Posted on 08/01/2024 6:19:57 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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Mostly dry and unseasonably cool here in Central Missouri over the past week. We’re getting a nice shower this morning but it’s moving steadily to the east and looks to be just about finished here. It will make a nice supplement to the watering I did over the weekend.
Not much to report on the victory garden. Watered and weeded, picked summer squash and cukes. Tomatoes aren’t doing much right now due to a lull in blooming from the Africa heat we had a couple weeks back. Sweet corn mostly stood back up after being flattened by wind and is looking like it wants to do something.
There’s no sign of the rhubarb that I transplanted in the spring. It looked great then the heat came and it all just folded up. I’m not sure where I’m going wrong with the stuff but it has used up most of my patience.
I give Beau a hard time because if I can’t find him in Menard’s, he’s in the Nuts and Bolts aisle...
...and he can always find me in the Paint Department. ;)
In my house? Pretty sure my family won’t steal then. Mom has a set too (from her Brother, my Uncle) but in the smaller gauge - which is much easier to pocket. ;)
You can see by the price why it was a gift - something I would never spend cash-money on myself. ;)
Uncle has dozens of these, all from different countries and in different styles, collected in his travels. Other ‘Favorite Niece’ already called ‘dibs’ on the Swarovski crystal Creche - which is where the REAL money is. ;) (Austria)
Just saw your ‘outside’ comment... :)
Menards is my favorite. Checkout this 2 minute YouTube on building tube homes for tree frogs. We have them all over around our house. Next trip to menards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smQtNmHqOYo&t=144s
Between tree frogs and mason bees, you’ll be all set! :)
I love toads and frogs; more partial to toads for some reason, but I’ve always lived in ‘woodland’ settings.
Toads are just so cool. ;)
Thanks - I’ll look those up.
No telling how they made it to Menards, mis-labelled!
I tried making a small recipe of tomato sauce with some of these: It came out pretty good, but the sauce is yellow-ish color, kinda “weird”. Maybe next time for the “tanginess” I’ll substitute ketchup. :-)
With just a bit of Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning, sliced and chilled, these are (uncooked) an excellent side dish.
I finally got time to get the defective Barracuda pump cleaned up and everything reassembled (I’d pulled off the pressure switch for remote mounting, among other things) and returned it to Menards. It looked just like new, except for my additions of fitting sizes to the drawing in the manual, LOL!
It took getting the Plumbing Dept. Manager over to the returns desk to get the return ok’d, but, now they have the pump and I have my $$ back. :-)
This last weekend I finally got around to something else I’ve been meaning to do to upgrade the well system for a long time: The pressure switch relay no longer turns the pump on directly, instead, it powers a 35 amp 600 volt mercury wetted relay that turns the pump on and off. That’s the “resistive load” rating, but, the (NOS) mercury wetted relay turning on the pump is probably good for a million cycles or so: A lot longer lifetime than I’ll have! (For me, I suppose NOS means “now old stock” - hahaha!) If I really want to go nuts with it, I can add a spark suppressor to the pressure switch relay contacts, although the thing is functioning at maybe 1% of it’s original workload.
A final touch will be adding a longer 1/8” ID line from the pump to the pressure switch, so I can mount the pressure switch higher. That’s a little for easier access, and a lot to hopefully get the switch / relay above any “water accidents” that may occur in years to come. The “new” standard of pressure switches mounted directly on the side - front of the well pump is, IMO, “nuts”, and just asking for big trouble for / danger to the operator or repairman. I’ve worked with electricity all my life, and getting electrocuted is NOT on my bucket list.
Heck, even my 18 y/o daughter was irritated today at seeing Halloween stuff “out” already...
It’s not even mid-August yet! I’m sure as soon as they can pull the Halloween stuff off the shelves, the Christmas stuff will be out.
All ‘Fall Decor’ is already on discount at Hobby Lobby. ;)
At the Garden Center, we received our fresh-cut trees right around Thanksgiving, and while we had everything ready to go and planned out in the back, we did not decorate the store for Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving.
I loved that about our Company. :)
... we did not decorate the store for Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving.
I loved that about our Company. :)
********
The way it ‘used to be’ & in my mind, the way it still ‘ought to be’.
I buy Christmas gifts* as I see them all year, refuse to buy Christmas decor or specific Christmas ‘branded’ items until after Thanksgiving.
*Found a set of 4 cute, small oil cruet bottles at HL, 50% off. Bought them as presents for my 2 nieces who grow herbs so they can make herb infused oils.
Anyone have experience (long experience!) with a pipe joint compound rated safe for potable water systems that stays soft / flexible, basically “forever”?*
I have some that works well, except it hardens up after several years, making it hard to get pipes back apart. I don’t know if that’s volatiles gradually evaporating out, or, some sort of reaction with our water, but I suspect the former, as “squeeze out” eventually hardens, or at least becomes a bit “crumbly”. In the little bottle with a brush, it stays gooey for a very long time.
Menards has two versions of a brand called “Blue Monster” (never heard of them) but I don’t know which is better.
vs.
*I know 3M Strip Caulk will stay soft for a very long time, even in an automotive environment, and I have some, but it seems unlikely it is rated safe in potable water systems...
Loctite makes a food grade anti-seize compound, but I don’t know if it works well as a pipe thread sealer...
Those will be appreciated! :)
Oy, I am glad those days are over for me with “our old house” projects. We used to have a sump pump in the old Michigan basement and every now and then it would go on the fritz. We had some minor flooding, pit was full of water and me trying to free up the pump. Big shock came up my arm, fortunately my hand released on its own. I was sure Menards would take it back.
Yeah, part of my lab is in the basement and the capacitors in those darn sump pumps fail often, too, or the impeller jams on a bit of debris getting in the pit, or, one time, we had a SNAKE get tangled up with the float switch! Talk about your unexpected problems! I have a battery back up pump too, but then you have to maintain the whole battery backup system and if you are “lucky” the bloody charger that came with the backup system won’t fail on you. I finally installed a water sensor about 2/3 up the pit (had to shield it in a plastic bottle as the pump requires a little vent hole in the exit pipe, and the spray would set off the alarm.) The alarm came with only a 7 ft. wire from the unit itself to the sensor element, but it turns out some 18 ga. speaker wire spliced in allows a long extension — I actually tested it with 200 ft. of 20 gauge wire, and then for the actual installation I ran about 50 ft. of 18 ga. Works like a champ. Just gotta check the battery in the alarm every several months. (Like tomorrow, when I get home, now that I think about it!) Damages aside, fighting a dead or jammed sump pump in an already flooded basement is NO fun, I can relate on that one!
I have a cutoff for electricity to the sump pump mounted well above it, and IF I have water in the basement I can easily flip the breakers to all basement circuits: Just flip the ones for everything except the lights on the ceiling.
I had a full fledged darkroom in my old basement. Never any snakes but friends had frigs sitting on their pump going up and down.
Speaking of frogs, I ran across this, wondering if tree frogs are big garden insect eaters. We have a lot of them for as long as we gave lived here. Found this page about the three best frogs for your garden and the gray tree frog is one. So this is a frog slide. First the article I just found and the other is a short you tube on how to construct a tree frog house. Cheap and helpful. They like things moist. We are in a damp woods but it does sound like they like moist conditions. Sometimes it does get dry around here. The comments on the youtube are great.
https://learn.eartheasy.com/articles/3-frogs-that-will-help-your-garden-thrive/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smQtNmHqOYo&t=144s
Ha! It took me a couple seconds to figure out “frigs” was a typo. Ya’ had me goin’ there! :-)
My funniest frog story was when I was cleaning out gutters several years ago. It had already been a long day, among other things clearing the line out to our septic tank. Anyway, here I am up on a ladder, cleaning out the gutter, and seemingly from nowhere, a largish tree frog glopped onto the right cheek of my face! I was so startled I nearly fell off the ladder!
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