respublica

A tree which walks

This was totally a new piece of information from the plant world to both Dale and to me. I came across a photo of a Walking Palm Tree.

It was named this because it actually does walk. When it chooses a location to go towards, it grows roots in that direction and lets the trailing roots die back. This continues inch by inch, and it can travel twenty feet in a year.

This, at least, is the story told, but experts tend to poo poo it. I'd like to believe it happens, but am skeptical.

 

Yes We have No Bananas

For the last couple of days our local Schnucks has been out of bananas. This struck me as very odd the first day I saw the empty shelf. Then I noticed a sign telling shoppers there was supply issues with bananas. Bananas are a big seller I've noticed over the years, just about every third shopper is picking up bananas, including me. Today the store had the same empty shelf. I wondered if this was happening in other grocery stores or was it just Schnucks and maybe only our Schnucks.

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Also, I needed a couple of limes and the 5 ir 6 they had were horrible looking.  Not green at all, brownish yellow. What is going on?

I bought one awful lime just in case I could not find a decent on somewhere else. The Walmart Neighborhood Market just down the way from Schnucks had lots of limes and lots and lots of bananas.

Here is a photo of the awful lime from Schnucks and the Neighborhood Market limes. It is very disappointing to see what Schnucks has and doesn't have.

 

A Tedious Gardening hack

Ok, gardening news advice has now shifted from how best to plant to how best to protect the vegetables and fruits which have begun to form. This is one of the more absurd things I've come across. We are advised to bag each formed vegetable or fruit with a mesh drawstring bag to keep insects and critters from getting at them. I don't know who this person is who suggested this, but he or she must have a lot of time on their hands and a lot of mesh bags. Or, really good knees to stay bent over for the time it would take to do this.

We have a strawberry patch in our yard and I cannot conceive of doing this for each berry. Or tomato or anything else.

 

Cotton ball gardening hack

Lately I've been spending more and more time out in the garden areas of our yard. Got the potato pots planted, put in some radish seed using the seed tape and have begun eyeing the rest of the planting beds to see what needs doing next. It's time for some things to get planted, too early for others. But the soil still needs working to be ready.

Which means I tend to read articles on this sort of thing and this particular gardening article struck me as the dumbest thing ever.

The Cotton Ball Hack to Germinate Seeds for Your Garden. The idea is you cram a bunch of cotton balls tightly into a jar, wet them down and then pop one or two seeds into it. Place the jar in a sunny window and moisten the cotton as needed. The one or two seeds should eventually grow enough to me removed and planted.

Who is going to do this? How many jars of cotton balls will have to sit around sunny windows in order to make the garden worth while? Not gonna be me.

Is half a roll better?

We use a lot of paper towels around here. I use them for everything practically-cleaning the counters, windows, clearing drip spots from the floor, drying fruit and vegetables I wash and on and on.We go through a lot of paper towels. Somehow using a dish cloth several times over seems unsanitary and using it just once and tossing it in the washer seems a waste. Paper towels do the job. But it gets expensive, the cost of these has gone up just like everything else. So this article caught my eye.

"Woman Cuts Paper Towel Roll in Half and Swears it Saves Her Money."

Along with the article is a Tik Tok video of her doing just that. However it struck me as pretty hard to do and without a really good knife this could be ragged. This does not mean I won't test this with one of our rolls. The knife should be sharp and I wonder if using a good knife may dull it. So we shall see.

Obsessive People should not be allowed to write articles

Here is one example of an obsessive person who want all of us to be like her. "How to get rid of dust in your home easily and effectively."

Right of the bat anyone who lives anywhere know this will be impossible. I read through the long list of things we should be doing to fight dust and I just finally laughed. It's unbelievable, we'd be doing nothing but dusting every day. You can read it the link if you have the energy.

A news story I just love

"For the second time this month, a bear escaped from the Saint Louis Zoo. Ben the bear was able to fiddle with some steel mesh to get a cable to give way, allowing him to escape. The bear was very calm the whole time we saw him. Just looked like he was having fun.” 

I realize bears are not cuddly puppies but I have admiration for his desire to get out of his confinement and just walk around for a change of scenery. Don't we all get cabin fever once in a while?

One more thing I don't understand

More and more recently I've been seeing Venmo as an option for paying for things. I have no idea what Venmo is or how it pays or why it's better than a checking account and a debit card. I googled it and still don't understand the positives.

Call me old, but if you do, list the positives of Venmo.

Important products for gray hair.

I'm not going to hide this, I have gray hair. lots of it. So this headline had me click the link to see just what gray hair needs. My first thought was they'd be products to hide gray hair, something I"m not especially interested in doing. But, no, it seems as though graying hair has special needs to avoid thinning and drying out. I have not had either of these issues so, we'll see. They recommend using coconut oil for moisture, purple shampoo to alleviate hair turning yellow which I do not believe is much of an issue, toners to alleviate dullness, color extending shampoos to brighten hair, Leave in treatments ( I have no idea what the are), quality styling tools (no thank you), bristle brushes to smooth out tangles and serum to get rid of frizz.

So this strikes me as rather nutty, I plan to just continue doing what a normally do, wash and dry my hair and forget it.

News I did not want to read

It seems there is an outbreak of Listeria in several states including Illinois which has as its source grocery store deli meats and cheese.

"Deli counters and food processing facilities can be a common source of listeria infection, the CDC said, as listeria can easily spread between food and equipment or surfaces and can be hard to remove."

But the oddest part of this story is this: "Most of the people identified in the outbreak so far are of Eastern European descent or speak Russian, the CDC said."

I don't know quite what to make of all this except the outbreak seems to be small.