Stanley, the Stinky Sponge

Everyone, no matter where they are, who uses a sponge in the kitchen has had to deal with Stanley, the Stinky Sponge! No matter how hard you squeeze the water out of the darn thing, the next day, or two days after, the aroma rises up and assaults your nose! Once you get that stinky smell in your nose, you smell it the rest of the day…So what can you do that will get rid of Stanley and end up with Nice Nancy, the Good Smelling Sponge?

Is this Stinky Stanley or Nice Nancy?

Well, I found an article on what works to get rid of Stanley and end up with Nice Nancy! The article was written by Beckey Worley. Now, just so you know, I have tried most of the remedies that Ms. Worley indicates do not work. What have I tried that does not work?

* Microwaving the wet Stanley offender. What you end up with is a hot stinky Stanley!
* Washing the sponge in hot water with dish soap. No matter how much you scrub Stanley behind the ears, he still smells bad.
* Ms. Worley indicates that she soaked the test sponge in bleach and it fell apart. I tried this too, although not overnight. It worked for about 10 hours. Stanley went into the trash and was replaced by Nice Nancy!
* The top rack of the dishwasher. It works, for about 5 minutes! Nice Nancy comes out of the dishwasher and gets wet once, and Stinky Stanley is back!
* Ms. Worley also tried a vinegar bath followed by a bath of baking soda…didn’t work either!

What Ms. Worley did discover is this: Place Stinky Stanley outside in the full sun and let Stanley sit there for four days. When you go back out and pick up Stanley, you will discover that Stanley is no longer there but you will have Nice Nancy there in your hands. What causes the change? The UV rays of the sun! It kills all those bad critters that make their home on Stinky Stanley! Ms. Worley did indicate that she left the sponge out for less than the four days and it worked!

But, who uses a sponge once every couple of days? Hmmm…can’t think of anyone I know. So here is the suggestion for keeping Nice Nancy in the kitchen and Stinky Stanley out. First, always squeeze the water out of the sponge. Do not let it sit in the sink to grow allow all those ghastly bacteria and potentially dangerous other stuff grow! After using your kitchen sponge, rinse it well, squeeze it well and stick it outside in the sun. Then have a backup sponge to take its place. By rotating sponges maybe we can all have Nice Nancy in our kitchens!

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The Answers to the Questions

Did you look up the answers?  Well, maybe you decided to really test yourself.  Without further ado, here are the answers.

Question #1 – Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.  The answer:  Boxing.

Question #2 – What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?  The answer:  Niagara Falls .   The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.

Question #3 – Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year.  What are the only two perennial vegetables?  The answers:  Asparagus and rhubarb.

Question #4 – What fruit has its seeds on the outside?  The answer:  Strawberry.

Question #5 – How did the pear get inside the brandy bottle?   The answer: It grew inside the bottle.   The bottles are placed over pear buds when they are small, and are wired in place on the tree. The bottle is left in place for the entire growing season. When the pears are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems.

Question #6 – Only three words in standard English begin with the letters ‘ dw’ and they are all common words. Name two of them.  The answers:  Dwarf, dwell and dwindle…

Question #7 – There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?  The answers:  Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation mark, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses.

Question #8 – Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.  The answer:  Lettuce.

Question #9 – Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter ‘S.’   The answers:  Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, skates, snowshoes, stockings, stilts.

Did you have fun with this?  I know that I did…How is this for a bit of whimsy Joe E.?

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Can You Answer These Questions?

Let’s have some fun, shall we?  Can you answer these questions right off the cuff?  No research, just the answers.  I got these from a friend, and thought that this would be a fun blog to post…

Question #1 – Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.

Question #2 – What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?

Question #3 – Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year.  What are the only two perennial vegetables?

Question #4 – What fruit has its seeds on the outside?

Question #5 – In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn’t been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?

Question #6 – Only three words in standard English begin with the letters ‘ dw’ and they are all common words. Name two of them.

Question #7 – There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?

Question #8 – Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.

Question #9 – Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter ‘S.’

Check back in about 6 hours for the answers!

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Sierra Foothills Wildflowers

Springtime in the Sierra Foothills is an amazing season. Trees and shrubs are leafing out, water is running down the rivers and streams and the wildflowers are blooming. For those who suffer allergies, this is a tough season to get through due to the volume of pollen in the air. I took a walk down the road with camera in hand to share with you some of the wildflowers in the area. To get a full appreciation of these blooms, you might want to click on the photo to enlarge it so that you can enjoy the detail!

Here is what I found:

Vetch

Vetch is a vine that springs up everywhere. It is a vine that twines around everything near it.

Scotch Broom

Scotch Broom is considered an invasive plant up here in the foothills. The flower on this plant resembles that of a pea. It is a shrub that gets to about 5 feet. There is a secondary variety of this shrub that is called Lena that has a red blush in the flower.

Scotch Broom – Lena

Another shrub that is blooming everywhere is a native lilac. Sprays of these flowers abounds everywhere you turn.

White wild lilac

Nothing could be more beautiful than the lupine that mass in areas.

A field of lupine

Lupine

Here and there you come upon a beautiful yellow flower called the monkey flower.

Monkey flower

We also have a native iris that is quite splendid.

Wild iris

Here is more iris with a small bell shaped flower called fairy lantern. I was unable to identify the yellow flower in this photo.

Wild iris, Fairy Lantern and an unknown yellow blossom

We also have a native azalea here that when it blooms, the shrub appears to be on fire.

Native azaleas

And wild grasses are everywhere. As the wind blows through the fields of these grasses it resembles waves on the ocean.

Unknown grass but beautiful

There are many others that are out there just waiting to bloom. Stay tuned for a visit with those gems!

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Day One of Lasagna Gardening

The day started bright and early. I got my post out on the Super Moon, and I started Chipotle Ribs going in the crockpot. My friend Jorge arrived right on time: 8 a.m. One photo of the garden before we start so you have an idea of the area and get a feeling for the layout of it.

Vege garden before we start

We were starting with 4 bags of steer manure and 8 bags of peat moss. We had quite a bit of newspaper, and the leaf layer leaves came from the lower part of our yard. The compost has been brewing for quite a few years and is really good soil.  My layers will be as follows:

**Newspaper
**Peat moss
**Leaves
**Peat moss
**Steer Manure
**Peat moss
**Compost

We started out by loosening the ground around the raspberries, pulling a few weeds and removing some plants for later transplanting.

Breaking ground

We decided to use the rototiller to break the ground up before we start the layers.

Rototilling the bed

As Jorge was rototilling, I followed with the rake to sort out some of the weed clumps. I removed these while Jorge finished with the rototilling.

Rototilling is done and we are good to go

Before we start the ground gets leveled.

Leveling the ground

We start with the newspapers, and overlap the sheets. The newspaper will act as weed block.  We started at the back of the garden.

Starting the layers

Once the paper was down, we hosed it so that it was soaking wet.  Next we added about a one inch layer of peat moss.  This was followed by a layer of old leaves that I took from a non-weedy area of our garden.  We followed this with another layer of peat moss, followed by steer manure, and more peat moss.

6 layers are down

Here we are finishing up the area by topping it with compost.

Final layer of compost

Once we got into a rhythm, we moved along at a pretty good clip. There is quite a bit more area as we cleared more than I ever have before.  And, I did not calculate the are as well as I thought that I had, and we had to stop for they day.

Stopping here…

We had a lovely lunch made by my husband, and figured out what I needed to get for next weekend. Here is another view from above.

View from above

It might have looked like Jorge was doing all the work, but I did stop every now and then to take photos of our progress so that I could share this experience with you!

Next week when we finish up, if I have the energy, and I must say that I am pooped today and ache in places I didn’t know could ache like it does, we will start planting! Wahoo! Stay tuned!

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Shooting the Moon

Once a year the moon reaches a distance of 221,802 miles away from earth, which is the closest that it ever gets to our blue planet. In its orbit, this point is called perigee. It has been dubbed as the “Super Moon.” The moon on this day looks bigger than at other times of the year.

I ventured outside last night hoping to catch some photos. Here are the photos that I took…

My first shot of the moon

It slowly rises

A close up

These photos were taken using my zoom lens, which is a 75-300mm lens. Here is a photo that I took using my regular 55mm lens.

With my regular 55mm lens

Did you get a chance to see the Super Moon in your neck of the woods? Let me know!

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Love in the Mist

One of my blog followers asked me what Love in the Mist is.  So I thought that I would do a quick post on this beautiful annual!

The scientific name of the plant is Nigella damascena. It is a delicate flower that has about 25 petals that are surrounded by feathery green leaves. The colors is typically blue, but there are other shades too. White, pink can be found too! When the plant emerges it sort of looks like dill. It reaches a height of 15 – 24 inches. After the bloom it forms a beautiful and unusual seed pod. Here are some photos.

Love in the Mist – Photo from UWex.edu

And up close…

Up close to Love in the Mist – Photo from TimeToCraft.co.uk

If you click on the last photo to get a good view of the flower, you will notice at the bottom left the unusual seed pod. These can be dried and used in flower arrangements, or saved for seeds for next seasons garden!

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The Greenhouse Today

I have started to count down the days to planting. Tomorrow we will be putting the layers together for the lasagne garden. And planting will start next week. In order to acclimate the plants to the cooler temperatures, I will be leaving the greenhouse doors open overnight, with something to block the critters from getting the plants.

Remember what the greenhouse looked like 6 days ago? Here is the left side from April 30th.

Left side of the greenhouse on April 30th

Here it is today.

Left side of the greenhouse

The right side from April 30th looked like this.

Right side of the greenhouse April 30th

Today…

Right side of the greenhouse

Do you remember the potatoes from the 30th? Here is the photo again.

Potatoes on April 30th

Here they are today.

Potatoes

These are already over the top of the containers!    I still need to add more dirt to the pots but will not do this until I move them outside. They are very heavy!

I still have some slow growers. The slowest are the poblano peppers. So far only three have sprouted. The tomatoes and love in the mist are the next. The tomatoes are at about two inches and the love in the mist about one inch.

Stay tuned in as tomorrow me and my friend Jorge will be creating the lasagna garden and I will be taking photos as we go!

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Rutabagas

There is such a variety of vegetables out there, and thinking about it there are a bunch I have yet to try. Growing up, the vegetables we ate usually came from a can. Corn, green beans, peas, Lima beans, spinach. The few that we had that were fresh were carrots and potatoes, with maybe cauliflower and artichokes occasionally.

Thinking back on it, my least favorite from the can were peas. This was followed by Lima beans. I used to swallow both of these gems whole, while plugging my nose and downing them with the much disliked milk. Lima beans are still on the list of least favorite. Peas? Love them fresh, and the frozen are not bad either.

So what does this have to do with the rutabaga you are ask? This is one vegetable that I have not tried yet. Do you eat rutabagas? How do you cook them? What is the flavor like? Wanting to know more about this vegetable, I did a bit of research and discovered some interesting facts.

Rutabagas – Photo from Greenling.com

I was surprised to discover that the rutabaga is in the Brassicaceae family, which includes cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, radish, horseradish, and watercress. Quite a big family – eh? And it is a cross between a cabbage and a turnip. Now who would have ever thought to do that?

The first known reference to this vegetable comes to us from 1620 when Swiss botanist, Gaspard Bauhin, notes that the vegetable was discovered growing wild in Sweden. So did mother nature then cross the cabbage and turnip if this was growing wild? It found its way to the royal gardens in England back in 1669, and France in the early 1700′s. It then made its way to Scotland in the late 1700′s. The first planting of this vegetable occurred in the U.S. in the State of Illinois in the early 1800′s.

Cut rutabaga Photo by Rainer Zenz

I found that people like to eat this vegetable roasted along with meats. It is also added to soups and stews as a flavor enhancer. And it is eaten raw, shredded in salads. In some countries they mash them together with potatoes and carrots. In Sweden they are cooked with ham hocks in a dish called Fläsklägg med rotmos. In Norway they are paired with salted herring. In Scotland they are combined with potatoes in a dish called neeps and tatties and served alongside Haggis.

Haggis with neeps and tatties – Photo by AGlugofOil com

In Canada rutabagas are added to mincemeat pies. Here in the U.S. they are typically added to soups and stews.

Nutritionally this vegetable has a slight bit of protein, has 8% of the recommended daily allowance of manganese and phosphorous, 7% of potassium, and a dash of calcium and magnesium. Its largest contribution is that it contains 42% of vitamin C. Who knew?

Will I be trying this vegetable soon? You betcha! My husband tells me that this vege was his Dad’s favorite and it was served mashed. Stay tuned to see how I do with this vegetable!

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Lasagne in the Garden

My friend Kathy told me about a thing called lasagne gardening.  She seems to have great success with this method and because of this, and the fact that my plants are just about ready to be planted I thought I would give it a go.

Here is what I have learned about this type of garden:

The garden bed is in layers.  After the first layer of newspaper, the next layer will be peat moss.  Every other layer that you choose to do is peat moss.  So, in essence, you are creating a lasagne in the garden with layers of food for the plants!  And the peat moss that you use can be considered the noodles!

Lasagne garden layers – Drawing from DesperateGardener com

What Kathy told me is so cool about this kind of garden is that there are very few weeds and whatever weeds you do get pull up really easily.  Also, that once you get your layers down, you can plant right away.  Sounds to good to be true?  Well, we shall find out.

The plan for tomorrow is to rake up what leaves I have remaining in the yard from the last fall season.  I have a bunch of newspaper courtesy of a pal from work, and Kathy has additional for me.   I will be buying 3 bags of peat moss and two bags of manure.  The rest I have here.

My plan for my layers:  Newspaper, followed by peat moss.  Next layer will be the raked up leaves followed by peat moss.  The next layer will be the manure followed by, yes, peat moss.  Then this layer will be topped with the compost that I have been accumulating for the last 5 years.   My layers, with the exception of the newspaper, which kills the weeds and relieves me of having to rototill, will all be about 1″ thick.  Once this is all together, the garden will be ready to plant.  I will hold off one more week to plant everything around Mother’s Day.  This also gives me time to acclimate the plants from the greenhouse to the natural temperatures outside.

I also read about this type of gardening from a book Kathy loaned me called “Lasagne Gardening,” written by Patricia Lanza.  One of the things that struck me from what I read in this book is that with this type of gardening, plants can be planted closer together than what is recommended on the seed packets.  OK, so I am going to give this a go, and the best part is you get to come along with me on this trip! So stay tuned for updates!

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