New York Renovator

I’ve found a few very good and reliable websites for researching and finding real estate online. These websites can give you property value and market value, among other things. The Yahoo! site also breaks down demographics for the local area. I think these are valuable resources.

Yahoo! Real Estate

Realtor.com

Zillow.com

Trulia.com

There are also the mainstream realty companies you can search, such as Coldwell Banker and RE/Max. Personally, I have found these to be difficult to use and they don’t always display everything in a local area.

For bargain properties, there’s Home Sales.gov (homes for sale by the U.S. government), Bargain Network.com, and Realty Trac.com.

I am a terrible wife and mother! I don’t know how to fold a t-shirt! I watched this video again and again, and I still can’t figure it out. How on earth do they do that?!?!?!

HT My Interesting Files. Now I’ll be haunted for the rest of my life.

I was taking my customary evening walk through the gardens the other day, and veered off to the “kids’ area.” I’ve designated a section of the property for them. Here is where they can stack old bricks into “fireplaces,” create “rafts” from discarded tree limbs and cut-up logs, and explore their hearts out. But I stopped when I saw this big hole in the grass.

I asked my eldest son who was digging that hole. “Me,” he said. I paused, waiting for him to explain. He just looked at me. (He’s not the talkative kind). “And… why?” I asked. “Just felt like diggin’,” he replied. Ooooook. Looking for buried treasures? Maybe. Never know what old junk or what precious old memory you’re going to find. Well, I DID give them this part of the land. Here’s hoping they’ll fill it back in when they no longer “feel” like digging. And actually, while they “feel” like digging, I’ve got a little project for them to do….

The soil in my Upstate New York property is mostly heavy clay. There’s a high water table here (we get a LOT of water running underground in these parts!) and we also have had record rainfall for about ten years. The soil is packed in pretty hard.

I have been adding peat moss to my garden for two years now, and all I can say is: what a difference! The first year, I tilled in two bags (7.5 cubic feet each) per bed (300 square feet each). This year, we tilled the beds, but did not add peat to the mixture. Rather, after I planted the seeds, I placed peat moss on top of the beds as a mulch (it took four bags per bed to cover the beds). Next year, we will till it into the soil when we do our spring tilling.

Here are my snap peas. You can see how well they are growing and how few weeds there are.

I’m very happy with how the peat moss is working! There are fewer weeds, and what weeds grow, they are much easier to pluck out. It is amazing. Buying peat moss has proved to be one of the best buys I’ve made for the garden! The peat was a pricey, but I’ve spent only an hour SO FAR weeding the garden this year! Phenomenal! And the veggies are just popping up very quickly. Plus, the peat helps to retain moisture, so I water less. Plus, I won’t have to purchase peat for spring tilling next year.

I do a lot of gardening during the growing season. I have a property that’s 1.5 acres, and when we bought the place, most of it was overgrown. It’s been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to beat back the weeds and scrubby bushes. And I still don’t know who’s winning yet.
I keep my fingernails short, but dirt still manages to get under the nails. It drives me nuts. I read a tip about keeping dirt from getting under your fingernails– scratch a dry bar of soap and get some soap under your nails before you garden. This will keep your nails dirt-free. When you are done outside and need to wash, you can use the soap under your nails to wash them.

I haven’t really done an official Growing Challenge update in a while. My little annuals that I’ve planted are doing well. Everything is really thriving in this heat (except my hydrangeas). I have gardens filled with perennials, and this is about the time they start to strut their stuff. The peonies are in full flower and smell so delicious. My iris plants are doing well, too. This is the best they’ve done, and I’ve had them for five years.

The Adirondack Red seed potatoes I plopped in are doing very, very well! I am so happy with them. The plants are so high that I piled up mounds of soil around the stems, to encourage side growth. This will make potato harvesting much easier– I won’t have to dig down into hardened garden soil to get my potatoes. The potatoes should grow right inside these mounds, which are a mixture of plain garden soil, peat, and compost.

We are taking comfort that the intolerable heat and humidity is having a good effect on something!

I was Entrecard dropping when I came across a great blog, The Snack Hound. This blogger is just so hilarious! Sometimes we can take “nutrition” and “fitness” a little to far, can’t we? This post was especially rip-roarin’ good. Here’s a tidbit.

For those of you who watch what you eat, here’s the final word on nutrition and health. It’s a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION

Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

ROFL!!!!!

You really should go to the post yourself and see what fun is there. But I cannot restrain from posting the ones I found absolutely hilarious. Here are some “fitness” questions answered by a “fitness expert”:

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?
A: Hey! ‘Round’ is a shape!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?
A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Pardon me, now, I’m going to laugh a second time by reading these to the family! Who needs Phentermine without a prescription when some big belly laughs will exercise that gut!

It’s kind of weird, how memories are associated with smells.

It’s FINALLY warmed up here in Upstate New York. I think we may hit a record here, over 90 degrees F today. This old house, customarily cold even when the temperature outside is warm, is steamy and very uncomfortable today. There is a pungent smell of plaster in the house and it brings back unsavory memories. That of grunting and groaning, of blood, sweat, and tears…

Check out last years’ post here for a little trip down memory lane. :S I can’t stand the smell of plaster! It’s more distasteful than the thought of medicare insurance!

I was glad to get rid of at least one room of it, last year. Good riddance.

One of my favorite Upstate blogs, Northview Diary, has a wonderful post with a treasure-trove of links about home-style agriculture in the United States. One link led to an article about the World War II Victory Gardens. I’d never heard of such a thing! Does anyone remember these?

As part of the war effort, the government rationed foods like sugar, butter, milk, cheese, eggs, coffee, meat and canned goods. Labor and transportation shortages made it hard to harvest and move fruits and vegetables to market. So, the government turned to its citizens and encouraged them to plant “Victory Gardens.” They wanted individuals to provide their own fruits and vegetables.

Nearly 20 million Americans answered the call. They planted gardens in backyards, empty lots and even city rooftops. Neighbors pooled their resources, planted different kinds of foods and formed cooperatives, all in the name of patriotism.

I think this is a great idea! I mean– the concept of everyone having their own gardens, even city-dwellers. There really is no reason NOT to grow your own food, because there are abundant resources available today, from potting soil to all kinds of seeds to available water to fertilizer.

I was saddened to read the end of the article, though:

When World War II ended, so did the government promotion of victory gardens. Many people did not plant a garden in the spring of 1946, but agriculture had not yet geared up to full production for grocery stores, so the country experienced some food shortages.

I’ve been singing the same again and again: we need to change our lifestyles in order to keep up with the radically-altering changes in the world. Fuel costs are not going to go down. Energy rates are going to go up, too, and conservation will be forced upon those who haven’t adopted it as a lifestyle. It’s hypocritical to be “green” for a day and shut off our computers and lights for 24 hours, then drive the SUVs to the malls and schools. By the way, did you know that schools keep their lights and furnaces running 24 hours a day for most of the year, even when no one is there?

I don’t want to be a “fair weather” patriot and change my lifestyle temporarily until it is no longer convenient. Look at the lifestyles of the WWII generation and their children– as soon as the war was over, they threw away their lifestyle of thrift and became the modern generation of uber-consumerists. Look where it has gotten us- foreign oil dependency (with foreign tensions), excessive waste, profligate debt (just look at all the balance transfer credit card offers we get now– banks and governments are spoon-feeding us into dependency on them. They call it “capitalism” but it’s not– it’s “consumerism,” something akin to fascism. I think it’s time that we throw away our consumerist/materialist mentality as quickly as the Victory Gardeners threw away their gardens after the war. Before it’s too late!

In the latest edition of The Family Handyman magazine, there’s an offer for 50 free handyman projects in pdf form. I am always on the lookout for good projects. I like the Family Handyman style projects, because they are simple, for manual-challenged people like me! They have a few very nice projects, like building Adirondack chairs (something I’ve been wanting to do), bookcases, garden ponds– typical projects. The project for building a pergola will come in handy for me, because I want to build one in the back (it gets too hot on the asphalt back there).

The offer is good until July 11th. See the link here. Be forewarned, you have to give your name, address, and email first. They then send you a “confirmation” email, and you click the link. It takes you to a webpage where you can download the pdf files. So basically, you are giving away your information to get the projects (which, IMHO, is not exactly “free”).