Garden 2024

[taxlady]

Well, the cost of living is a lot less here than in the PNW, and winters are generally mild, but the summers may be a bit hard for you to get used to.



Years ago, I worked November and December at Restoration Hardware, and the store put a Christmas music CD on a continuous loop. If you think it bothers you as a customer, imagine what it does to employees.

CD

It was as an employee that @rodentraiser got sick of Xmas music. I think she can more than imagine it.

 

[rodentraiser]

I figured he just missed that. Either way, I hate canned music in any public place I have to shop. After growing up with the real thing, it's disgusting to hear the elevator muzak take of "Light My Fire". There ought to be a law. LOL

 

[caseydog]

I can deal with hot summers if I can have a pool. Up here it doesn't do any good to set one up because our weather is so crazy. Ninety degrees one day and 65 for the next two weeks.

But I'm not a fan of Texas politics. And Texas critters bother me. I'm not fond of scorpions, fire ants, or rattlesnakes. I think they need to vote those things out of office, but the real ones scare me too. LOL

First, Dallas does not have scorpions or rattlesnakes. Those are in other parts of the state. Fire ants are not as big of a problem as they used to be, and they are very easy to get rid of very quickly with a pet safe product that wipes out the whole mound and kills the queen in a day or two.

We do have tarantulas that come out for a few weeks right about now to mate. That freaks some people out, but they are NOT venomous, not aggressive to people or pets, and the males are actually beautiful animals to look at.

Yeah, Texas politics are very different from PNW politics, but in the big cites and suburbs, people are pretty accommodating of people who have different opinions. My neighborhood is very multicultural. There are fourteen houses on my street. Four are black households, three are asian households, and two gay men own a home across the street (they have a key to my house in case something happens while I'm out of town). We all get along great.

Austin, Texas is more like the PNW, but a huge influx of Tech companies from Cali are making real estate pretty pricey. Austin's motto is "Keep Austin Weird."

CD

 

[dragnlaw]

I take a razor knife and lightly score the root ball in a few places, to stimulate new root growth.

I actually dig my fingers into the bottom of the root ball to about 2 or 3 inches and split it out in a cross split. If it's too tight for my fingers, yeah, I use a knife. I try to 'open' this X as much as possible (without tearing off the chunk of course).

We do have tarantulas that come out for a few weeks right about now to mate. That freaks some people out, but they are NOT venomous, not aggressive to people or pets, and the males are actually beautiful animals to look at.

Are they that different that you could tell just walking by? How interesting.
But casey, I'm pretty sure they ARE venomous, "but the effects of the venom of tarantulas indigenous to North America are typically mild in humans and only cause pain at the bite site. Contact with tarantula hairs can cause redness, itching, and swelling."
according to a Poison Control report.

with my luck the bite would be insignificant compared to the itching of the hairs! LOL