We found this critter while checking for water after Hurricane Ida drenched the area:
It’s on the outside of the vent screen and we have no objection.
We should put up a bat house to encourage more of its friends to hang out with us …
Category: Home Ec
Things around the home & hearth
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Sticky Trap Results
In late May we deployed six sticky traps in and around the onion bed, attempting to reduce the number of Onion Fly maggots. By mid-June the sheets were covered with the shredded leaves Mary uses to mulch the onions, but half a dozen flies were out of action:
Sticky trap – 2021-06 We’re pretty sure that’s what these things are:
Sticky trap – Onion Fly – 2021-06 They’re supposed to have red eyes, but being affixed to a sheet of snot for a few weeks doesn’t do the least bit of good for your eyes.
We replaced the sheets and left them in place until the end of July:
Sticky trap – 2021-07 The sheets took another half-dozen flies out of circulation, Mary began harvesting the onions, and observed it was the healthiest onion harvest she’s ever had.
We declared victory, removed the traps, and the remaining onions suffered considerable maggot damage over the next few weeks.
Anecdotally, it seems reducing the Onion Fly population by (what seems to be) a small amount and maintaining pressure on the population dramatically reduces the number of maggots available to damage the onion crop. At least for a single bed in a non-commercial setting.
The plural of anecdote is not anecdata, but we’ll try it again next year, leave the traps in place while the onions are in the ground, and see what happens.
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Wheelbarrow Rebuild
For reasons that should be obvious by now, I volunteered to rebuild a wheelbarrow used at the Vassar Community Garden plots. It spent all its time outdoors and one of the handles eventually broke off:
Wheelbarrow rebuild – old handles I’d already removed the wheel and front strap, which were in good condition.
The new handles were undrilled, so I marked and drilled them with a nice brad-point bit to get clean holes:
Wheelbarrow rebuild – handle drilling The metal “barrow” had cracked around the carriage bolts holding it to the frame, so I filed a quartet of fender washers to fit the square section under the heads:
Wheelbarrow rebuild – fender washer holes After a false start, I marked the bolt heads and washers to line them up properly while tightening the nuts on the other end:
Wheelbarrow rebuild – fender washer installed One front strut had gone missing, so I replaced it with a mashed-and-drilled section of ski pole:
Wheelbarrow rebuild – front strut All in all, a few hours of Quality Shop Time interspersed with a few pleasant bike rides to various local stores, wherein I learned who doesn’t stock the necessary hardware.
Protip: Home Depot has the highest-entropy hardware assortment.
For the record, all the bolts have a 5/16-18 thread.
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Another Power Outage
We woke just after midnight to a completely dark and silent house, I padded around shutting of half a dozen UPS units under various desks and benches, and we eventually got back to sleep:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – status According to our clocks, power actually returned about four hours later.
Our grocery ride the next morning went past the crash site:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – A Tracks in the grass leading up to the smashed mailbox on our right suggest the driver didn’t quite make the very slight curve leading to the straight section.
It was garbage collection day and the debris field covered the entire front lawn:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – B Both poles have rectangular reflectors, but the one on the smashed pole (on the left) shows the pole is maybe four feet shorter than it used to be.
We have no idea how a can of white paint got involved in the proceedings:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – C [Update: Now we know where the paint came from.]
Quite some years ago, an errant driver demolished the front corner of that house and, more recently, the whole building burned out, so there may be a jinx on the site.
Other than that, we had an uneventful ride …
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Just One More …
Spotted behind a mall undergoing renovation:
Overloaded dumpster Perhaps they were loading it from the end and didn’t notice the instructions:
Overloaded dumpster – detail Protip: Always get the biggest dumpster available!
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Seedling Shelter Frame Deployment
Mary bound up a mesh cover for the shelter frame and deployed it to protect some yummy seedlings:
Seedling Mesh Shelter – installed Those will become the next round of lunchtime sandwiches:
Turkey Sandwich with Excessive Lettuce It’s a quarter-pounder: 4 oz of turkey, 4 oz of lettuce, and a layer of Swiss and good stinky Provolone cheese. Yum!
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Power Outage
A gusty thunderstorm knocked out power across Dutchess County, including half the service to our house. Being glad the refrigerator and freezer were on the live phase, I shut off the affected breakers on the dead phase, as well as all the 240 V breakers, and, with the living room darkened, we skipped our evening storytime.
By the next morning, a quick lamp test showed the recloser out on the pole had worked its magic, so I flipped all the breakers back on. The living room remained dark, prompting an investigation of the fuse box feeding the original house wiring:
Blown 20 A glass fuse Yup, another blown fuse.
Given what happens while wind and falling branches knock power lines askew, anything is possible. I have no idea where the fault current went, but replacing the fuse brought the living room back to normal.
None of the various UPS / lamps / phones seem damaged; I admit not peering inside the outlets to check for arc damage.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 