Thinking alike after nearly 50 years.....

When I got up this morning I decided it was a good day to clean our bedroom and bathroom. The dust was practically choking me it was so thick.

But before I got started I grabbed all the bath towels and headed to the washer. We have so much humidity in our bathroom because there's no window so the moisture from showers just hangs in the air. There is a decent exhaust fan and, fortunately, it has a 'timer' switch so if it's a particularly humid day I can leave the exhaust fan on for 30 or 40 minutes. I'm super sensitive to mold and mildew, I can smell a 'musty' towel from 50 paces!

I have found that if I use Borax and/or soda in the washer with the towels and let them soak in it for 30 minutes before going through the cycle, most of the musty smell does get washed out. I tried vinegar first and it just didn't do the trick.

So when I was out messing around with the washing machine, Dane was getting out the vacuum cleaner and was cleaning the bedroom.

How did he know that was on my agenda for today? Well, I'm no dummy. I just let him go and he did a WAY better job that I was planning. I can't move the furniture like he can.

He even pulled the bed away from the wall and vacuumed down the whole wall behind our bed. I don't know why but in this house the master bedroom gets dustier than any other place. It just drives me nuts ~ but I've learned to live with it.....

So, now it's all nice and clean. And I even thanked him.

He's pretty good about helping with stuff like that. He knows it takes more than one to keep a house up.

bethk wrote:When I got up this morning I decided it was a good day to clean our bedroom and bathroom.  The dust was practically choking me it was so thick.

But before I got started I grabbed all the bath towels and headed to the washer.  We have so much humidity in our bathroom because there's no window so the moisture from showers just hangs in the air.  There is a decent exhaust fan and, fortunately, it has a 'timer' switch so if it's a particularly humid day I can leave the exhaust fan on for 30 or 40 minutes.  I'm super sensitive to mold and mildew, I can smell a 'musty' towel from 50 paces!

I have found that if I use Borax and/or soda in the washer with the towels and let them soak in it for 30 minutes before going through the cycle, most of the musty smell does get washed out.  I tried vinegar first and it just didn't do the trick.

So when I was out messing around with the washing machine, Dane was getting out the vacuum cleaner and was cleaning the bedroom.  

How did he know that was on my agenda for today?  Well, I'm no dummy.  I just let him go and he did a WAY better job that I was planning.  I can't move the furniture like he can.  

He even pulled the bed away from the wall and vacuumed down the whole wall behind our bed.  I don't know why but in this house the master bedroom gets dustier than any other place.  It just drives me nuts ~ but I've learned to live with it.....

So, now it's all nice and clean.  And I even thanked him.  

He's pretty good about helping with stuff like that.  He knows it takes more than one to keep a house up.

That's pretty fabulous!

Yeah, I figure he wants to buy something we don't need and can't afford and he's trying to butter me up......

Hahahahahaha

Even if he was harboring a desire to buy something, who cares?! The help is worth its wait in gold!

I transplanted small pots of herbs and jalapenos today into larger pots with Miracle-Gro potting soil. Brian sat outside with me while I did it and offered to help but I was okay on my own. The nice thing is he hung around with me until I'd finished all the pots and asked could he water the newly transplanted herbs for me using the soft spray on the hose -- I gladly accepted. It was HOT outside today. I got a couple of basil plants transplanted, along with two jalapeno plants, English thyme and Lemon thyme and a pot of spearmint.

Yesterday he weeded the raised garden and transplanted a Thai basil plant and a jalapeno plant -- he also put some seeds in there for sweet basil and some arugula. I know it's a bit late for arugula but I had him put the seeds in the part of the raised garden that goes into shade sooner than the rest of the garden, hoping to get some arugula before it gets too hot. Not only do we enjoy salads made from arugula, but washed arugula is super piled on a sandwich in lieu of lettuce. Love the stuff!

Just a head's up, Michelle, from Dane......he's stopped using the potting soil and gone with some Kellar Garden Soil (he gets it at Home Depot or Lowe's, I think). He mixes it with the Black Cow to ammend the soil and give plants an extra 'boost'. He sometimes mixes in some sand to the mix.

He found that the potting soil wouldn't hold moisture as good as the garden soil ~ and he swears by the Black Cow manure mix (it doesn't smell.....) to 'feed' the plants, top dressing about once a month with a few handfuls. We had been using the Miracle Grow Potting mix with the moisture beads but nothing did well. That's why he came up with the new growing medium that seems to work well.

He's quite upset. He planted ONE hot Hungarian pepper plant. He only wanted one. And it set out blooms and he had one pepper about 2" long after just a week or so. I looked at it yesterday and the pepper had a hole in it, like something had taken a bite. Then tonight I looked at the plant and the leaves were peppered with holes. He is not happy. He got the spray he uses for unknown pests, hooked the bottle up to the garden hose and 'let-'em-have-it'. He used the same spray on my dill plant because it kept getting aphids. Filthy creatures. I have to say, the stuff worked. No more aphids sucking the life out of my favorite herb! Just to be on the safe side, as long as he was spraying, he gave the dill another shot.

All of my herbs are doing beautifully. The basil is prettier than I've ever seen here. Unfortunately, I don't use nearly as much as I should. I just pinch off the tops when ever I see it bolting and sending out flowers. That just makes the thing divide and grow twice as much! But it is really pretty.

When spring rolls around, I usually amend the soil in the raised bed by using manure (I try different types all the time, sometimes cow, sometimes chicken), too, Beth, and I try to add a bit of peat moss too to lighten up the mixture. I promise myself I'll top dress my potted plants but very rarely do. But I do use liquid fertilizer on most of the plants, though not usually on the herbs. I never usually buy Miracle-Gro potting soil but it's what Al grabbed at Home Depot and since it was the big bags and he was toting, I went with it.

It's funny, as I find when I've used "garden soil" instead of potting soil, I usually found it to be too dense -- the water just flew through the pot instead of staying there for a while wetting all the soil and THEN dripping out the bottom. So I stick with potting soil, even when I add soil to the garden.

We used to use a lot of not so good sprays for the yard as one and then two of our cats had flea allergies. But since we've fed the birds for so long, we only use insecticidal soap now. Unless I'm hand-spraying a particular plant, like I did with the desert rose we have and it needed Neem oil to get rid of some type of bug on the bottom of its leaves. If you use the insecticidal soap at the beginning before you see any problems, it works well if you spray again about every three weeks or so. And I make sure Brian's always careful about spraying the underside of the leaves of plants when he's spraying. There's a little gizmo on the sprayer that allows the spray to "face up" so to speak. Brian and I just spoke of doing that the other day when I was out there transplanting things. We usually purchase it but I see on the Internet where it's too easy and too cheap not to make your own.

It got really hot here really fast -- we're in the mid 90s already and are setting all kinds of heat records for May. We went from pleasant in the low to mid 70s with low humidity to mid 90s and TONS of humidity and pollen problems for those with allergies. I always hope for cooler weather longer as once the night time temp reaches 75, the tomato blossoms will no longer fruit. It's funny how it doesn't affect cherry tomatoes but even if you buy tomato plants known for growing well in lots of heat, they still won't fruit!

It'll be a week or two before the farmer's markets are selling Creole tomatoes (ones grown here in LA soil) and I'm sure we'll be picking up tons of them. I just love tomatoes and so does Brian, who told me he didn't eat them when we first got together. I asked if he'd ever had a Creole tomato and he had not. He said he'd never before tasted anything but the pink looking tomatoes sold in the grocery stores. He loved it when I started growing some and he loved it even more once HE got into gardening and he was planting them and taking care of them. He lasts a lot longer in the heat as it gets hotter and hotter, watering and taking care of the plants. Thank goodness as sometimes it's just too hot for me to do anything. I water the potted plants every morning when I go downstairs to get coffee for us, carrying a couple of gallon jugs of water from the kitchen now right out to the deck. He's got the hose already stretched out so I can water the raised garden later today but he said it when he gets home from the hospital/doctor later on today.