Copper wire trick - May 22, 2026

The Grandson and I went down to the garden this morning to poke 20-gauge pure copper wire through the tomato stems.  It's supposed to keep down fungus.  

It's SUPPOSED to be done when the plant stems are about as big around as a pencil; mine were thicker.  And tough.  There may also have been some window of time (not sure how long, or why) between planting and poking that I missed.  The wire bent like crazy; it was hard to get it in.  But we did it.  I just hope we didn't kill the plants.  

Two of my pepper plants and one of the tomato plants are just gone.  Not even a shriveled stem where they were.

The okra has come up, is about 2-3" tall.  I thinned it and replanted some of it the skips.  The ground around some of them was like . . . chocolate pudding.  I just mushed 'em in with my thumb.  

The Grandson and I washed our crocks off with the waterhose by the back porch.  I noticed that the inside of my left ankle was bright red, angry.  Ants, most likely.  They're all over the place.

Last weekend, I tried an ant-killer recipe of 3 oz. orange oil, 6 oz. Dawn dishwashing liquid, and 1 gallon of water.  Poured a whole gallon straight down into the mound across the road from our house.  Ants came pouring out when the water hit.  I did not hang around long to see what happened.  Yesterday, I poked that mound with a stick.  It's still full of ants. 

On Mother's Day, while we were visiting at Nanny's, I set fire to two ant mounds at the north end of the garden.  Two weeks earlier, I had piled up okra stems and weeds on top of the mounds, just to piss them off.  A third mound, just a few feet away, had popped up during the interim.  I lit the two piles and went back to the porch for a while, and when I went out to check the situation a few minutes later, the ants from the burning mound were moving over to the new mound, entering the mound at ground level, not from the top.  I did not get close enough to get a good look, but it almost looked like the ants on the inside of the mound had knocked out part of the dirt at the base of the mound to welcome the new-comers.  Or maybe the mound defenders were busting out to meet the new-comers and run them off.  

In any case, the experiment tends to prove that roasting an ant hill does not work.

Creative Hands "ClayStudio" Polymer Clay from Hobby Lobby - Review - May 22, 2026

Yesterday, I yielded to temptation and went to Hobby Lobby to get a little more polymer clay, "just a couple of packs" to enable me to make something I'd seen in a tutorial.

I already had a couple of 2-oz packs of Sculpey clay in my basket (at roughly $3.50 per pack) when I noticed another brand of polymer clay - Creative Hands ClayStudio" - hanging above the Sculpey.  There were six 2-ounce packages of clay in each box, and there were four color themes - warm, cool, primary, and neutral colors.  Each box of clay cost $9.99.  My razor-sharp math brain calculated the price of each pack of ClayStudio clay to be a little over a dollar-something per pack.  On top of that, there was a sign that said, "Clay 40% off."  SOLD!  I bought a box of each color theme.

I wasn't sure the 40% discount applied to ALL clay, so when I got to the cashier, I asked if the ClayStudio clay was part of the sale.  The cashier said that the clay sale didn't start until Monday.   I said, "But there's a sign...."  She paged the manager, he checked (and took down the sign), and I got - 24 2-ounce packs of clay for $23.something.  SCORE!  

When I got home, I googled the brand and found only one mention of this clay, a short video made by someone who had bought the brand at Dollar Tree.  The video said that the clay was very soft and sticky, with the consistency of already-been-chewed gum.  

I opened a pack and began to condition it by rolling/folding it in my hands.  It was sticky straight out of the package, and the color was uneven.  I tried rolling it through my pasta machine.  Instead of coming out smooth, it looked . . . leprous.  I was able to get it smooth with an acrylic roller, but it was impossible to lift it off a tile without stretching it, and impossible to get it out of a cutter without mangling it.  

Eventually, I made a pendant and some earrings, all of which were misshapen by the time I took them to the oven.  The package said to bake them at 250 for 15 minutes.  My pieces were about 1/4" thick.  I was afraid that 15 minutes was not long enough, so I baked them for 30 minutes.  Left to cool overnight, when I attempted to sand them, they crumbled.  

This morning, I tried again.  I skipped the whole conditioning process and tried just rolling out the clay with a roller.  It was sticky.  When I tried to cut out a shape, the edges came out ragged.  At this moment, I have a 1/2" thick log of the clay on a tile in the refrigerator to see if cooling the clay will make it easier to handle.  I probably should have made a slab instead of a roll so that I could get straight to the cutting.

We'll see.  

Admittedly, I am not an expert at handling clay, but I cannot give this clay a passing grade.

Rain - May 20, 2026

It is raining cats and dogs this morning, and according to the weather predictors, it's likely to rain every day this week.  We need it!

Yesterday's plan was to sneak down to Nanny's while she was gone to her canasta group and stick copper wire through all of the tomato stems and water the tomatoes.  I got busy doing other things and never got around to those tasks.  Now, I can mark watering off the to-do list.  

What I was doing while I should have been in the garden was experimenting with polymer clay, hoping to create some pretty pieces for jewelry, and today I'm trying to decide whether to invest any more time and money in the craft.  Yesterday's experiments produced some fairly interesting results.  

But I have enough baked and sanded pieces to fill up a quart zip-lock bag.  Is there really a need to make more?  Wouldn't the time be better spent in actually finishing some jewelry?

Copper wire - May 19, 2026

Something growing in/around our yard is producing an absolutely wonderful scent.  We think it's the wild grapes - at least that's what we're calling the vine that grows around the edges of the yard.  It is currently dripping with green clusters, but we never see any actual grapes.  Maybe the critters eat them green.

This scent, almost always in May, reminds me of my mother.  She and my father married in mid-May, 1945.  Once, when we passed a locust tree in full bloom, she said the fragrance always reminded her of her wedding day.  

* * * * * * * * 

Over the weekend, I came across a video about copper wire used on tomatoes as a deterrent of early and late blight.  The instruction was to use a short length - maybe 3 or 4 inches - of 20 gauge pure copper wire, driven through the tomato stem (perpendicular to the ground) about 4 inches from the ground.  The tomato stem needs to be at least as big as a pencil. The video stressed that 20 gauge wire should be used, as anything thicker might damage the plant beyond repair, and anything smaller would be too flimsy to go through the stem.   Since I am making jewelry with pure copper wire, I have plenty of wire around.  I've already cut pieces for all of my plants and will "install" them later today.

Oh, no! - May 17, 2026

"The best laid plans," as they say.

The Husband's birthday was last month.  When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he said, "Nothing."

Unacceptable.

I pondered.  One day as I was surfing the internet, I discovered that the comedian Henry Cho was coming to town.  The Husband likes him.  I got two tickets for his birthday present.

The show started at 8 p.m. last night.  We got there about 7:15 and parked in a lot behind a donut shop.  When the show was over, we went to our car, and IT WAS GONE, as was every other car that had parked in that lot.  

OH, SHIT!

There was a wrecker in the parking lot with a truck hitched to it.  I asked the driver some questions.  He told me where the car was but said that there would be nobody there to give us our car back.

While I was talking to the driver, The Husband looked for a "no parking" sign.  We hadn't seen one when we parked.  The sign was about 12 feet up a light pole, not exactly in the line of an average person's vision.  

Miraculously, as we were standing there trying to figure out what to do (Uber the 30 miles home?), we saw a former classmate and her husband walking across the lot.  They live 10 miles or so from us and agreed to take us home.  

Could've been worse, eh?

Anyway, this morning we went back to town to get my car.  Cost us $225 to get it out of hock.

Expensive birthday present.

Mole Battle! - May 16, 2026

The most disgusting thing just happened.

Yesterday afternoon when we came home from our trip, I walked around the yard to stretch and check on my flowers and noticed that a mole had absolutely wrecked our back yard.  It was late in the day, and I didn't want to fool with the mole trap.

But this morning I went outside and stomped down all the mole tunnels.  An hour later, I checked the trail, saw where the mole had raised up what I'd stomped down, and set the trap in the trail. 

Fast forward 4 hours.

I decided to water the thirsty flowers.  In the process, I saw that the mole had dug all around the trap but had not sprung it.  I figured he'd get there, eventually, but just as I was about to turn off the water hose, I decided to poke it down in the mole tunnel to see if I could drown it or at least piss it off.

Behold, a pink nose poked up out of the ground!

I ran over to the compost pile to get the shovel.  It wasn't there, but the pitchfork was, so I grabbed it and stabbed it down in the mole tunnel, and when I lifted it up, there was a fat, squirming mole impaled on one of the tines.

EWWWWW!

The Husband was not here to finish it off, and I wasn't about to chop it in half or brain it.  

So I drowned it in a bucket of water.

And left it for The Husband to deal with when he gets home.  

Home - May 15, 2026

Today, "home" feels like the best word in the English language.

There were about 500 attendees at this morning's final meeting, which was scheduled to end mid-morning.  I shuddered to think about what kind of mess there'd be when the meeting was over with 500 people trying to check out of the hotel at the same time, so I got the jump on them by starting the process as soon as breakfast was over.  Summoned a bellman for our luggage, summoned a valet to bring the truck, and re-parked the truck so that when the meeting was over, we could hit the road.  We made it home about 7 p.m., stopping only to pee and stretch.  

It's good to be home.