Timothy Norton

I'm going to warn you to be careful, because once you start going your wallet is going to get quite a bit lighter.

I LOVE local auctions and estate sales for finding quality tools. A lot of people will walk by or ignore a box full of rusty metal tool heads but a knowing eye will see gold. You can purchase or make handles for tools but the head part is key to get ahold of.

A friend of mine in the community got ahold of a bunch of fly presses for pennies, restored them, and now is shipping them crossed the country for big bucks. He hooked me up with some cast iron cookery that he got ahold of that just needed a little TLC. The auction barn is the place to be.

I have a monthly tabletop gaming meetup with a few coworkers and friends that has been a lot of fun recently. We commit to finding a date and time that works for the majority of people and make the effort to get together.

Some food, some games and some time to just relax really pays dividends for the following days. We will have conversations leading up to the day discussing what we should do and then just make it a good time.

Sometimes we have kiddos running around, other times we make an effort for just the grownups to meet up.

It is one of the better things this introvert has started to do to help push off the winter blues.

I'm familiar with sand filters when it comes to an industrial filtering for production purposes. Biologics are not as much as a concern in our systems compared to mineral impurities.

It is my understanding that the upper layer of the sand filter itself is alive with bacteria/microbes that help process gray water/black water. This layer is only a few inches deep so it may require the effluent being treated to be re-cycled through a few times to reduce the bad biology enough to be utilized elsewhere.

My assumption then is that letting gray/black water leech into the environment would not allow enough contact time with a biological layer to render it 'safe' before it might end up in ground water systems.

I'm not an expert and this is my crude understanding but it might lead you somewhere?

Our sand filter tanks need to be periodically backflushed to deal with clogging, another potential issue with just going straight in to the environment?

At the mill that I work at, we are an exclusively red tool building.

Red (specifically the FUEL line) is definitely industrial rated. Expensive compared to some other colors but incredibly reliable in my experience. The batteries last and can take a beating.

At home I'm a green guy, but I definitely endorse red.

I have some mullein growing along a railroad easement that readily self seeds. One year, I waited for the seed stalk to form and dry up in the fall. I cut the stalk and walked along the easement shaking the seeds along it. I now have a ton of mullein growing.

I believe the plant is biennial so if it was just a floret without a stalk last year, you can expect it to go to seed this year.

It sounds like she already has these plants so a lot of the deciding factors have already been made. Fruit trees can come in a lot of shapes and sizes. Rootstock can effect how large a fruit tree might grows if the tree is grafted while cultivar might give you some hints towards flowering and fruiting dates.

You can find a wealth of generalized knowledge based on the fruit tree type. For example, tangerines are generally considered suitable for zones 9 and upward so I'd look into placing it in a warm microclimate. Cherry trees might need a pollinator so looking into another similar type (and planted nearby) may be worth planning for.

Good afternoon,

If you go to your profile button on the top right of your screen, the drop down should give you an option to "Edit Profile".

Once in there, if you scroll down you should see a header stating "Pie Features" and can turn on the green line there.

It is found under "Keep track of threads read on a thread by thread basis".

Select the check box for "Show, in a thread, how far you have viewed in the past"

I live in a primarily rural farming county, I have seen firsthand how programs like this are incredibly valuable to communities.

Thank you for sharing this. We have a mobile free healthcare clinic coming to a nearby high school in a couple months and have seen flyers advertising it.

I have added two new options.

Elastic and Drawstrings!

Thanks all for the feedback.

I would love the power to know what I'm looking at, whatever it is that I'm seeing.

I'm working on that power right now, it seems everything that looks interesting tends to be pokeweed however!