For Once, Happy News!

Our Meyer lemon tree, loaded with fruit. You might remember how sad I was last Christmas when I mentioned we'd lost our lemon, grapefruit and orange trees to citrus greening disease. My guy stopped watering and fertilizing them, and we faced the unhappy job of digging them up and burning them. Only we got busy and my guy kept putting it off, as he was hoping a treatment would be developed that we could use to try to save them.

Our white grapefruit tree, also loaded with fruit. While we were busy, all the signs of citrus greening gradually disappeared. The trees thrived. The orange tree put out dozens of flowers for the first time in years. By the middle of summer all three trees had lots of fruit on them.

Our Valencia orange tree, likewise loaded with tons of fruit (the most out of all three trees.) My guy did more research, and it's possible that what we thought was citrus greening was a reaction to him over-fertilizing and over-watering. It could also be an iron or nitrogen deficiency. Anyway, since he left the trees alone almost all of the yellow leaves are gone now, and they have more fruit on them than any other year in the past. We don't know for sure (I'm still trying to find a place to test them), but odds are they didn't have citrus greening.

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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

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