be fine for a country in which people are big on using bikes for transportation, but I doubt there would be enough call for them in our cities. Maybe a couple. 90 percent of Danes own a bike and over a third of them bike to work.

But it seems an advocacy group named Re-Wind, is attempting to come up with ideas on what to do with the worn out turbines. These ideas include roofing material for a 40 square foot home (!!), guard rails and pedestrian foot bridges.

There needs to be more ideas pretty soon as the turbines begin to fail.

 

 

Pulling out the garden

It's October and much of our vegetable garden has given up producing so I decided it was time to clear a lot of it out. The tomatoes did just an amazing job, growing almost 6 feet tall and very wide. They grew so massive the branches tangled with each other. I lost track of just how many cherry/grape tomatoes we gathered, it was in the hundreds. The Romas did well, I was able to skin and freeze many of them. The slicers were fine, but not as numerous as the others. I didn't get any photos of the amazing height of these plants, but did get pictures of how thick they were growing into each other and some of the tomatoes.

This weekend I spent hours cutting them all out and putting them in brown yard waste bags.

6 bags so far, I just hope the pick-up guy won't be fed up with us.