Possibly Immortal

We inherited a lot of plants from the people who sold us our home; the lady of the house liked to garden. Unfortunately she tried to grow a lot of things that don't fare well in this region. She also put in some invasive plants like this Mexican Petunia, which is a Category 1 troublemaker that displaces native flowers, and is a real pain to eradicate.

Since the petunia patch happens to be contained in a spot where it can't spread we decided to leave it alone and just cut it out when it died during the winter. Which we did, down to two-inch stalks we planned to till into the ground in spring. Only it grew back within a couple weeks. That started a cycle of cutting it again or watching it freeze during frost nights, and then seeing it grow back again.

Since then we've tried everything we can think of short of setting it on fire to discourage it from growing, and it still grows and flowers beautifully. It's hard to kill something that determined to live. It's still going strong -- which is likely why it's a Category 1 invasive -- but we really need to get rid of it. So, next spring I'm going to persuade my guy to dig it all out and replace it with a native plant.

Comments

Gifts

This is a story that starts out very sadly, so if you're depressed by the holidays you might want to skip the first part. As far back as I can remember I've dreaded the holidays. Being poor, having constant family troubles and belonging to a strict religion made that time of year always pretty unhappy. I just hunkered down and hoped to get through without being yelled at or punished because I didn't do something I was expected to do, like sit in church for hours without moving or making a sound while a priest spoke mass in Latin. Gifts were uniformly disappointing, too. My mother usually gave me dolls or socks or underwear for Christmas. I understand now as an adult that she was doing the best she could, and trying to save money at the same time, but as a kid I'd been told good children got what they wanted for Christmas. I was a pretty good kid, but while my friends received new bikes and cool toys and lots of treats from Santa, I didn't. I thought San

We Have Backsplash!

Yesterday my guy and I decided to chose this natural stone as the backsplash tiles for our new kitchen counters (which will be in the same quartz I'm holding at the bottom of the photo.) Since all the bids for installing the backsplash came in very high my guy is going to put it in himself; he's done a bit of tile work in the past, too. I swear there is nothing this guy can't do. :)

Detoxing Results

For twenty-four hours I left these five vintage cigar boxes sit with detoxing agents (baking soda, coffee grinds, dryer sheets, vinegar and Febreze) inside them to see which worked best to remove the tobacco/storage odors that came with them. I then removed the agents and did a sniff test. Before we get into the results, a reminder: none of what I do is ever meant to be expert advice, as I am certainly not an expert at anything. Follow my methods at your own risk, and please first consult an actual antique expert conservator or restorer to detox items that have value for you. Okay, let's see how my experiment worked. Baking soda (left) did nothing to remove the odors. I think if I let it sit for a longer period of time it might have done something, but for a 24-hour test it was a complete fail. Coffee grinds (right) removed 100% of the odors, and left behind definite coffee scent. I like that and think it goes very well with wood, but if you don't like the smel

Rayen

Search This Blog