New York Renovator

Even the name insinuates the most noxious, insidious killer to lately crawl out of Asian cargo ships onto our purple-mountain majesty coasts: The Giant Hogweed!

It’s heeeeere! It’s native to Central Asia and it’s spreading toward the northeast. It’s already established in Michigan and Indiana. New reports are showing the unwelcome visitor arriving in Pennsylvania and New York State.

The Giant Hogweed is an invasive species, a member of the carrot and parsnip family. (I knew there was a good reason why I hate carrots!!). However, this family member grows to be a lot taller than Bugs Bunny’s meal of choice. The hogweed can grow to be 15 feet tall and 15 feet wide. It produces a disgusting number of seeds, too, to ensure that it ruins as much property as possible. *sigh* The British initially brought the hogweed home from Asia in the 19th century, planting it as an “ornamental” plant in special gardens. But like The Blob, Jurassic Park, and Killer Bees, things *kinda* got out of control and the species escaped captivity. Oopsie.

The hogweed has lace-like flowers very similar to Queen Anne’s Lace. The leaves resemble large, jagged dandelion leaves and the plant would almost be pretty were it not for one small problem: it’s viciously poisonous.

The plant produces a sap that burns human skin. God forbid it should get in the eye, or blindness can occur. According to the University of Illinois Extension:

Characteristics include hollow stems, between two and four inches in diameter, with dark reddish-purple splotches and coarse white hairs. Leaves are compound, lobed, deeply incised and may grow up to five feet in width. Flowers appear from mid-May through July. As with other members of the carrot family, the flower heads are umbrella-shaped, up to 2½-feet in diameter across a flat top with numerous small flowers.

The Giant Hogweed is sometimes mixed up with other members of the parsnip/carrot family. My husband came home wondering if he’d seen a hogweed planted by a mailbox, but the flowers were yellow. I think he probably saw wild parsnip. Other very similar plants are cow parsnip, wild carrot, poison hemlock and angelica.

Giant Hogweed has a thick, tuberous stem with very wide white lace flowers. It exudes a clear, sticky sap that causes photodermatitis. Skin contact followed by exposure to sunlight can cause severe burns and blisters that become purple or black blotches and scar the skin. VERY nasty.

I just don’t know how the Chinese manage, with all these horribly toxic plants and bugs that float around over there. In my opinion, I’d rather manufacture our tablet netbooks and other goods here in the U.S.A. and avoid all the extra baggage in the cargo crates.

Anyway, the Giant Hogweed is a “federal noxious weed” and therefore it is illegal to propagate, sell, or transport the plant. Do not pull, mow, or chop down the weed with a weed whacker. Doing so will release the sap. And, since the plant is a perennial weed (which means it will grow again even after the entire planet has been decimated by nuclear war), the Giant Hogweed will just keep coming back for more. Think of this plant as Bishop Weed from hell.

If you see the Giant Hogweed, alert the authorities. Who ya gonna call? The GIANT HOGWEED HOTLINE! I’m putting this number in my speed dial, people: 845-256-3111. If you see hogweed, call them. A hazmat team will arrive via black helicopters and blow the smithereens out of the noxious weed. YEAH, BABY.

OK, I jest. A hazmat team is *probably* not required. Nor are the black helicopters, but hey– black helicopters have descended upon DVD pirates in the local ‘hood, so ya never know….. this is a “federal noxious weed,” after all….

Some photos and information courtesy of Illinois University Extension.

Something very strange has happened. I realized it the other night while I outside in the backyard during twilight. The entire yard and forest and small creek that runs next door is completely silent. Completely silent!

No crickets. No spring peepers. Nothing. I have never experienced anything like it since I’ve lived here. Besides the mosquitoes quietly whirring around us, the only forest activity was the lightning bugs, blinking their lights in utter silence.

This is my backyard. Behind that scraggly brush is a small rivulet that fills with peepers every spring. There’s no sign of my beloved musical friends there this year.

At dusk, the area is usually ablaze with sounds. The crickets usually chirp so loudly that they challenge the sounds of the busy streets. And the peepers– those tiny little frogs that exhale high-pitched raspy whistles– are gone. Everything is SILENT.

I found a video recording of peepers in the northeast. This is what my neighborhood SHOULD be sounding like:

I’m devastated!! What happened?! I have lived here for over 14 years and nothing like this has ever happened. Was it the awful April flooding that swept my critters away? Is it some kind of pesticide or toxic chemical that has been sprayed in the forest and has descended into my neighborhood? Is there some evil raccoon gang or other monstrous creatures that have eaten all my precious nightly musicians in some kind of perverse thuggery??

This spring and summer has been weird, simply weird. I feel forlorn, bereft of a very necessary ecological foundation. It just ain’t summertime without the peepers.

I must have been absolutely nutty to take her outside. I was tired of her whining, and spoiled her. She was a MANIAC as soon as she hit the grass. She thinks she’s a puma or a bobcat or something.

She raced me around the entire acre+ of land, skulking behind trees, poking her head into grasses…. I had to furminate her thoroughly when we came back in, since the yard is infested with ticks (thanks to the immense deer population). She was quite cranky about that, lol.

But look at her adorable face. Ugh.

No wonder she’s spoiled rotten. What an old softie I’ve become!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

I’m not going to wait until somebody gets sunburn to try this out, so I’m mentioning it here now in case any of you have heard of such a thing: rose vinegar for sunburns. Some gals in the natural herbal section of the blogosphere are praising it’s benefits. I am definitely going to try it. I’m curious like that.

Here’s how you make rose vinegar:

• Fill a glass jar with fresh rose petals and leaves.
• Fill the jar with apple cider vinegar.
• Cap the jar with a PLASTIC lid! Vinegar will eat through a metal one and discolor your vinegar solution.
• Allow the glass jar to sit for 3 to 6 weeks.

To treat a sunburn, pour 1/4 of a cup of rose vinegar into a bowl. Mix in a few cups of fresh, cool water. Dip a clean, cotton cloth into the rose vinegar and wring lightly. Dab the sunburned skin with the rose vinegar. Apply as needed. Rose vinegar also helps cool insect bites and stings and heat rash.

I am definitely going to make it! I’ll have my scientific results for you in a few weeks.

It’s almost July. Ya think I should be getting back to the garden and home renovation projects yet?

We purchased an air conditioner. Hurray! It’s the first air conditioner I’ve ever had. It’s the window kind, so we’ve been having *fun* trying to fit it into our old 1855 window frame…. more on that to come. We’re still working on a unique shelf that juts out from the window, upon which will sit the A/C’s bulky butt. Man, those things are bulky. I guess they have to be.

I’m also starting to take more time off from work. I try to get my writing assignments done by the time I have to cook dinner. I don’t always make my goals, and sometimes I wind up staying up much later than I like. But at least I’m not working non-stop anymore.

Gardening is on my mind lately. I bought some hostas and a few blackberry bare roots (all died but one). I have to plug them in sometime.

And of course, I have a lot of loose ends to finish up after last year’s renovation. I still haven’t completed that kitchen bench. And my living room/office needs a lot of decorating help. I have Ethernet and VGA cables strung about everywhere. I dislike cords all over the floor. :-p My intention is to build a very nice modern office with updated equipment (i.e., an i7 core computer with slick video graphics array or DVI cables, and… *sigh* yeah) with nice furniture and orderly shelves! I can see it all in my mind’s eye. Reality is another matter, lol.

All in good time.

How are your summer projects going? Or are you one of those lucky persons that have no projects???

*sigh* To Do Lists....

When I first moved here over a decade ago, I knew next to nothing about gardening. I bought some books and checked some out from the library, and went to work, studying. I learned a lot. The nice thing about gardening is that it’s actually kind of easy. Plants are pretty resilient, and they will endure a good amount of abuse, lol.

So when I moved here, there were few plant: a rhododendron on its last gasps; a front flower bed FILLED with hostas (yuk); a stinging nettle bush next to the driveway (we got rid of that nasty bush the second day we moved in!); and an old Scotch rose disfigured with horribly drippy bags of fluorescent-orange spots. I later found out this was a fungus.

The rose bush, while pretty, was situated right next to the garage wall, in the shadows in an obscure area. I hacked at it to remove it. The thing grew back every year! And every year, I hacked at it again. I cut, I sawed, I weed-whacked. It just stubbornly refused to die! As a matter of fact, it grew back beautifully, free of the orange goop. I guess it had been neglected for so long that my vicious hacking only helped it!

Last year, I didn’t hack it. I was too exhausted. I just left it.

Look at it today. Photo taken this morning.

It’s still in the shadows in that obscure area, by the garage wall. I have to admire the tenacious little thing. It’s blooming like there’s no tomorrow- and I guess that makes sense because I hacked at the poor thing like there was going to be no tomorrow!

So I’m going to leave it. Maybe next year I’ll take the root suckers and plug them elsewhere in the garden. There are a few offshoots of this bush, elsewhere around the yard. They are also blooming prolifically. And they smell HEAVENLY. Oh, those old-fashioned Scotch roses! You can keep your hybrid plastic-surgery models– give me the old fashioned, hardy rose.  They are absolutely delicious. Like any true blood American, I love an underdog. And this rose bush is definitely a contender. LOL

So I have plans to put roses everywhere. I’ll incorporate them into my lilac-laden garden plans. Wouldn’t that be so wonderful– lilacs in May, roses in June. What’s for July and August?

There’s a new bug in town. And yep — you guessed it — it’s a native of Asia. With all the bugs and diseases that comes from Asia, it’s any wonder that there are even ANY trees there. Yikes.

The latest news of doom to come from the cooperative extension is the emerald ash borer, a tiny, iridescent green beetle that kills ash trees. I love ash trees. They were a hearty replacement for the gigantic elm trees that one graced Main Street America. They died off by a beetle, too, in the 1950s and 60s. So now you know where the name “Elm Street” comes from and why there are no elms. The ash trees also grow to be giants. When we moved here, there was an enormous ash tree in the front yard. It must have been 40 feet tall. Unfortunately, it had been planted smack dab on the property line, and the neighbor took it down. So he could put in an asphalt parking lot.

Photo from Wikipedia

Anyway, between chainsaw-crazy, asphalt-loving neighbors and the emerald ash borer, the ash tree looks like it’s in trouble. Really, there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do. It’s a BUG. We all know how pervasive bugs are– there’s no stopping them when they smell fresh meat.

The emerald ash borer is native to Russia, China, and Korea. It was first detected in North America in 2002, lurking in shipping containers brought to Canton, Michigan. The bugs (in containers) spread to Maryland and Virginia, and it really hasn’t taken long for the bug to reach the surrounding states and up into Canada. Now, it’s here in New York State. There are 7 billion ash trees at risk by this dumb little bug. The emerald ash borer has already chewed through millions of trees in the Midwest.

The ash tree is a commercially important tree to us. It’s a very versatile and dense hardwood. We use ash tree wood to make guitars, baseball bats, furniture joinery, flooring, milled products, tool handles, and millions of other materials where strong but flexible wood is needed. The sugary sap from ash was even once used by the ancient Norse in making their “Mead of Inspiration.” The ash tree is also an important shade tree since it grows so tall so quickly. The Northeastern White Ash can tower to heights of 100 feet.

The emerald ash borer kills ash trees by strangulation (called “girdling”). The bug lays its eggs beneath the surface of the bark, where the larvae tunnels around the sensitive phloem and cambium layers of the tree. The tree, unable to transport nutrients from its roots to upper trunk and branches, dies within 2 to 4 years from infestation. Good Lord. Since 2002, the bug has killed 50 million trees in North America.

The only thing we can do to stave off the pandemic is to be VERY careful about firewood we carry to camp sites and report the beetle should we discover it in our area. The Department of Environmental Conservation is taking this threat very seriously and has quarantined several counties in New York State (see maps below). See their page about the Emerald Ash Borer for more information.

Image courtesy of DEC

Image courtesy of DEC

As far as we know, there is no natural predator to the emerald ash borer in North America. I read a story that a certain type of wasp was discovered on ash trees in China, so that may offer some help. It’s not like you can slather best acne treatment on trees… I wish there was some kind of easy solution. Who knows what problems imported wasps will bring….

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away…. before the 1970s malaise and even before the Industrial Revolution, most homeowners focused more on keeping their homes cool in the summer than warm in the winter. Back then, wood and coal were plenteous, and labor was cheap (not to mention that families had dozens of kids back then), so heating the house was relatively easy. Houses were built to release heat. High ceilings were the repositories of warmed air; thin glass windows– the bane of our modern homes– and drafty rooms kept the house well ventilated. I’d even heard that the reason for all the decorative gingerbread features in Victorian homes was not for aesthetic reasons, but to give the impression of icicles and therefore the illusion of coolness. I am not sure if this is 100% true, but it’s what I’ve heard.

That's the closest I'll ever get to gingerbread on this house...

At any rate, the world is turned upside down, now. Thanks to the energy crunch, we homeowners must seal every crack, plug every hole, lower ceilings, install thicker windows with better quality glass…. and while there’s great benefit, in hot or cold weather, to insulating walls and sealing every crack, it does make the interior of the house rather airless during summers. Airless homes are not healthy. Mold and mildew love homes with temperate, stale air. Toxins within the home, such as natural gas and small traces of carbon dioxide, reach poisonous proportions in tightly-sealed homes. And since we are in our homes more frequently than previous generations, ventilation is all the more important for our health and well-being.

Our old wiring could never have supported the large electric load of an air conditioner.

I have lived in old homes all my life. Old homes aren’t really built for the power-sucking, window-filling air conditioning systems of today. My old homes had outdated electric, unable to withstand the kilowatt slurping window-installed air conditioner. And unless we gutted the walls or purchased new fangled cooling units, we couldn’t install central air, either. So I grew up learning the passive methods of keeping a house cool in the summer. I remember my mom waking up very early on summer mornings to “batten down the hatches” before a particularly sultry summer day dawned. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years:

1. Open the windows at night.
Summer nights are obviously cooler than summer days. I place fans in the windows, blowing cool night air in at night. I sleep better when it’s cool, too.

2. Close the windows before the sun rises.
After encouraging the cool summer night air to enter the house through open windows, I basically seal the cool air in for as long as possible by closing off the source of the heat– the summer day. All windows are closed and curtains are drawn. I may have one upstairs window open, with a fan blowing out.

3. Know the natural air flow of your home.
Every home has some kind of natural air flow to it. I have studied the flow of the drafts in my home, so I know what directions the air naturally travels downwind. If I work WITH instead of against the flow, I can save energy (and money). This helps me to position fans in the right areas, especially that upstairs “out” fan I mentioned in #2. There’s one room in the house upstairs where all the air goes into. I open the window in that room and point the fan out. The fan will blow the heated air that is rising up from the first floor out the window. This does two things: it removes the heated air, and provides a constant draft that makes the house feel cooler.

4. Hang heavy drapes.
Solar energy is a marvelous thing, but when it’s making you sweat buckets, it stinks. I close all windows and blinds during the hottest time of the day (from 11am to 5:30 pm). My current home is situated in the middle of a small business district, with large sections of heat-pumping asphalt all around me. Heavy drapes are my only barrier between comfort and that nasty, heat-belching asphalt.

ISSOHOT

5. Reduce heat-producing appliance use.
Obviously, the clothes dryer is a biggie here. If you have a laundry area right in the living quarters, it can get pretty hot, running that thing. Hang clothes or relocate your dryer to the basement. Don’t use the stove at ALL (you’ll really regret it!)– get a grill and cook outside. Computers generate a lot of heat, so turn off the ones you are not using. Lower your hot water tank thermostat. Use the “air dry” cycle on the dishwasher. Turn off lights. Regard anything that produces heat as an impediment to your goal.

6. Plant deciduous trees on the south and west sides of the house.
Deciduous trees will provide shade for your land during the hot summers. The nice about deciduous trees is that they will drop their leaves by winter, giving your home access to the warm sun that is welcome in the winter. Don’t plant them too closely to the house, or you may have roof and/or gutter problems when the leaves drop in the autumn.

7. Plant evergreen trees on the north side of the house.
Much like deciduous trees on the south, evergreens offer your home a little barrier. But while deciduous trees provide a barrier from the hot sun in the summer, evergreen trees provide a barrier from the cold north winds in the winter.

8. Install light colored roof shingles.
Black asphalt shingles retain heat and continue radiating it. Shingles in white, gray, or even red absorb less of the sun’s sweltering rays.

9. Insulate the attic.
And seal all holes and cracks from the attic to the living areas. In my old home, the insulation is both insufficient and disgusting. It’s the old cellulose crap– loaded with dust and it stinks like all get-out. Oh, how I hate cellulose insulation!

How I HATE this attic!

Well, anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, seal the holes! In my home, the roof heats up and the backyard heats up thanks to all that asphalt, and the heat builds up to epic proportions in the attic. And I know all about physics, but in my house the heat actually DROPS. Must be wacky airflow. But the house sometimes smells like the attic and the upstairs gets really hot. When we gut the upstairs, I’m going to seal that blasted attic.

10. Open the basement door.
Before we had our sneaky cat who is always trying to get outside, we would open the basement door and place a fan in the doorway. I really can’t believe how wonderfully cool the basement is. When the weather gets really oppressive, I sometimes go down there to cool back down to 98.6.

Of course, sitting in the refrigerator is a great way to cool off...

11. Install awnings over south-facing windows.
Believe me, this works. My new kitchen window at 4 feet by 5 feet is so wonderful, but it faces south and receives the full brunt of the hot summer sun and asphalt.

So there ARE ways to keep the house cool without busting your energy bill to force factor reviews proportions. After all, you’ll need to save every dollar you can for the winter’s heating bills!

Ugh, what do you do when the house falls apart faster than you can patch it up???

Yeah, it’s spring. Now that the snow has ebbed away, the busted up dregs of winter’s wrath has appeared. And blast it, I just can’t keep up.

First, there’s the front porch. Years ago now, I had to patch up the decking to put on a new roof. The decking was never properly supported (ever) and I didn’t have the know-how nor tools to dig below the frost line and support it. Now, the porch floor is tilting. A LOT. Ugh. I’m going to have to shore up the roof, remove the decking, and rebuild. NOT FUN.

Thank God the hydrangeas mask the slope and decrepit porch skirt trim!

Our garage door broke last year. The old cable and spring just gave way. We were in the house (thank GOD no one was in the garage) when we heard a huge slam. One of the cables that holds the door up on the track had split in half, like a weary rubber band. We tried to fix it then, but to no avail. I think we may have to hire some garage door company to get a new door, or at least fix the old one. This kind of work is a little beyond my capabilities, and the husband is concerned that the door may spring out or the other cable break while we’re trying to fix it. It’s just too dangerous.

Sad thing is, we don’t even use the room as a garage. Right now, it’s just a place where we keep our tools and junk (we have no storage space in the house, as the basement floods and there is no real attic). When we want to get the lawn mower or rakes out, we need a team of people to hoist the garage door and place a wooden post in the track to keep it up. :-p I have plans to eventually renovate the room into a media room or family room, but that’s not for a while yet. Nuts. I’m stuck.

So how’s your spring turning out as you survey your property? Is the to do list adding up? Still, even though there’s a lot to do with a home every spring, it’s SO worth it, owning your own home than renting.

Subtle, she is not.

Sorry I haven’t been around very much. Winter is long in tooth this year. We had a little reprise yesterday (and last week). With thunder! But as I suspected, nothing accumulated and the birds didn’t fly back south. The flowers took a bold stance and are still persistently blooming. But shame on me– I still have not ordered garden seeds! Growing season doesn’t “officially” begin in Upstate NY until Mother’s Day, when *they say* threat of frost has passed. I don’t know, though… last year we had a frost in June. We’ll see. I can confidentially report that the monster snowbanks are now all melted (although north of us, I’m sure they still have dregs).

My thoughts are turning more toward the land, now that I can see it again, haha! We’re starting to think about home projects, garden projects, New York holidays– maybe even a farm stay or a camping trip– and of course the regular work to do around here. Because the kitchen renovation consumed my time and energy last year, I totally ignored the gardens. They are in terrible disarray. And the deer literally devoured my hedge or young arborvitae this winter. I am still very angry at them about that. More about them, later. Today’s a good day and I don’t want to spoil it.

So spring really, really is here. It may take some time before it’s a consistent visitor, but winter IS over. It is! Honest! Hang in there!