Donna Lynn

Donna Herrmann-Vogel wrote:Any suggestions on a good camera?

I'd love to know of a good trail camera system that does not require a cellular connection, wifi, bluetooth, or any other hackable or "outside" connections to function.  it would be nice if it could transmit to a home-based computer or recorder, but only wired or "local" radio frequencies.  I've only done basic searches, but all the ones I've seen require some kind of outside connections that would be either outside my control or hackable by others.  I'm not electronically gifted, or I'd just design and build my own.

Houseplants are great for cleaning the air, plus they just look nice and make the house feel more natural during the colder months when the trees are barren outside.  I have maybe a dozen houseplants, but I also grow tropical fruiting plants in pots indoors during winter and outside during summer.  I harvested 13 delicious mandarin oranges off my small (not even 3' tall yet) potted tree late last fall!  Unfortunately during our recent move, the furnace went out during the coldest time and the tree died back quite a bit, but it did survive and hopefully will recover enough to produce fruit again next year.  

The main problem with bringing them indoors is scale insects and spider mites.  The tropical citrus seem to attract both of those pests, which don't do much damage while the plants are outside, but once they are indoors, after a month or two they mushroom into infestations, and spraying large plants indoors is quite messy.  Of course, so are scale drippings...

The next significant problem is light levels indoors during winter.  I've had to use grow lights to keep the plants going through the winter.  In our new home, we have a small sun room off the master bedroom with 3 skylights and a south-ish facing wall of windows, which of course became my dedicated winter plant room, LOL!  The plants that survived the furnace fiasco seemed to really come back to life under the better lighting of that sun room once the days started getting longer.  I have yet to install the grow lights in the spaces between the skylights, but will hopefully get to that while the plants are outside this summer.  

I even put some of the houseplants outside for some or all of the summer, mostly in dappled shade, just to revitalize them a bit and let the rain rinse the dust off.  Most of them seem to appreciate it, although some don't care for the rain and wind and prefer to stay indoors.  Just like some people 😁.

We used ours for lifting and holding our tractor's backhoe bucket up for easier replacement of blown hydraulic hoses.  Also to keep it from sagging down after shutting off the engine, to avoid it getting into a position we couldn't get it out of in the tight space we were working in one time.  They do tend to tip though, and require a firm flat surface to push against, which we provided in the form of some pressure treated plywood and other scrap lumber blocking.  Very handy tool!

Burra Maluca wrote:At least, I always assumed they were corn-stalks. Looking at them now I'm not 100% sure...

That's a sugar cane field being burned before harvest.  Note that he lit it intentionally, which isn't done to corn stalks (unless you want a field of burnt popcorn... 😁)  They do that where I lived on Maui.  Depending on wind direction, there were times we had to keep all the windows closed up tight to keep the stench out, even miles away from the burn!

Perhaps the marketing folks who made that commercial were under the influence of a different kind of burning vegetation... 🤷‍♀️

Coydon Wallham wrote:

Donna Lynn wrote:Probably a "transfer station."  A local place with dumpsters (or large pits for more heavily populated areas) that individuals bring their trash to, that are periodically hauled off to the landfill.  It may also have separate dumpsters for recycling.  (I used to work at one in Oregon.)

Not to hijack Tiffaney's thread, but regional dialects/phrasing is related to what I wasted four years of higher education on and it still fascinates me anyway.

I've not heard of "transfer station" anywhere around Wisconsin or Minnesota outside of busses and trains. I wonder how widespread "the dump" is since I've never noticed anyone confused in four decades of asking "Where does the Lone Ranger take his trash?" and telling them (or having them tell me) "to the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump"...

A quick online search showed that there are indeed waste transfer stations in Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as Michigan where I currently live.  Most folks never actually see where their garbage goes because a truck picks it up from a container or three at the end of their driveway and it magically disappears to a mysterious place known as "the dump."  Even many rural areas have this service available for a fee if not covered by local taxes.  But people who have to take their own trash "away" will take it either to a permanent site such as a landfill or a commercial incinerator, or to a transfer station that collects trash from local residents and transports it to permanent sites farther away.  The Oregon county I lived in walked the fine line between having enough transfer stations close enough that people would drive to them instead of dumping their trash along the side of the road somewhere to avoid the cost of proper disposal, and keeping municipal costs of trash collection within budget constraints.

The way I see it (without the benefit of higher education 😁,) "the dump" is a generic slang term which can encompass any place trash is emptied, while "transfer station" and "landfill" are more precise, proper terms.  I recognized what Tiffaney was specifically referring to because I worked for the county's waste management division for a time and learned the details that most folks never even think to think about.  ("When you throw something away, where is 'away'?")  Seeing a working landfill up close was somewhat akin to seeing a commercial poultry house for me... it reeks of cruelty to and mistreatment of the natural world (although the seagulls on the Oregon coast might disagree with me -- they swarmed the trash pit at one transfer station daily as if it were a free all-you-can-eat buffet...)  Thus I have my own chickens who live pleasant, healthy, mostly-natural lives while giving me eggs, and I minimize "trash" leaving my property as much as I am able.

Coydon Wallham wrote:

Tiffaney Dex wrote:On Saturday morning, when the trash transitory deposit ( ? I have no idea how to translate that)

I think in the USonian dialect that would be "the dump"?

Probably a "transfer station."  A local place with dumpsters (or large pits for more heavily populated areas) that individuals bring their trash to, that are periodically hauled off to the landfill.  It may also have separate dumpsters for recycling.  (I used to work at one in Oregon.)

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:...However I have a separate suggestion which is to add thermal mass to the top of the bench. Depending on the exact design, strip the top, add wet mortar and drop on two or three inch slabs of soapstone...

Soapstone is an excellent idea, even only one inch affords quite a bit of heat transfer slowing.  I have a soapstone woodstove, and I believe it can make a difference of a couple hundred degrees vs. the cast iron parts of the stove.  Unfortunately it's too late in the spring now to measure it precisely since I've stopped using the stove.  The downside is that even soapstone "remnants" can be very expensive.  

One year I collected fallen branches about thumb diameter, cut them to size, whittled down a flat area near the top, and used permanent sharpie to write labels.  The sticks lasted fine, but the sharpie had faded by the end of the year.  (Plus it tended to soak into the wood and "fuzz out" the letters.)  We're in the middle of a move right now so I don't have any around to take a picture of.

If you used a paint pen instead of the sharpie, and/or carved the letters into a bigger stick, this idea should work better.  Although, being sticks, they are not as permanent as plastic or some metals.  But they are free and abundant!  Maybe not the best idea for folks with dogs though... 😁

Nancy Reading wrote:I love this idea! - it would make a sweet little keepsake box for a little gift perhaps. I've embossed foil puree tubes, but haven't tried drinks cans - I expect they will be a bit tougher to emboss neatly - any tips?

Maybe repurpose a nail set, or even a large enough nail, (round over the end as needed on a grinding wheel, or with a file) or use the ball end of a glass cutter for a larger pattern?  You might have to draw your pattern on first, then use a small hammer with the nail set to tap your design in to the metal, moving along the drawn lines.  

Sophie Hatter wrote:Never mind that critters of all kinds are peeing and pooping on your land, and have been since the dawn of time, but YOU, filthy human, may not do that!"

Actually, they kind of have a point with that last bit -- humans consume waaaay more toxic "food," drugs and such than any animals (other than perhaps pets fed commercial kibble, injected and treated with chemicals and drugs.)  So what gets pooped and peed out from humans can literally be quite "filthy," while wildlife's excrement is usually perfectly healthy for the land, microbes, etc.  

This in no way means I support large-scale wastewater treatment over on-site natural methods.  But I do think that folks wanting to process their own "waste" and/or gray water might be well advised to eliminate as much as possible their use of drugs, chemical food additives, chemical body care and laundry products, and so on.