When the tide moves, you have to move the barrels
I did, and I like it. Instead of hardly ever making my goal of 10,000 steps in a day, I changed the goal to 8,000, and that I make every day, and sometimes I go over. Peace of mind and happier feet! A little extra time in the day meant all the mending is done, and I can spend time in my flower garden. I actually gathered a basket of clippings and weeds and took them to the street.
Pneumatic garden waste collection
This is a very organized neighborhood. On Mondays, everyone takes his large trash and recycling cans from the garage to the street. But not before 3:00 p.m. After three, people come out of all driveways with their rolling garbage cans and put them just so: 10 feet from the mail box, and 3 feet from each other. No kidding. A great feature that I have never seen in other neighborhoods is that you can put garden clippings, branches great and small, flower pot contents, dirt and all, by the side of the road on trash pick up day. The following morning a large truck drives through the neighborhood with on the curb side a wide, elongated tube that moves down to the curb, sucking up all garden waste in passing. I knew that a pneumatic system with regular waste exists in big cities, but that it happens street-side with garden waste was new to me.
Dog rules
I was made aware, as the owner of one of two new dogs in the neighborhood, that dogs are allowed on the pavement and on the grass, but not on the “mulch” or rather, the pine straw that has been deposited nicely around all trees, shrubs and borders. Not a hard rule to follow, although I can see that dogs like to scratch through the needles to find just that special scent of the dog that went before.
Many dogs come to our neighborhood from other streets, and one day I noticed a disgusting number of large dog deposits in the grass next to the walkways. Obviously not from “our” dogs, because here they are all small. I think that Lani at 23 pounds is the biggest. The next day, all of the poop was gone. Somebody had walked around and picked up all of them, and likely not with a pneumatic system!
Wildfires in Canada
All of last week we received warnings about dangerous air quality caused by numerous wildfires in the area of Quebec, Canada. So far, over 10 million acres have been burned and more than 20 thousand people have been displaced.
The smoke spread far and wide, and even reached us in North Carolina. We kept doors and windows closed, but yet, the haze was visible, as you can see in this picture of the sunrise on Tuesday morning, seen from our back yard. I could look straight into the sun like never before. It made me think about fire safety at home.
Our home has vaulted ceilings in living room/kitchen and master bedroom. Looking up to find where the smoke detectors would be, I found none. When we lived in Prescott, Arizona, we had one in every room. Annually, around Thanksgiving, the batteries had to be changed. Or we would be alarmed by a loud shrieking sound, often in the middle of the night. Then, we’d have to walk from room to room, looking up to where the sound came from, and which one had a red light instead of a blinking green one. When we found it, we’d get the ladder from the garage and change the battery. Later, we could do that with a broomstick – safer than standing on a ladder.
Here, we do have a sprinkler system in our ceilings, but I know that those do not act as a smoke detector. They are only for protection in case of an all-out fire. So we need to look into that and find out what neighbors have in their homes.
I did Google: what to do to remove smoke smell from your home. It said to put bowls with white vinegar throughout the house, and/or bowls with ground coffee. Lemon juice would also be good, and the smoke smell would be gone in a day or two. Carpets and drapes would need a treatment with baking soda. We don’t have carpets or drapes, but baking soda comes in handy for all kinds of things. I will get some, and also some white vinegar, because I only have apple cider vinegar. I don’t think I would use the ground coffee any more for a nice cup of coffee once it has been absorbing smoke smells for two days, so I will go for the vinegar and lemon juice if we should get smoke in the house one way or another.
And that’s a wrap!
Until next time, be well!
Ronny