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
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
more pics ...
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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.
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.
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
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
Monday, March 29, 2010
Herbs and some spring organizing ...
I transplanted the parsley and oregano in bigger pots this afternoon. Boy, were they root bound. Anyway, they are in the back patio area now,there’s plenty of sun there now during the day. I’m going to try the shade cloth thing when the sun is stronger and the heat is here in the back patio.
The container herbs can just be out in the sun for some time each day during the heat and then be put in the shade against the house wall but the shade cloth makes more sense. I'll have to ask a couple of people how that might work.
I went to Safeway to check on produce prices, just out of curiosity. I really haven’t looked at much produce there since I joined the CSA. I have bought some apples and bananas the past 2 months though. All, I can see is that Safeway has slashed prices again or maybe temporarily on most everything especially lettuces. All the kinds of lettuce were like 10 bunches or pounds for $10.00! Everything else, including the sweet peppers, were pretty much the way they were 2-3 months ago.
I checked the jam/jelly aisle and the lentils and bean prices. The jam, at least this week, is lower than I bought the last time I was there. The lentils and beans seemed much the same.
We are fortunate in the Phoenix area to have a lot of competition among several grocery chains. We also have a number of farmer’s markets available valley wide every week almost all year round.
The last few months, Safeway and Basha’s in particular seem to be in some kind of price war. Or at least the Basha’s near me is in a lot of competition with the Safeway a mile away. The Safeway is much bigger and has a wider selection of food but the Basha’s is in very easy walking distance. Basha’s has also filed for Chapter 11 the past year.
I, then, walked around the corner to Whitfill nursery and checked out their herbs. No cilantro there today but I got some English thyme and a “Bronze Fennel.” The fennel is really quite pretty with that bronze color and the slender branches/shoots it sends out. I looked at the French thyme and decided I liked it a lot, too but that’s for another time. I looked at the rosemarys and the lavender, too.
yesterday was a beautiful day for Palm Sunday!
I attached and cleaned out the frige today. I tossed, scrubbed and cleaned out the whole things, crisper, middle and freezer part.
I had to throw out some greens leaves as they were at the end of their lifespan. But I chopped the rest of the chard, Chinese cabbage and spinach together, rinsed them and then decided to just use them as a salad with the rice and lentils that were in the global sun oven today. I mix the lentil dish and the greens together as a giant tossed salad with vinaigrette. Mine was an Italian type but I’m sure other kinds would work well, too.
It was a pleasure to chop all these greens with the new knife. The right tools DO make a lot of difference no matter what you’re doing in life.
Leftover greens get used tonight or tomorrow for a potato and greens dish. Or maybe I’ll just eat them as a salad dish with the leftover lentils.
Used the rosemary and tarragon that I had purchased at the grocery for dehydrating in the global oven. They were getting rid of a lot of packages of herbs at half price, so I figured the purchase was worth a try to dehydrate. Normally, the packages are like a little over $3.00.
peace, Shamba
The container herbs can just be out in the sun for some time each day during the heat and then be put in the shade against the house wall but the shade cloth makes more sense. I'll have to ask a couple of people how that might work.
I went to Safeway to check on produce prices, just out of curiosity. I really haven’t looked at much produce there since I joined the CSA. I have bought some apples and bananas the past 2 months though. All, I can see is that Safeway has slashed prices again or maybe temporarily on most everything especially lettuces. All the kinds of lettuce were like 10 bunches or pounds for $10.00! Everything else, including the sweet peppers, were pretty much the way they were 2-3 months ago.
I checked the jam/jelly aisle and the lentils and bean prices. The jam, at least this week, is lower than I bought the last time I was there. The lentils and beans seemed much the same.
We are fortunate in the Phoenix area to have a lot of competition among several grocery chains. We also have a number of farmer’s markets available valley wide every week almost all year round.
The last few months, Safeway and Basha’s in particular seem to be in some kind of price war. Or at least the Basha’s near me is in a lot of competition with the Safeway a mile away. The Safeway is much bigger and has a wider selection of food but the Basha’s is in very easy walking distance. Basha’s has also filed for Chapter 11 the past year.
I, then, walked around the corner to Whitfill nursery and checked out their herbs. No cilantro there today but I got some English thyme and a “Bronze Fennel.” The fennel is really quite pretty with that bronze color and the slender branches/shoots it sends out. I looked at the French thyme and decided I liked it a lot, too but that’s for another time. I looked at the rosemarys and the lavender, too.
yesterday was a beautiful day for Palm Sunday!
I attached and cleaned out the frige today. I tossed, scrubbed and cleaned out the whole things, crisper, middle and freezer part.
I had to throw out some greens leaves as they were at the end of their lifespan. But I chopped the rest of the chard, Chinese cabbage and spinach together, rinsed them and then decided to just use them as a salad with the rice and lentils that were in the global sun oven today. I mix the lentil dish and the greens together as a giant tossed salad with vinaigrette. Mine was an Italian type but I’m sure other kinds would work well, too.
It was a pleasure to chop all these greens with the new knife. The right tools DO make a lot of difference no matter what you’re doing in life.
Leftover greens get used tonight or tomorrow for a potato and greens dish. Or maybe I’ll just eat them as a salad dish with the leftover lentils.
Used the rosemary and tarragon that I had purchased at the grocery for dehydrating in the global oven. They were getting rid of a lot of packages of herbs at half price, so I figured the purchase was worth a try to dehydrate. Normally, the packages are like a little over $3.00.
peace, Shamba
Friday, March 26, 2010
Catching up this week.
March 26,
We had our association HOA board meeting last night. It’s been very quiet around the place. We’ve had no major repairs to make since we replaced the damaged rafter holding up the front porch roofs. We have a substantial amount in our bank accounts! The increase in fees is helping us by us putting the increase away to take care of property insurance, which is what it was intended to do. For the foreseeable future, we’ll have a positive cash flow. We have some HOA dues delinquencies but not too many. Here hoping we don’t have any really big unexpected things come up like we did the whole new water line thing about two years ago. :0 We made major broken line repairs over and over and then finally had to redo the fresh water lines, those old pipes just wouldn’t hold together anymore.
Our units are generally worth about $50,000-55,000 these days. That’s just about the 50% decline in prices for the Phoenix area during the last two-three years. A couple of units have sold in the past two years. Our property managers said they’re beginning to see some properties move a little more than they did 6 months ago. They’re hopeful it will get better and one of our board members said we have to wait another couple of years for things to get better. He’s hopeful too, that things will increase in value. I think he’d like to get out of being a landlord himself here although he is a good landlord and good for us to have on the board.
I didn’t mention anything about the further deterioration of housing and any other market. We didn’t have time for those kinds of discussions and needed to get a lot of business done in our time allotted. One member had worked 12 days in a row and looked really kind of tired. He works for an airline, counter agent. Our property managers are good but they work regular hours and attend some board meetings during the week so they were ready to go home and forget work.
March 22,
Interesting, to say the least, point from Jim Puplava at www.financialsense.com this past Saturday, March 20, 2010. He has a weekly show that is available to listening on the website in a variety of formats. The topics and guests for each hour are listed at the website. I don’t listen to everything every week, but this past week I listened to the MP3 version of Hour 2 on the topic: “Turning Point: Change Ahead for Markets and Economy.” This part of the program was about 1 hour and 15 minutes. About 35-40 minutes into the program at the end of this Turning Point Segment Puplava says and I paraphrase I’m not direct quoting. As matter of fact I think he’s quoting a guest from the hour 1 of this date.
Everybody known a major financial crisis bigger than we’ve ever seen before is coming. What nobody knows, what nobody is smart enough to know, whether it’s 3 months, 6 months, 1 year or 2 years. Big money is preparing for this because everyone knows it is coming.
: (
Cheers,
We had our association HOA board meeting last night. It’s been very quiet around the place. We’ve had no major repairs to make since we replaced the damaged rafter holding up the front porch roofs. We have a substantial amount in our bank accounts! The increase in fees is helping us by us putting the increase away to take care of property insurance, which is what it was intended to do. For the foreseeable future, we’ll have a positive cash flow. We have some HOA dues delinquencies but not too many. Here hoping we don’t have any really big unexpected things come up like we did the whole new water line thing about two years ago. :0 We made major broken line repairs over and over and then finally had to redo the fresh water lines, those old pipes just wouldn’t hold together anymore.
Our units are generally worth about $50,000-55,000 these days. That’s just about the 50% decline in prices for the Phoenix area during the last two-three years. A couple of units have sold in the past two years. Our property managers said they’re beginning to see some properties move a little more than they did 6 months ago. They’re hopeful it will get better and one of our board members said we have to wait another couple of years for things to get better. He’s hopeful too, that things will increase in value. I think he’d like to get out of being a landlord himself here although he is a good landlord and good for us to have on the board.
I didn’t mention anything about the further deterioration of housing and any other market. We didn’t have time for those kinds of discussions and needed to get a lot of business done in our time allotted. One member had worked 12 days in a row and looked really kind of tired. He works for an airline, counter agent. Our property managers are good but they work regular hours and attend some board meetings during the week so they were ready to go home and forget work.
March 22,
Interesting, to say the least, point from Jim Puplava at www.financialsense.com this past Saturday, March 20, 2010. He has a weekly show that is available to listening on the website in a variety of formats. The topics and guests for each hour are listed at the website. I don’t listen to everything every week, but this past week I listened to the MP3 version of Hour 2 on the topic: “Turning Point: Change Ahead for Markets and Economy.” This part of the program was about 1 hour and 15 minutes. About 35-40 minutes into the program at the end of this Turning Point Segment Puplava says and I paraphrase I’m not direct quoting. As matter of fact I think he’s quoting a guest from the hour 1 of this date.
Everybody known a major financial crisis bigger than we’ve ever seen before is coming. What nobody knows, what nobody is smart enough to know, whether it’s 3 months, 6 months, 1 year or 2 years. Big money is preparing for this because everyone knows it is coming.
: (
Cheers,
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