Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group discussion

Tuesday - Feb. 17, 2009
The Grands are still here. They have off from school all week. We're enjoying their visit.

On Sunday they went to the Lake George Winter Carnival. Yesterday some of them went snowboarding at West Mountain. I stayed home and played with the others. We ordered Chinese Out for supper.

Danny (7 yrs. old) and his mom went shopping and bought a couple of Lego Star Wars Building Toys. Dan has already put together the 153 piece "Anakin's Jedi Starfighter" by himself. Now he and his dad are working on the 251 piece "Darth Vader's TIE Fighter", the 2009 10th Anniversary Edition.

At acronymfinder.com , I found out what TIE means. It stands for: Triple Ion Engine.

You learn something new every day.

I'm taking a vacation day today to put stone down. Marg's bus has been running off the lane in several places & I need to widen it. Also, out past my shop,it's pretty deep after the gate, so I put in 150' feet of gravel there, too.

I had 2 truck loads of about 22 tons each come in this morning about 8am. Unfortunately, it was so cold the stone was in frozen clumps, so it made getting it spread well a lot harder. I got it done a bit past noon. Mostly tractor work (I LOVE the front end loader!) but a fair amount of raking to finish up.

I should go out & cut up stuff from the ice storm in the fields & woods this afternoon. There's still a fair amount left & the ground is probably dry enough. I should put some grass seed down in one spot on the south west side of the woods, where I cut a channel for a small pond to overflow. I might get lazy & just play in the shop, though.

Jim, where do you get all the energy? (g)

You wrote: "I might get lazy & just play in the shop, though."
Here's a quote about "play":
==========================================================
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play
instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."
-Carl Jung (1875-1961)
===========================================================

I worked with a lady who was a wonderful supervisor. One day she was helping me use
a new program at the office. As we were both sitting in front of her computer, she said:
"Let's play." By saying this, she passed on her relaxed attitude to me and I began to
enjoy the session instead of dreading it. It's a wonderful state of mind.

Another quote:
============================================================
"People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing." -Dale Carnegie
============================================================

Well, I decided to play with the chainsaw instead. Molly, Erin's dog, & I got several pickup truck loads of branches cleaned up plus a lot more that just got cleared from paths into nearby or new brush piles. Still more to do, but now Marg can ride through almost all the paths again.

It's raining today, so I'll play out in the shop tonight. That's the main reason I did branches last night. One of the rare days when I could get around the fields with the truck without tearing the ground up & it wasn't frozen. We tend to go from frozen to mushy & back again. A lot of the branches I was picking up were driven into the ground several inches. I don't like breaking them off as then they can become spikes to tear a horse's hoof or a tire.

I agree about the play & those were good quotes. For me, whether I'm turning a bowl or cleaning up the fields, it's pretty much play. I enjoy doing both.

I took time to clean out some of the bird houses (I built & put up 20 last year) so they'll be ready for new occupants. Actually, we have quite a few birds that stayed this year, a lot more than last year. We've always fed them but this year we made sure they had water, too. That's been the biggest reason they stuck around.

We looked into heated bird baths, but they're really expensive. We found a much less expensive alternative is a $15 heated dog dish with a big rock in it. We have one in back on the porch & one out front. The birds use it a LOT in the very cold weather when no other water is available.

While the power was out for 6 days, we set pans of water out for them & kept rotating them. I couldn't spare the power to keep the dishes warm & they were frozen in place.

We've got a couple of pairs of Blue Birds, at least 6 pairs of Cardinals, several Downy Woodpeckers & lots of Wild Canaries around, besides all the House Sparrows & Starlings. Not bad for this time of year.

Do you feed the birds? We're not super into it, but we find we're doing it more all the time. We feed them suet cakes, peanut butter, wild bird seed & thistle both in the front & back all year round. Hummingbird feeders (we got up to 48 oz. every couple of days last year) during the season.

Jim, it's great that you enjoy so many things.

About the birds, we were avid feeders of birds for many years. We even bought a heated bird bath for them. However, we stopped feeding them because we realized the seeds were attracting mice who came into our houses and stored all kinds of seeds everywhere. They were crawling all around the houses during the winter, leaving their little black droppings everywhere, especially at the vacation house. It was so bad that I had to give up the birds to get relief.

We really miss watching the birds. We started keeping the bird bath heated early this winter, but after a while we didn't see any birds. So we gave up on it.

How lucky you are to have so many bluebirds and cardinals. We're lucky if we get one pair of cardinals at each house. I've seen a bluebird on our deck only one time. It was so beautiful. I did see some in a bush one fall while on a walk around the neighborhood. Bluebirds are supposed to be the state bird of NY. We set up a bluebird house but the swallows always move in first.

When we were feeding the birds, we attracted a lot of goldfinches, very pretty birds. And of course there were always the adorable black-capped chickadees. Also house finches, mourning doves, starlings, grackles and a couple of different kinds of woodpeckers. The red polls sometimes came too.

I like your idea of the heated dog dish! Never knew there was such a thing!

Leave it to my wife to find a good deal & know about a heated dog dish.

As far as mice go, we have them around anyway. With the horses, there's no avoiding it. We keep the bird feeders at least 50' from the house, which helps. I also make sure to put several kinds of poison for the mice in various places in all the buildings. We still get a few, especially in the Spring & Fall, but nothing major. All stored stuff, even parts drawers in the shop, get mothballs in them twice a year, which also helps a bunch. They hate the smell & won't nest there.

I enjoy watching the birds too much to let a few mice dictate what I can or can't do. They live a nervous life around our place anyway because our dogs are very good at catching them. The dogs are also tough on the moles, which we have a bunch of. The moles suddenly got active this week & two weren't careful enough.

Molly was in quite a quandary yesterday. She wanted to hunt more, but didn't want to put down the mole she had killed because it was hers. The other dogs wanted it, especially Pixie (the new pup), who was trotting along directly under Molly waiting for the mole to drop. Molly finally gave it to Marg who put it on a fence post for safe keeping. I'm sure it will be gone today.

Did the crows get the mole?

Why are there mice where there are horses?

As far as mice poison is concerned, we don't like to use it because the mice die inside the walls and the smell of a dead mouse lingers inside the house. One time a whole nest of mice died inside our wall. The kitchen smelled awful for months and months until Eddie put a hole in the wall and found the nest and removed it. So no more mice poison for us.

About mothballs, I thought they were determined to be carcinogenic. In fact I thought the sale of them was prohibited... or the shipping of them is prohibited by some states. See the following webpages: ====>
http://www.ehso.com/ehshome/mothballs...
http://www.physorg.com/news70042017.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naphthalene
(See "Health Effects near bottom of page.)

Mice eat the same stuff the horses drop; their droppings, feed, hay seed & such. There's also lots of nesting material from the hay, straw & shavings plus water. What more could a mouse ask for - besides a lack of cats, dogs or snakes, of course. We had an owl in the barn the other night, too.

Once in a while a mouse dies inside, but one mouse doesn't usually smell much or for long. The trick is to poison them before they make babies. You need to always have a supply of several flavors waiting for them. We can't use traps as the dogs get into too much stuff or we have to make them too inaccessible. That's what we do with the poison.

As for mothballs being a carcinogenic - isn't everything? I remember in the 60's when there was a craze about charcoal, too. I don't use naptha except in mothballs, but I use acetone fairly often for thinning epoxy. It's another one - if you stand around huffing it all day. I don't, but use each in moderation, so I'm not worried about it.

Jim wrote: "Mice eat the same stuff the horses drop; their droppings, feed, hay seed & such. There's also lots of nesting material from the hay, straw & shavings plus water. What more could a mouse ask for -..."

Jim, as you say: "What more could a mouse ask for..." (lol)

I guess you've found the best possible way for controlling the mouse population. As long as you're careful, those ways work well for you.