Thursday, April 29, 2010

One more thing off my list of to do... Water related ..

this is partly prep stuff and partly just maintenance on the house and partly, "help, this needs to be fixed!"

My very old toilet has been on it's last legs for at least a year, leaking now and then, but it increased in leaking the past couple of months. Also, all the faucets in the house seem to all start leaking badly in the past few months. did they all decide to leak together to get me to do something?! I was amazed at how much water these drips totalled up to after I plugged a sink one day to see how much water was being wasted. Wow, waaay more than I realized.

So, after checking on kinds of toilets available and some other realated info, I got a new one yesterday and all the dripping faucets have been totally fixed. So, the new toilet uses much less water than the previous one (we found a date of 1968 on the old one!) that's about how old the buildings are but I didn't realize it had been THAT long.

Yes, someone had to bring all the stuff and install it. Everyone I know who used to help me with such things have aged or developed their own problems about doing moveing and lifting of things like old/new toilets. That's one thing about getting older, sometimes you have to pay more for things to be done than doing them yourself with help.

I've also been much better about using water generally. When a cup of bowl has a little water in it, I don't pour it down the drain anymore, I had it to a plastic pitcher I have and use it to water my plants. When I change the cats' water, I pour that in the plants and give the cats fresh water. I also have a 2 1/2 gal bucket under the hose faucet in the back of the patio so that catches anything there. there's not too much that's comes out of there unless I'm using the hose but whatever falls is usable from the bucket.

peace to all,
shamba

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

more pics ...









It's hard to get a good picture with the contrast of shadow and sun so stark in the afternoons .....earlier in the day with the whole back patio in sun it's easier to get a better picture.

Some of the container herbs ..

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Tax Day 2010 already!

Notes from this past week or so:

Quake news on April 5 or 6: On local news yesterday evening: Calexico, California has a water plant off line for at least 60 days as a result of the quake a day or so ago. So they have to conserve water.

Channel 12 talked about what happens here, Phoenix metro, if the big One hits southern California. Well, they’d be coming here, we ‘vet always known that. Such an event in California would interrupt 60% of our fuel supply and 90% (!) of our food supply. That’s what they said. I knew the fuel supply would be affected, I guessed by about half, but I didn’t know the food supply percentage was so high.

Spent a really lovely afternoon at S.’s house and met many of her cats! I took two rolls of film of the cats. Most of them were quite obliging to have their pics taken.  I got a couple of ceramic pots for her. I needed some more to choose from to translplant some things in this week.

S. also has lavender and a an interesting looking catctus/succulent that she said I could have some of.

Busy week, I ran a lot of errands today, some to look at things, some to acquire supplies—really materials for the herb container garden in the patio area.
I picked up a card reader for the digital camera cards, previous one was broken; picked up a roll of shadecloth or sun screen fabric; a small solar stake light and some masonry nails. The fabric isn’t needed right away but in a few weeks—2-4-weeks, I’ll probably need it.

Moved all the herbs into the back patio. I moved some of the aloes to the front porch and the plant stand there. They’ll do better in that sunlight for the next 6 months than the herbs will. And if, probably really “when” not if, the herbs need to be covered with the shade/sun screen fabric they’ll all be in one place I can do it easily.

Also, added a sage plant to the herb group.

Picked up my 2009 taxes today and my mom’s estate taxes and made my weekly vegetable run for CSA veggies. I signed up for another round of CSA foods. I'm actually catching up with the overflow of veggies I've had in the past few weeks--passing some on to S. and a neighbor, dehydrating all the dill, and just eating more.

the DJA has gone up to 11,1??? this week.

cheers,
shamba

It’s getting warm in the car when I’m out—lots warmer. We’ll come close to 90 degrees this week.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Easter Monday ...

Another beautiful day in the high 70s. :)

Transplanted into better and larger pots: Italian parsley, Lemon thyme, French thyme, Greek oregano, and cilantro.

Still out in the front of the house: Sweet basil, 2 bronze fennel plants, and chives.

Tomorrow, I’m doing the 3 cat nip plants into bigger containers and they’ll be out front for the cats to use/play with. The two tortiseshell females, Tortie and Chloe, particularly like these plants.

Hung up my two clay sun faces on the patio wall facing the bedrooms. They look better over the plants and I get to see them this way when I go by the patio doors. I left the other face on the wall facing the plants.

Monday morning, lots of smaller earthquakes today south of the Imperial Valley/Salton Sea area between Baja and mainland Mexico, The reason is the Sunday quake in Baja California (near Mexicali) which rated a 7.2 on the Richter scale. K. called me from San Diego yesterday afternoon to tell me about the quake they felt quite a bit in La Jolla. He said the buildings swayed a little (they live on the 3rd floor of 5 floors) and the pool water sloshed out of the pool itself. He’s never been in a quake in La Jolla. He lived in Palo Alto when the big quake hit in the Bay Area in 1989.

He was the quake happened only about 100 miles from Yuma and so that’s why Yuma felt it so much. A lot of people in Phoenix also reported feeling the quake, I didn’t but I was asleep! This is the first time I can remember so many people feeling and earthquake in Phoenix that came from the California or the Mexico border area.

Lots of home videos from Phoenix and Yuma, that show water sloshing around inn pools and over flowing the sides of the pools because of the quake.

I hope it doesn’t happen again very soon.

Peace, shamba