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.