Save More, Spend Less

Today's photo....hope you're not getting tired of my food photos! This was olive oil cake with ice cream at a local restaurant.

Today I did mostly nothing except for a few hours outside removing dead leaves that collect at the top of my driveway. I did also replace the filter on the Aprilaire humidifier that's attached to my furnace. A chore I dislike because it's never easy to take the thing apart that holds the filter and fit it back into the unit. I actually use an old set of handwritten instructions from probably 10 years ago that a friend of mine wrote for me after helping me perform this particular task. Anyway, that's done for another 6 months.

I did some work on our website for my volunteer group.

I think tomorow after the furnace firebox gets straightened out, I'll treat myself to lunch either at the Vietnamese place I like so much, or a pizza shop that everyone raves about. Guess I'll decide which when the time comes. I also hope to do another chore I've procrastinated about: rechecking the copper mesh mouseproofing I did last year along bottom row of siding, as I've been getting mice in my one indoor trap. They don't go to waste, though. I use a plastic, reuseable trap and toss the dead mouse outside in a certain area periodically checked by possums and I'm not sure what else. I'm sure the unexpected protein is much appreciated.

Today was the chilliest day of the fall season to date. In fact, it was the first day I felt it necessary to wear my winter coat.

Since it was too cold to do fall yard work, I turned it into a day of errands: Target (dad needed underwear), Wal-Mart (I wanted to spend a $5 gift card, so I bought some green tea), Whole Foods (they have the best produce, including a new favorite for me, organic Cosmic Crisp), BJs (for gas and a few food items) and then dropping off some donations at Good Will.

When I got home, I found a BJs coupon circular in my mailbox and a $3 coupon for the Nature Made vitamins I'd just purchased there. Since the coupon is good thru December, I will return the vitamins, then repurchase it so I can use the coupon. 

A local gallery is calling for artists for its "Small and Large" holiday exhibit, which I like to enter since it's around holiday gift-giving time. You can either submit 3 small pieces of art under 13" or one large piece over 31" for a $20 entry fee. I picked out 3 of my mother's pieces but realized the frame on one was a little dinged up, so I'm in the process of painting it now. I got a free paint sample in a pretty shade of blue from a paint shop last year and found that it goes perfectly with this piece of art. I need to drop the 3 pieces off this weekend.

The replacement part for my furnace should be shipped to my HVAC people this week, so hopefully can schedule a return visit soon after. Dad was more or less happy with the deep clean of his living space last Friday ($340) and agreed to have them come on a monthly basis ($140) moving forward. However, he wants to stay there while they clean so he can tell them what to do, which I know they won't like, but.... 

I had decided I wasn't going to share anything about the funeral I attended unless he asked about it, which he did once we sat down to lunch the other day. So I shared a little. Then he wanted to know who was there, what was on the menu, etc.

I brought him to the dentist that day (every 3 mths) and I was so relieved they didn't announce another cracked tooth, cavity or broken crown. Next week he'll be getting his covid shot and going to PT. The week after that we'll be driving an hour or so south to meet my cousin for Thanksgiving dinner at an insanely expensive Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. It's just a convenient location for her and I suppose for me, so.... we go early so we can all get home before dark. I think this may be our 4th year going there? Neither of us wants to cook the whole traditional Thanksgiving meal for just 3 people (her partner won't be around as he's a longtime volunteer helping to get the balloons ready for the Macy's Day parade in NY, and so it just makes it easier to eat out although I do sorely miss all the leftovers..

My knotweed group has decided to allow a 5th person to join our small group. We haven't been activley seeking to expand the group, cus we all work very well together and sometimes when you add new people it changes the dynamic, but she had recently met one of our members who was enthusiastic about the idea. We're involved in so many projects, we could definitely use an extra set of hands.

I'm not sure what I'm doing tomorrow. It will be in the low 50s so theoretically I could do yardwork. I'd like to remove a large quantity of leaves at the top of my driveway, where they tend to collect becus it's surrounded on 2 sides by stone walls and the 3rd side is my garage wall. 

There are also 2 smallish trees I'd like to take down (maybe) with my mini chainsaw so I can move one of the many oak seedlings that sprouted elsewhere to that spot. Getting rid of nonnative or invasive plants and replacing them with native plants has been an ongoing project for me. I've gotten more aggressive lately as i realized that much of my problem stems from the fact that the invasive plants keep spreading into my yard from my neighbors. In fact, I've been battlings invasives on the periphery of the property for 30 years now, and because I always avoided using herbicides, preferring to pull, dig or even just "cut back" invasives, of course they did indeed grow back and nothing's really changed in 30 years! . Last year is when I really started using chemicals in a very targeted and controlled manner. I never do foliage sprays. I'll cut an invasive shrub at the base, as close to the ground as possible, then paint herbicide on the stump with a small paint brush. Sometimes I'll even cover the herbicide-treated stump with a small white mesh baggy so an insect can't land on it. I bought a hundred of these little bags on Amazon; they're used to hold wedding favors. Of course this time of year I don't have to worry about insects since we've had a few hard frosts. But there are still animals roaming around.

But getting back to my neighbors....one of them is a widow well into her 90s. Even when her husband was alive, they never did anything to the brushy/woodsy area on their side of the stone wall, which is the property line, so it is filled with Asiatic bittersweet, Japanese privet, multiflora rose and a bunch of other stuff.. So I've been venturing onto her side of the wall to kill invasive vines and shrubs becus damn, I can't be doing this forever. I don't think she'd care, but I try to make it not noticeable. And I just uncovered a very spindly oak sapling underneath all the vines. Someday, I may move from here and downsize, but I still would want to leave this place in as good shape as possible, and that includes ecologically, too.

I allowed myself 2 hours to get down to Hackensack, knowing that taking the Tappan Zee would make it a little longer, but also allowing lots of extra time in case there was an accident or traffic backup. But GPS had other plans for me. You know how when you punch in a destination, they give you 3 options and show you the different routes on a map?  I wanted that Tappan Zee option to avoid the GW Bridge. Problem with the GPS is that when you click on one of the routes, it's hard to know if that's the route you want, and it seemed like every route had me driving into the city, so that's where I ended up. So amazingly, I arrived in Hackensack over an hour early!

I lived the first 17 years of my life in New Jersey, but the only things I recognized today were the old Bendix Diner and Teterboro Airport. Everything has changed so much and I guess I felt like an alien there.

The Tappan Zee spans the Hudson River, connecting New Jersey and New York State.   

I stopped at a nearby Wawa to use the rest room, then headed to the cemetery. The service itself was very brief, like maybe 10 minutes. Then we headed to a local restaurant where "Uncle Joe" treated us to a nice meal. It was good to see some of my extended family again, fragmented as we are, and it made me sad that it took someone's death to bring us all together. It was just 14 of us; my brother's best friend came to the funeral but not the meal. My late brother's wife is Chinese; her parents speak only Chinese, limiting communication.

Heading home I was determined to avoid the GW, and this time I was able to get on the Palisades Parkway North, which is a scenic drive with great views of the city. From there I headed east and crossed the Tappan Zee, then north to dear New England.

It was an exhausting day. I didn't sleep well last night, then 4 hours of driving in unfamiliar, high trafficked environs and the stress of the funeral. When I got home, the first think I did was change into my comfy clothes: a ratty pair of sweat pants and an old sweat shirt, and climbed into bed with the beginnings of a headache.

There's a problem with the firebox replacement on my ThermoPride oil furnace. HVAC is here now. Seems the part they got is a different size/shape than the one they're replacing. They have ordered again, but will have to wait a few days now. I'm worried about how much this will inflate the $900-$1200 estimate I'd been given. The technician has worked out a temporary solution so I can continue to use the furnace in the meantime, but he's still tinkering with it so I've been stuck here all morning.

I received word yesteray that my half-brother has passed. Very sad. I had first learned of his illness 11 months ago when I pulled into the parking lot at my gym and he called me. As it turned out, I received a text from his wife yesterday in the same parking lot, informing me of his death. I am waiting for details on the funeral. I am hoping it's in New Jersey and not Chinatown, NYC. (My brother's wife is Chinese-American.) My father has told me he doesn't want to go.

In addition to the problem with the furnace repair, I also already scheduled a deep clean of my father's place for this Saturday. They will bill me the full amount if I cancel/reschedule any later than tomorrow morning. I think I would just let them clean even if we aren't around. Just to get it done. They already have my credit card info.

And dad has a dentist appointment on Monday.

I was happy at a recent gym workout because I was able to raise the weight pulled, pushed, pressed or lifted by 5 lbs on every machine. I say this because I feel I'm already lifting near the maximum possible, but then I go and surprise myself. I noticed today when I went to the gym that they are putting solar panels on the roof. 

This week I reviewed loans from Pakistan, Albania, Uganda, Ghana, Liberia and Kenya.

I had to cut loose one of the men i got together with. I don't think we had much of anything in common, and he's Republican, which would be bound to create conflict.

I got together a 2nd time with the other one, the anesthesiologist nurse, going to a great takeout type Vietnamese restaurant I'd never been to (tofu curry, above), but I'm not sure about him either, I'm afraid. He is very liberal (he drives a Tesla with a F*** Trump sticker to ward off possible vandalism) and we definitely share some common interests, but he seems very, I don't know, repressed/depressed. Not light-hearted. He had a very tough upbringing. At this point in my life, I just want to have fun and be with someone a little more outgoing.  I'm afraid that J. is not that person.  Plus he plans to continue working for at least a few more years, so that would limit my fun stuff agenda. So I don't know. 

The company that provides my Internet just raised my monthly fee from $50 to $60, which feels like a lot! It was not so long ago, I guess a few years now, when they raised it from $40 to $50. Sigh. They said it was just an across-the-board rate hike, which to me sounds like saying we raised it because we could.

I do fine with just my Netflix subscription, free movies with my public library's Kanopy account and over-the-air antenna for TV, and a family member pays my cell phone bill. Nice, I know. So all I need is the Internet. I see some providers give you a year's worth of Internet for just $30, but then they jack it up to $70, so that wouldn't really entice me. I need to research it more although truth be told, I guess I could also skip the stress I cause myself and just accept it, knowing I can pay it. I used to always get very stressed when this particular provider raised their rates becus you basically feel powerless, and there aren't many options in my area. Plus, it's always an unpleasant surprise; the rep said they mentioned it in the prior month's bill, but since I'm on auto pay, I have no reason to be looking at the bill; I just look at the total due in the email they send, and that's it.

Wednesday night, try to take a look outside after dark. There's supposed to be a very bright and large moon. I will be trying to take photos.

Oops. Alas, I have no photo I took today so I'm cheating a little and posting a photo I took last week that made me laugh. A teeny tiny lock someone's using at my gym.

Today I made lentil soup.

In other news, Patient Saver has dipped her toe in the dating pool again and now she has not one but two suitors. I find it kind of stressful. I  never liked dating more than one man at a time (feels deceptive and gets complicated), but in this case, I met Bachelor #1 today and Bachelor #2 is really counting on us meeting sometime this week.

They are both very different from one another but coincidentally, both grew up in the same town about 45 minutes from me, are the same age and both have 2 kids. I met Bachelor #1 today for a nice long fall walk; he is a divorced nurse anesthesiologist who had a rough childhood and is on the quiet side. He seems thoughtful and is a good listener. He is interested in fitness and plant-based nutrition as I am. Bachelor #2 has a much more outgoing personality on the phone, is retired from a lengthy career with a single (defense) employer and is widowed. I want to at least meet Bachelor #2 before making any decisions but in a way it would make it easier for me if the choice were obvious.  

After our walk today, Bachelor #1 texted me while he was driving home to ask me to dinner this weekend, and Patient Saver said yes!

Near where I live....

What I'm reading: The Nature of Oaks, by Doug Tallamy.

Today started out as a good day but that was short-lived.  That's when I entered my father's apartment to see him attempting to attach a paper towel with scotch tape to his leg, which was bleeding. The elderly have very thin skin; he had a large scab that I guess he scratched, and his entire leg was bloody from the knee down.  There was blood on his bedsheets, the floor, the rug and him. Luckily I found a full drawer of medical supplies and actual bandages. I applied pressure to stop the bleeding, which he resisted, causing us to quarrel. He is really misinformed about a lot of things, and this is one of them. In the midst of all this and trying to clean him up and his apartment (which he also resisted), I got a text from the wife of my half-brother (my father's son). He is dying. Any day now. She told me to brace myself. He learned in December, or perhaps a little earlier, that he had stage 4 colon cancer. December is when I learned about it.

So it was not a good day. I'm not going to say we were close, because we weren't. We didn't grow up together. We lived in different states, led different lives. We've been cordial when we've seen each other, but that became very infrequent, especially once he had kids. His kids are great, and I know he loved them very much. The whole thing is very upsetting, so tragic and so unnecessary. He is young. He had a colonoscopy scheduled but cancelled it due to covid and never got around to rescheduling it. This is the only reason I am sharing this info here, in case anyone has procrastinated about any kind of routine screening.  Just get it done. 

If you're wondering what this means, the phrase is a modern adaptation of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous quote emphasizing that progress toward justice is not inevitable or automatic, and that we need active human effort to bring about change. It's meant to be a call to action urging people to work toward social change rather than waiting for justice to happen on its own. So appropros for 2025.

Even if trumpty-dumpty was not destroying the environment, selling off public lands, dismantling a wildly successful program that made health care affordable for millions of middle-class Americans, eliminating energy effciency tax credits and similar green energy incentives, hunting down and kidnapping suspected illegal immigrants with no due process, blowing up boats in the Caribbean, cozying up to dictators like Putin who is hell-bent on destroying Ukraine, dismantling the federal government, enriching himself and his family and pardoning Santos, who lied about his education, that his parents were Holacaust survivors and defrauded donors, who pardoned the Capitol rioters, I would still loathe this repulsive man. He does not have a shred of moral integrity, not an ounce of human decency. He is vindictive, cruel, self-serving and is an embarassment to this nation. 

I am so proud of the estimated 7 million souls who took time out of their lives to voice their anger and displeasure. There were some great signs, too. 

I wanted today to be a leisurely day, and it has been. This morning I headed out to nearby small city to help clean up one of their parks. Worked there for 2 hours; they were very appreciative. Oh, and I got this nice t-shirt too.

I came home, had leftovers for lunch and am contemplating my next move while there are still a few hours of sunlight left. I could do some laundry and want to make a big pot of lentil soup. Or, I could go outside and pull invasive plants. Finish tidying up the garage so I can fit my lawn furniture in there, and my vehicle. What to do, what to do?

The amazing thing is that the thousands of my photos that disappeared from my personal file folders have magically reappeared in those folders. I have no idea why, but I'm relieved, that's for sure.

All the Kiva loans I reviewed this week were from Phillippino borrowers, and all wanted money for a sanitary toilet. All of the borrower profiles showed the borrower standing next to a toilet inside a crude, cinderblock hut with a curtain for privacy. The toilet is never connected by pipes to the wall, so I can only guess they dig a pit underneath it until they can afford something approximating modern sanitation.

I think we may have had about 800 or so...maybe a thousand....people show up for our town's demonstration today. First we listened to a series of motivational speakers, including my favorite, a church pastor, and then we walked to South Main Street and lined nearly a mile of roadway with our signs, receiving a great deal of support from passing motorists.

I have a weak spot for craft fairs, church fairs and things of that sort. I love homemade knit items, which remind me of my dear grandmother, as well as homemade baked goods. I saw many things my grandmother would have liked.  It's a glorious fall day and I love this time of year.

That's a knit pumpkin at left with a real pumpkin stalk on it. So clever. Also a ceramic pumpkin for my kitchen window; I bought a similar pumpkin in a teal color last year. And, my first pair of fingerless gloves so I can use my phone outdoors.

I would have liked to support the church ladies by buying a few loaves of their home-baked pumpkin bread but I forgot they don't take credit cards like the craft vendors do and I rarely carry cash these days. I remembered the same thing last fall (!) when I had no cash, but then remembered I had lots of loose change in the car for tolls or Aldi's, so I trooped back to my car last year and paid in quarters, which they didn't seem to mind. I could have done the same this year, but it escaped my mind.

I also got a high dose flu vaccine at the health fair and a variety of fun freebies like pens, notepads, a rubber jar opener thingie, etc. I've been going to the health fair for years now. It's a great resource for residents and you'll see tables for the town's emergency response system, home health care agencies, suicide prevention, our local police force, the regional health care system/hospital, a local naturopath physician, varous dentists, the senior center, etc. 

In a few hours, I'll be attending a rally on what could be a record-setting day because a record-setting number of Americans hate what is happening to this country.

This was a very good dessert this week: a flourless chocolate cake (warm) with raspberry sorbet and pistachio nuts.

Took dad to PT, then lunch. Mowed the back lawn when I got home.

So tired of difficulties posting here. 

Anyhoo, catching up for a few days of missed photos.

Tonight I went to a meeting on efforts to ban rodenticides in my state. This is a rehabbed screech owl that survived an anticoagulant poison that killed the rest of its family. They've seen a real spike in birds and mammals like foxes and even domestic cats poisoned by rat and mice bait. This woman, with a group called A Place Called Hope, was a great advocate and very informative. 

This is the view as I sat at a traffic light on my way to the meeting.

Here's the gym where I work out 3x weekly. It's actually a huge building. The gym is on the 2nd floor but there are all kinds of ball courts and they have lots of tournaments there on weekends with out of towners who come to compete. It's a great resource.

In a post that disappeared after I saved it, I explained why I'd forgotten to post, but eh, I won't go into it now.

OK, so I needed to come up with a photo today, but it's been so cold, dreary and now rainy that I haven't really ventured outside. So I had to delve into my photo gallery to pick something recent. I imagine you are getting tired of my many plant photos, so here's another dish I enjoyed at that favorite cafe in town I told you I visited last week with my father.

This dish is "meatball salad." Each meatball is the size of 3 regular meatballs. It's delicious.

I have a small collection of head planters. They're not looking too spiffy at the moment, but they look great with the right kind of plant in there.

I had an incredibly productive day.

* I took a small pussy willow cutting from my one pussy willow shrub back in APRIL, and the poor thing sat in water all these months. I wanted to plant it sooner but couldn't find the right spot for it. It needs a lot of room but also needs sun. I tucked it in the ground today, FINALLY. It had quite the root system on it. I will be curious to see how it does.

* I also transplanted one black oak seedling from a bad spot where it popped up early in the spring and put it in a better spot. I have 3 or 4 more I'd like to do the same with.

* I finished cutting down a kousa dogwood. I noticed it a year or two ago; I had mixed feelings about taking it down, but it doesn't have much wildlife value. And then I noticed it was starting to steal sunlight from a nearby oak sapling which I very much want to thrive. In 31 years I've never had a single oak  here, and now this year I have at least 5 or 6 popping up all over. This sapling was about 6 feet high last year and has doubled in height this year. 

The kousa dogwood was a lot of work since this involved cutting up larger branches and then dragging them to a brush pile hidden in the woods. I got almost 13,000 steps in today, and this was a big reason why.

* I mowed part of the lawn.

* I started organizing the garage so I can store lawn furniture in there and all my plant pots. Maybe even my SUV. Didn't quite finish but made great headway. Also filled 4 trash bags with old newspapers I had used a few years ago to suppress weeds but decided I didn't like it as it required mulch on top of it and inevitably the ugly newspaper sheets would show thru the mulch. I'm doing a more natural mulch now of just leaves. Mice had gotten into the newspaper anyway.

* Continued work cutting rampant trumpet vine at the base near soil and then dabbing it with herbicide. There are a zillion individual plants. I feel like I did quite a bit but then when I look around at how it has gotten into every nook and cranny in this area, it's quite discouraging. Yesterday I was doing the same thing and pretty much cleared and treated the vine that had been growing up a very large evergreen I'd like to save. Vines will kill a tree pretty quickly. It's really a challenge to eradicate it because by June this whole area becomes impenetrable and the best time to treat this particular plant is late summer/early fall. So I get just one shot at it all year. I CAN try to maintain some sort of narrow pathways in there in spring and if I can do that, I can at least cut back the vines even if I don't treat them. This can help maintain some sort of control.

Tomorrow we're getting a fairly significant storm, big enough that I charged up my 2 "power stations" just in case I lose power. The big one can keep my fridge and freezer going for 4 days.  So, maybe I'll squeeze in another mowing session before the rain starts in the afternoon. 

We had our first frost last night, which reminded me of the days when I used to do the No Heat Challenge. Ha! As I get older, I appreciate creature comforts more. Though the heat is still OFF; just threw 2 blankets on the bed.

This week I reviewed Kiva loans from Kazakhstan, Ghana and Philippines.

I was just thinking about what photo I would post today when Nature decided for me! Saw this beautiful bobcat pass through my yard just now.

Took my father to physical therapy yesterday and then one of our favorite cafes for lunch. I'm not even sure of everything that was in these, but they were soooo good: tostadas topped with potato, feta cheese, avocado, diced red peppers, a fried egg, black bean spread, oh my. Not a low calorie meal, that's for sure!

This was last night's dinner: a quick stir fry with snow peas from my garden, broccoli florets, mushrooms and cashews over jasmine rice. I'm so happy a few others are doing the Photo Challenge! Makes it more fun!

.

We are finally getting some much needed rain today. Not driving rain, just a nice light to medium rain.

We're expecting a possible first frost Thursday night, which may signal the end of my herbicide treatment of tree of heaven seedlings. I'm just anxious to do as much as I can since I will have to wait an entire year to treat again. There are literally hundreds of these things popping up in back and they grow fast. The trumpet vine can continue to be treated until a HARD frost (defined as 24 degrees or colder), and temps are still well above 50 degrees. The trumpet vine is inaccessible until late September or so, so for the same reason, I want to get to as much as possible as it's killed some nice evergreens here already. It's relentless.

Yesterday was warm and humid so I didn't do any of this work then, but tomorrow will be considerably cooler and is ideal for this kind of work.

OK, with this photo I'm caught up with the daily photo challenge. It shows the new chandeleir ("sputnik" design) my handyman installed this morning. I like modern stuff. I liked the one I had before, which was more traditional, but, well, after 16 years living with it, time for a change. 

Aside from that, the only meaningful things I did today was write a two-sided handout for a presentation my invasive plants group is putting on at the senior center this week. I also went to the transfer station with mostly recyclables and stopped in at grocery store for a few items since it's nearby. I also scheduled my father for PT and will be bringing him tomorrow.

I was flooded with at least 6 or 7 pleas for money in the mail from various groups, and I vaguely remembered seeing some sort of notice a while ago indicating that my registry with the Do Not Mail list had expired. So I renewed it for another 10 years; I see now they charge you $6 to do this. I'm not positive it's the same group I registered with before, but anyway....they estimate doing so will cut down on junk mail by 80%.

Opsie. Skipped another day. I'm just busy.

View from my doorway...

In the past year, I realized my house plants were threatening to take over this small space, so I have winnowed down my collection of cacti and succulents considerably. I think I now have 8 now, plus 2 pothos. But I still have this pencil cactus, which loves its spot in my sunny bathroom. I may bring a little Ikea stool down from the attic for her.

This week I reviewed Kiva loans from Tonga, Rwanda, Phillipines and Indonesia.

Opsie, I took the photo yesterday but forgot to post. It's mistflower. It's nice to see such a vividly colored flower in bloom this time of year.

This is what I did today. Been pulling it for weeks. Rather exhausting as it also includes carrying the stuff on a pitchfork about 300 feet from where it's growing. Next stop: dump.

Now that the 3rd quarter is behind us, I thought it would be a good time to project my total 2025 income and see if I could manage a small Roth conversion while still staying in the 12% bracket, which tops out at $48,475. Cus I'm not sure my income would ever exceed the 22% bracket, which tops out at $103,350 for a single person, so not sure during a Roth conversion now and paying 22% taxes would offer any benefit.

To my surprise, my projected income this year, between annuity payouts, traditional IRA distributions and a few taxable mutual fund distributions, total about $63,000, and that's not including dividends or cap gains on two taxable brokerage funds. That was surprising since my expenses have remained in the low $40s for many, many years. But then I already forgot the January purchase of my new SUV, and the whole idea of taking out a loan for the purchase was to avoid a larger $30K bump-up in my income that would push me into the 22% bracket. I've been aggressively prepaying the loan in addition to the regular payments, and all told, all those car payments do seem to account for most of my income increase. (I plan to have it paid off next year.)

Although my income will be over $63,000 this year, with the standard deduction of $15,750, my adjusted income will be roughly $47,416, just within the 12% bracket. Cap gains and dividends will likely add another $3,000 or so to that total, but I guess I can live with that.

I am now well stocked in my favorite brand diced tomatoes, Muir Glen. They are pretty expensive (over $3 a can) but they go on sale to half-price (!) in the fall, so I took full advantage of that recently and should have enough organic, sodium-free diced tomatoes for the entire winter's worth of soups and stews. I use 2 cans per pot of soup with a whole lot of veggies.

Generally speaking, my diet is as low sugar, low salt and low sat fat as possible, and it's very hard to eat in America without consuming some degree of processed foods where much of that sugar, salt and fat can be found. I used to buy dried beans for my soups and stews but it was too time-consuming to soak the beans overnight and then cook them. The Muir Glen brand also uses BPA-free linings in their canned products.

I am also very happy with my Biroux water filtration system, which is said to filter out all kinds of unwanted stuff, including BPA, microplastics, heavy metals, and more. The water does taste subtly different; I'd mentoned that to a customer service rep, who asked me if I could describe what it tasted like, and I could not. I found myself puzzling over that for weeks afterwards, and decided that it just tastes like nothing, which I guess is what water is supposed to taste like. Perhaps in the past I tasted flouride or minerals, although Biroux is supposed to retain beneficial minerals while stripping away contaminants.

Biroux sells a nice countertop stand for their water filtrations system (i bought the small one shown) but I saved a few bucks and just used a plant stand.

The 2025 vegetable garden is wrapping up. All I have left are my snow peas, but here's the tally of everything else I harvested. Note that I planted for one person using 3 4 x 8' raised beds.

Cherry tomatoes: 490
Lost a few to exploratory chipmunk bites.
Yellow squash: 31
Cucumber: 21 (wiped out early by powdering mildew)
Zucchini: 16 (also pulled early due to cucumber beetle and powdery mildew)
Medium-sized tomatoes: 8
Stringbeans: 3 lbs
Snow peas: 40.5 oz (2.5 lbs)
Plenty of red lettuce but not counted

Next year I may skip the stringbeans and return to eggplant.

This morning I woke up and, looking out the bathroom window, I saw a wooly caterpillar in a large, ground-level water bath I put out for the animals. Fearing it had drowned or was drowning, I ran downstairs and outside, to remember with some relief that I had dumped the water yesterday after seeing mosquito larvae swimming around. The wooly caterpillar was just wedged beside a small river rock in there. I let it be and now, with the warming sun, I noticed the caterpillar crawling around the rim of the bath, maybe doing its morning calisthenics. So all is well.

Since I'm so fond of photography, I've been thinking of doing the Photo a Day Challenge starting on Jan 1. Although it's harder to find things to photograph during winter. It would be fun to compile a year's worth of photos which would likely be rather mundane but also accurately reflect my life. 

I've now achieved my credit card goal to earn $100 credit. Now I can go back to a different card to charge up entertainment purchases, which include restaurants, where I can get a refund on any entertainment-related charges with credits I already earned on a travel rewards card. I think I have a year to do that.

Wow, the Shark cordless vaccum (the PowerDetect) that I bought 3 months ago (which I love) has jumped in price by $80. I gave it a 5-star review on Amazon.

Violet's owner picked her up 2 days ago. We had a nice chat about the dog and also their travels to Berlin and Prague. I am definitely missing the dog, but I am also enjoying me freedom again. I would not be opposed to dog sitting again should the opportunity arise. 

Didn't do a heck of a lot today. I am STILL sick; it's been harder to get rid of than I thought. Which stinks, as I want to go to the gym, get back to invasive work, etc. Well, I did manage to change the bed sheets and vacuum. 

Yesterday I pulled up my tomato plants but am still picking squash and snow peas.

...

I am nearing the end of dog duty this week but unfortunately came down with a cold (!) that forced me to curtail the twice daily walks totalling about 70 minutes to just a single, 25-minute walk. (She still gets out 4x daily to pee and poop.)

I've gotten a little attached to the dog and in some ways will be sorry to see her go. She is so exuberant when she's going for a walk and is very easy to care for. She follows me around the house wherever I go. I could see myself pet-sitting again in the future if the opportunity arose. I actually lost 3 lbs just walking with her!

Today is the first day I'm feeling more energy and I think I've turned the corner. However, out of an abundance of caution, since my friend is coming to pick up the dog on Friday and since I've had a low fever (99.4), extreme fatigue and hacking cough, I decided today to get a covid test. Luckily, I tested negative, but I'm supposed to retest myself in 2 days, right before my friend arrives.

A friend and neighbor dropped off some dog food and a box of tissues the other day, which I really appreciated. She's a nurse, and I think she chose the right profession because she is a very caring individual.

Otherwise, not a whole heck of a lot new. 

I have 10 more transactions I need to charge on my credit card in the next 8 days ( by month's end) to earn my $100 credit.

Looking forward to some much needed overnight rain.

I like to make my money work for me, especially when I don't really have to do anything to earn more/get more back, aside from being alert to various promotions.

Today, in a single trip to BJs, I was able to take advantage of 3 separate offers:

The 1st was spending at least $100 at BJs to earn $10 off. Done.

The 2nd was to purchase $30 in "baking goods" to get $10 off. Since I was already getting walnuts and Truvia, I threw an extra bag of walnuts into my cart to earn that. (They freeze well.) Done.

The 3rd was that by getting gas and then groceries at BJs, that was 2 more transactions on my US Bank Altitude Go credit card. Specifically, transactions #36 and #37 toward 50 transactions by this month's end, to earn $100 credit. (It was a 2-month thing.) Done.

Dog sitting has been interesting. She wasn't eating her food, so her owner said I could try canned. She LOVED the canned food, which I first served straight out of the can to make sure she'd like it; the next meal, I mixed 50/50 with her regular food, to try to reduce the number of cans of dog food I'll need to buy for the remainder of her stay with me (another week). It's kind of pricey. I'll be reimbursed, but I think he's kind of price-conscious.

She has been very cooperative about peeing and pooping. In addition to her 2 walks a day, she also gets 2 quick trips outside just to pee. At first I was thinking I might want to use the garden hose to dilute the urine on the grass so I don't get dead spots, but that really hasn't been necessary since she has taken to peeing exactly where the grass meets the asphalt part of my driveway, and it ends up trickling down the driveway. Once it rains, it will rinse away.

She absolutely LOVES her walks, and I suppose you could say this is her one bad habit: pulling me along on the leash. I haven't had the heart to reel her in because she is just so happy and exuberant; she has at times PRANCED on the leash in her enthusiasm to carpe diem. The rest of the time, she is very good about not pulling on the leash, especially as I walk out the door with her or when she has to wait for me to put her leash on or off.

Still, I will be glad to have my life back when I give her up to her owners next week. Right now, all my personal chores (mainly, weekly trip to the transfer station, grocery shopping and the gym) all revolve around her schedule and needs, and then I fill in my my errands in between her outdoor time. The weather has been absolutely perfect for an extended period of time; I can imagine this kind of schedule would not be so painless in the dead of winter or rain, so I'm grateful for that.

I'm trying to take her with me when I can, just to give her more stimulation in between walks; so far, we've been to the bank drive-up window, the local Stop & Shop for a quick run in, the library (to return a book using the drive-thru thing), the transfer station and the healthy pet food store, where she got extra attention and a treat from the clerk. 

For the 2 walks a day, I've mostly been sticking with a large campus (maybe 200 acres) in the center of town very popular with dog walkers and walkers, baby strollers, etc. Lots of paved walking paths, a fruit trail, victory garden for the food pantry, municipal offices, volunteer ambulance, community center, pool, senior center, ball fields, the gym I belong to, a micro-brewery and the location of our farmer's market, road races, arts festival, etc. It's getting a little boring becus I'm going there often twice a day (not including when i go to the gym), but I like it because they have poop bags, which I've run out of, and trash cans, plus I can avoid other dog walkers, which I have been doing just to play it safe. 

I tried taking her on a newly built sidewalk that extends from my neighborhood for about a half-mile to a small park, but that road is so busy with traffic it's not that enjoyable. I also tried a larger park that is made of of a small pond and grassy areas, but there's a lot of geese poop and the grass is pretty high. So I just return to the large campus in town. It's a convenient 5-minute drive, although one of her walks is at 5 pm and it can be tough making a left turn off my street during rush hour.

I continue to be impressed by how price competitive places like Whole Foods and BJs can be. The BJs price on organic cosmic crisp apples were better than Wal-Mart. Whole Foods also continues to beat Stop & Shop on a variety of foods, I've noticed. 

Making slow progress on assembling things I have purchased, a chore I HATE doing. I've assembled everything from a full size outdoor composter to a desk and other stuff, but I've also returned something once (a simple bench!) that just wouldn't assemble.

Lawn mower

The Greenworks lawnmower arrived yesterday and I was relieved there was not much to do beyond charging up the battery and inserting the battery. I like to mulch my grass and leave in place, so I didn't even need to attach the bagger.

I had found a mower guy who was $5 more expensive per cut than my last guy, so I just gave him the job, and he said he'd be here today, so I just briefly tried out the Greenworks and liked it very much. I want to do a full mow to see how long the battery lasts and just to assess overall performance and if it's easier to push with the somewhat lower weight, so since my mower guy will only come every other week, I'll do a full mow on alternate weeks, starting next week. But so far I am very much liking the simplicity of design.

Meanwhile, I posted the old Black & Decker mower on Buy Nothing and even with the needed wheel repair issue, I already have a taker who has picked it up.

The new mower was here. Actually there were 2 mowers who also did trimming and then blowing. What a racket. I'm going to ask him to skip the blowing. It's too noisy and I have pollinators around here that could be harmed. But anyway, without having gone out there yet, they seem to be more thorough; my old mower had his son doing the trimming and he did a half-a**** job.

Fancy water filter

My Biroux water filter is another story. Right out of the gate, I had a really vexing problem priming the 2 filters. They give you 4 different ways to prime them, and none worked. Beyond frustrated! They shipped out a replacement filter and auto primer, but that still took 6 days. I was so relieved the new auto primer worked exactly as it should. You charge the primer, attach to the filter, hook on the side of chamber, then push the on button and the Start button and it does its thing. It runs for about 2 minutes and then shuts off. Then you do the same thing with the 2nd filter, which is about the size and shape as a rolling pin.

Next step was doing the red dye test. Had to do it a 2nd time as pink water came out when it should have been clear. I don't think one of the filters was attached correctly.

I thought I was NEARLY ready to go using this thing, but once filled up with water, the spigot developed a slow leak/drip. There's a bunch of washers on it where it attaches to the lower chamber of the unit, but it's not leaking from there; it's leaking from the spigot itself. So the company just told me they will have to send me a replacement spigot. I'm hoping that's not another 6-day wait. I thought there might be a workaround for that. I have a wood floor in the kitchen so I have to be absolutely sure there's no leak.

Yardwork bag holder

I bought a bag holder thing on Amazon that I thought would be very helpful when doing yard chores. I often collect the berries of invasive plants I come across on the property and bring them to the transfer station to reduce the repopulation cycle going on here. It would be very helpful to have something that holds open the large trash bags I use for yard work so I can just dump stuff in there instead of holding the bag open with one hand while putting stuff in with the other. I gave away some old trash cans on Buy Nothing a year ago; I suppose they would have worked as well.

Anyhoo, the highly rated bag holder I ordered on Amazon never arrived, even though they said it had arrived at Teterboro Airport, and then Manchester, CT, but then no further updates since a week ago, which I thought was strange and maybe means they lost it. I finally decided to cancel that order and order the same item from another brand, but now I have to wait to cancel per Amazon's rules.

Dog-sitting

Ms. Violet is very well-behaved and couldn't do anything to be easier to manage. She's very quiet, sleeps through the night, etc. The real challenge for me is 2 of her 4 daily walks, at the very beginning and end of the day. Getting up and dressed to bring her outside around 6 am, even just to my driveway area. The noon walk is her biggest walk, at around 40 minutes at a popular spot in town that dog walkers and others love with its paved trails, ball fields and lots of open space. I've been only going there as it's the easiest place to avoid other dogs if you want to, though, because Violet's parents say she loves people but other dogs is a 50/50 proposition, and I don't want any problems.

The 5 pm walk is a bit shorter, at about 20 or 30 minutes. The last walk is at around 10 pm. That one is hard to get up for. I've been getting away with letting her do her thing alongside the driveway or across the street in a grassy area between homes. I thought today that i would try to use the garden hose where she pees so i don't get dead spots on the grass.

It's just that now, at 8 am, I am feeling tired from having gotten up too early and the 10 pm walk kind of wakes me up at a time when I'm usually already comfortably ensconsed reading in bed.

She is not a big eater, though, which her parents said was something new, that she doesn't immediately finish her meals, so breakfast may sit around til noon. Her meals are just dry food with some pumpkin puree mixed in. She does seem to have a strong interest in people food, but owners are not in the habit of feeding her that, so while I gave her small bits of chicken or cheese, I'm thinking I'd better curtail that or she'll let it be known at the table when she gets home with her and her parents won't appreciate it.

In other news...

It's funny how your chosen careeer and line of work kind of lives on even when you're retired. I worked as a marketing writer and journalist, and that's largely what I do as a volunteer for my groups. It's what I'm good at, and I really do enjoy it.

I started a series of interviews with "leaders in the litter cleanup community," which I've posted on our Facebook page. I bet you didn't know there WAS a litter cleanup community, but indeed, many small towns around here have their own dedicated litter cleanup group. The first guy I spoke to had such an interesting background and strong leadership traits at just 23 years old that I decided to interview him and write about it. The man I interviewed today, from a different group, told me his most interesting litter "find" was a $100 bill! I'm waiting for him to send me his photo and then I'll post it.

I'm trying to grow the presence of our little knotweed group, which is becoming better known elsewhere in the state simply because most towns don't have this kind of group. We are now on Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky, in addition to our own website. I am new to Bluesky but am flummoxed by the 300-character limit on posts with no way to edit them. You just have to delete them and start over if you want to change something. I still like Facebook best.

This month we're meeting with the sustainability director of nearby city who expressed interest in seeing our demonstration plot, which shows a stand of knotweed divided in 2, with one side having been merely mowed and the other treated with herbicide. There's a pretty dramatic difference in how many canes came up on the mown side (hundreds) vs the herbicide side. We've done this multi-year project becus there are a lot of people who hope to kill knotweed by tarping it or cutting it repeatedly so as to avoid using herbicide. Neither work.

Later in the fall we're putting on a training station for our town's Dept. of Public Works. We hope to raise their awareness of knotweed, learn how to identify it and then avoid mowing it when they mow the roads, or if they must mow due to sight line issues, then collecting the fragments, the smallest of which can resprout into a new plant.

For such a small group (5 of us), we're doing a lot.  There will also be a public knotweed presentation at the library soon.

I attended a native plant sale and bought 4 plants (3 butterfly weed to expand on the few tht I have, and a buttonbush, whic would make the second). They are small seedlings and have all been planted now.

I have just 3 more weeks left in my current credit card promotion. I need to make 21 more transactions of $10 or more in that time (for a total of 50 in 2 months) to earn my $100 statement credit. I think I can do it, but I may have to intentionally make lots of small purchases at the grocery store toward the end if I find I haven't quite nailed it.

.

I asked the man who has been mowing my lawn for the past 5 years or so if he could please not leave divots on the lawn, and also that I've noticed my lawn size has shrunk over the years becus he skirts the edges, allowing weeds to fill in. I figured he would just raise the blade. Instead, he suggested I find someone else to do it because, he said, my ground is uneven, and as for the shrinking lawn, he said I needed to have it mowed every week instead of every other week.

I was not expecting him to suggest I go elsewhere, but I really wasn't happy with how he mowed my lawn and it had taken me a while to finally decide to talk to him about it. So I just said okay, but would you mind just finishing out mowing for the year. He never responded, nor did he return to mow, which now has put me in a jam to find someone new rather quickly becus the grass just keeps growing.

So I pulled out my battery walk-behind mower to touch up a few areas where the grass was getting high, but I've had this recurring problem with one of the wheels coming off, and that's what happened as I mowed sideways across a steepish hill. There is this little metal gasket that holds the wheel on the axle, and when that extra weight is applied to the wheel, especially on  the downward end of a hill, it tends to push it off the axle.

It's a real pain in the butt to put on a new gasket; you're supposed to tap it on with a hammer, but as it's supposed to be snug, it's hard to get on at all. My handyman helped me with it just about a month ago.

Yeah, I could run down to the hardware store again to get more of those gaskets, but I hate having to deal with and would likely need my handyman to help me with it and I dislike throwing more $$ at it since it will likely contine to be a problem. 

I decided to buy a new mower at the same time I'm looking for a new mower to do the lawn. I like having a mower myself as a backup, as my current mower man sometimes misses an area or doesn't do narrow walkways of lawn area between pachysandra beds, for example, becus he has a much larger/wider ride-on-top mower.  If the weather's not too hot, I sometimes enjoy mowing, but it's too much lawn to have to do all the time.

Anyway, I didn't want to delay too long as it will take time to ship, and then assemble, and who knows if I get a new mower man in a timely manner. I tried texting 4 that were recommended my my town's Facebook page and only 1 responded.

So I purchased a Greenworks mower. The price was pretty good as I got it directly from Greenworks and they were having a clearance sale (out the door price including the battery and charger was $334). It is NOT self-propelled and I'm hoping that's not a problem. I made a point to check the weight of my old Black & Decker battery mower vs what I bought. The B&D was heavy, at 76 lbs and I don't think it was self-propelled. it was just 19" across. It also was just 24 volt.

The new Greenworks mower is just 65 lbs, or 11 lbs lighter than the B&D, so hoping it will be noticeably easier to push, even without the self-propelled technology. It's also 22" across, so it will cut a wider area, which is good.  And it's a 60 volt mower, which means it has a lot more power to get thru high grass than the B&D, and that was often a problem where I would be mowing and would hear the mower start to slow down and threaten to stall out in thick grass, or just when the battery was wearing down. 

When I was shopping online, I hadn't noticed that what I was looking at was not self-propelled until after I made the purchase. Hmm. I considered cancelling the purchase while I still could, but didn't. The self-propelled feature does add to the price. 

The Greenworks mower is good for mowing up to a half-acre on one charge. I have 1.5 acres, but much of that is woodsy area; the lawn, I would guess, takes up about an acre, but I can't physically handle mowing, at least with the B&D, for more than about 40 minutes anyway. The new mower should take 110 minutes to recharge while my current mower takes so many hours you could never consider doing more than 1 mow in a day.

I'm not sure how long I've had the Black & Decker; it's been a while. At least 10 years. I know i replaced the battery once. So maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised by the improved performance of a newer mower, not just a new gasket holding a wheel on the old mower.

In just a few days my friend will be dropping off his senior dog for an extended 2.5 week stay while they visit Berlin and Prague. It's going to be a big adjustment adjusting my schedule to revolve around 4 daily outdoor visits/pee walks plus meals, of course.  Partly becus the first one is pretty early and before her breakfast, at around 6-7 am, and the last one is around 10 pm, when I am usually in for the night. I don't really want to walk her in my yard becus this is Wildlife Central and I have plenty of ticks around, which I'd rather not get on me or in the house.  I plan to walk her at a place with paved walking trails and mowed soccer fields and so on, but that's a 5-minute car ride. 

This week I reviewed Kiva loans from Philippines and Kenya, about half and half, and one from Uganda. As is typical of all Kiva loans, about 90% of the borrowers were women. All of the Philippine borrowers were people who fished for a living and wanted money for a boat engine. All of the Kenyan borrowers were farmers wanting about $175 for fertilizer and good quality seeds.

The average annual income in Philippines is about $4,000 and in Kenya, it’s closer to $7,000, so even a small loan of $175 is a big deal.

I finally finished writing out 200 postcards to encourage environmentally oriented voters in Virginia to vote in their upcoming November general election. Then I’ll just need to certify I completed the project with the Environmental Voter Project and then mail them on the designated day this month. 

Saturday I went to a new-to-me native plant nursery with 2 friends. I bought 6 plants.

Well, I guess it was only a matter of time before this happened. As you may have noticed, I am very health- and nutrition-conscious. About 5 years ago, I bought a countertop glass water pitcher with a charcoal filter in it that’s supposed to filter out certain things, but who knows if it really is?

So after reading a lot about microplastics, nanoplastics and PFAs (forever chemicals), I decided to spring for a decidedly more expensive reverse osmosis system that’s supposed to be highly effective at filtering out a bunch of stuff, including what I’ve just mentioned.

I was hoping to have the whole thing assembled on Saturday, but hit a stumbling block when I tried to prime the 2 filters but could not fit the rubber gasket thingie they provide onto the end of my modern kitchen faucet, so the alternative way to prime the filters is to soak them in water for 8 hours, which I did.

The good thing is that I only will have to do this once a year, cus that’s how long the filters last. And next time, I will know to plan ahead so it’s not an inconvenience. But then when I did the red dye test, to make sure the filters are working as they should, well, only about a tablespoon of water percolated thru one filter, and none from the other. It's possible I overtightened the nut on the ends of filters, or maybe they're not really primed? At this point, I want to call customer service regarding next steps, and due to the holiday, that won't happen til Tuesday.

Anyway, I’ll be excited to get this system working and see how or if it changes the taste of my water, which is supposed to retain whatever beneficial minerals it already has.