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For people who garden, here is a simple trick to make the handling of small seeds easier. My wife mixes the seeds with dry play sand before planting. This technique will make the seed distribution much more uniform and transplanting becomes a simpler task. It works with any seed but is especially useful with tiny seeds like begonias.
For cut flowers from your garden, you can buy those little packets of powder that you mix with the water to keep the flowers fresh for a longer time. Here is a recipe for flower water which works just as well. I borrowed it from a seed catalog. I have tried it and it does work. To one quart of water, add 1/2 tsp. of liquid bleach, 2 tbsp. of lemon juice and 1 tbsp. of sugar. Use this mix instead of plain water for your cut flowers. This stuff will grow mold if you keep it too long, so you may want to try half batches.
For weekend plumbers, a torch is a very handy tool. They come in several varieties. Many years ago, I used a device called a blowtorch which ran on unleaded gasoline. It was a real pain to use cause you had to pump it up, light it, then wait till it got hot enough to burn clean. I still have it, but I consider it to be an antique. Those little propane and butane torches are much handier. Here are two useful things I learned while watching a plumber make repairs at my house. First, if you heat a rusty, corroded, galvanized joint it will come apart much easier. Sometimes, the parts will even be reusable.
Second, black plastic pipe is supposed to be flexible but we know it's not really. It has a memory of the way it was coiled at the factory and is a bugger to handle. However, if you heat it with a torch, you can reshape it the way you want and give it a new memory. It has to do with the yield point of the plastic. This is where the molecules are just ready to flow but not yet melted. This same yield point theory applies to wire. It's something I learned as a technician. Instead of heating to make the molecules flow, if you stretch wire to just before it breaks, It will stay straight instead of coiling back up on you.
Here is something I learned about telephone solicitors. Most of these creeps are working in, what is called a boiler room. This is a place, set up for them by your kindly, friendly, helpful telephone company for nothing more than easy profit. In essence, it's a room full of telephones. Each of these creeps has three or four telephones which he or she keeps dialing from a sucker list he has been supplied. These lists come from the companies you have previously bought things from. They save and sell your phone number to companies which specialize in buying and selling sucker lists. If you have ever bought something by telephone, you are on those lists.
Keep in mind that this sleazy, slimy creep is working several phones at once. That is why, when you answer you hear background noise but no one is immediately there. He's on another phone making a pitch. So the key is, to waste his time and keep him from the other phones. It's not necessary to get angry. It's much more fun to waste his time and make him angry. Here is something I did a couple of times which worked. I'll probably do it again.
"Hello, this is Bill at Wesoomi Publishing, how can I
help you?"
"Background noise....."
"Is there someone there?"
"Hello, I need to speak to Mr. Stenneaiamine."
"Mr. Who?"
"Mr. Stenammumum."
"Perhaps you mean, Mr. Steinman?"
"Yeah, him. I need to talk to him."
"Who is calling please?"
"I'm Joe Slime with the Big Liar Fire Fighters Association."
Now I know I have a boiler room solicitor. He is no more a fire
fighter than my beagle.
"Oh Joe! Thank you for returning my call."
"Huh?"
"I won't keep you. All I need is your address, so I can send
you our free catalog."
"Huh?"
At this point, this slime ball is looking at his other phones
and at his watch.
"Your address, Joe. I can't send you our catalog until I
have your address."
"Ah-h-h, I'm not allowed to give out that information."
"Well how can I send you a catalog, then?"
"Ah-h-h, what catalog?"
Sooner or later, this grease ball will catch on and hang up. I
have yet to get an address. If I did, I really would send a catalog.
If you have a big garden you may have, or you may plan to get a rototiller. I have two tillers. One is a front tine and the other is a rear tine. I'm sure, most of you have seen those less than forthright advertisements which imply that rear tine tillers are easier to use. I'm not sure, everyone knows it's nonsense. Front or rear tine tillers can be easy or difficult to use, depending of whether or not you know the techniques.
Both tillers will have an adjustable depth, drag point at the rear of the tiller. The depth of this point is one of the factors which determines the depth of cut of the tines. The other factor is simply how the handles are controlled. For a front tine tiller, pressing down on the handles will make the tiller dig deeper. Lifting up on the handles will make it walk. The opposite is true for the rear tine tiller. Either one is easy to operate once you realize that.
My 63 year old, 130 lb. wife has no trouble at all operating our front tine tiller. In fact she prefers it. I have no trouble operating the bigger rear tine tiller. Which one I prefer depends on what I'm doing. The rear tine tiller has front wheels with power drive. This makes it better for pulling through wet soil where the front tine machine might bury itself. However, for fenced areas, the rear tine tiller cannot till into corners. Here the front tine is better. That's really the only difference I have noticed.
Perhaps the most important point about tillers is, unless you're
very strong and like to brute force things, get a tiller with
a reverse. Backing out is a heck of a lot easier than dragging
out.
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