No, not at the shooting range. We're having some work done on a concrete patio. The workers are using a jackhammer and a concrete saw.

It is VERY LOUD!

Pulled out the old Peltor Bullseye 7 hearing protectors. It helps a little.

Looking for fresh strawberries and/or humanely-raised local meat? If you're interested in learning more about local food (and the people who produce it), the Market Square Farmers' Market is launching a monthly series of farm tours. The "To the Source Farm Tour" series kicks off on Sunday, May 18, with a visit to three farms in Meigs, Rhea, and Monroe counties.

The tour will visit Tidwell's Berry Farm, a family-owned "ready pick" berry farm in Spring City, Tennessee. The next stop on the tour is River Ridge Farm in Ten Mile, Tennessee, to tour the farm where Dave Waters and his family raise beef, pork, chickens, and other goodies. Regulars to the Market Square Farmers' Market are familiar with Dave as the market's "meat guy." The tour will conclude with an opportunity to pick your own strawberries at Strawberry Knob Farm in Madisonville.

"Eleanor" and I will be going as we continue to explore our local food options. Cost of the tour is $20 per person and shuttle vans (provided by CAC) will depart from Market Square at noon on Sunday, 18 May. The shuttles will return approximately 6:30 p.m. Advance registration is required by Wednesday and space is limited. So, contact Charlotte Tolley at the Farmers' Market booth on Market Days (today or Wednesday) or visit the new MSFM web site at www.marketsquarefarmersmarket.org for additional information in the "Special Events and Programs" section. "Eleanor" and I will be manning a booth for the MSFM this morning at the Beardsley Community Farm's Farm Fest and we'll also be signing interested people up. Other volunteers will be at the farm fest booth in the afternoon to get you signed up, also.

See you on the farm!

or a kinder, gentler vandalism.

Brown thrasher foraging, hungry mouths to feed

I have had these year after year since we bought the house. We have never know what they are. My camera does not do birds well and this won't move so help me out horticulturists.

I had given my neighbor a cutting from a lavender azalea bush I have a couple of years ago. Doug sent me this picture.

Share your plants!

Sherrie

Link... The Knoxville Plant Swap is coming up May 3 at Admiral Farragut Park.

If this interests you, go to their website and get on the email list. These folks who swap plants are some of the kindest folks I have ever met.

A reader brings our attention to this free online TVA energy audit. It's fairly detailed, and the more information you provide the better recommendations it can make.

We came out pretty good, but there are more things we could do that would result in 10% to 20% more savings. As a wild guess, the payback would be about 10 years, but conservation is a good thing, too.

Here's the breakdown of our annual energy use:

Electricity:
Space Heating 1%
Laundry 3%
Kitchen Appliances 3%
Refrigerators/Freezers 4%
Small Appliances 5%
Lighting 8%
Home Office 18%
Air Conditioning 19%

Gas:
Other Usage 1%
Water Heating 4%
Space Heating 35%

I was surprised by how much the home office uses. But working from home and telecommuting offsets that in many other ways.

You can enter up to 12 months of utility bill info, but I put in just two, one for August and one for February. It did a pretty good projection on the other months based on that. Anyway, have a couple of utility bills handy when you start the survey. (P.S. The survey asks for gas consumption in "therms." Ours is billed in CCF. The conversion factor is 1 CCF = 1.0250 therms. Or you can just enter the CCF and it's close enough.)

Bonus: If you register and complete the survey, TVA will send you an energy conservation kit that includes two compact fluorescent light bulbs, outlet and light switch gaskets, filter whistle, two faucet aerators, hot water temperature gauge, home thermometer, and a "How to Save" brochure. (Through June 30, 2008, while supplies last.) That's a pretty good deal.

UPDATE: A reader writes "You can also call your utility (in the case of KUB, 524-2911) and they can give you your bill history right over the phone so you can get a complete picture of your consumption and thus get a more accurate report."

The Dogwood Arts Festival on Market Square is being held this week, April 11-13.

My Mother and I went yesterday to beat the crowds and the weather. It was a beautiful day even with the wind.

Good art, good food, good music, good people...

More photos after the break.

Enjoy!

Spring has sprung. Daffodils, tulips, redbuds, forsythias, cherry trees, crabapples flox, and so much more in bloom.

The Dogwood Arts Festival has begun.

April 9th - Dogwood trails open
April 11th - Parade
April 11th thru 13th - Festival on Market Square
and more...

Red-bellied woodpecker, Sunday Feb. 17, 2008

The Great Backyard Bird Count was this weekend.

It was a good year at our house.

Species observed after the jump...

Got our first full-month utility bill since installing our new energy efficient front loading washer/dryer.

As compared to the same period last year, it appears we may have reduced total water consumption by about 21%. Water is so cheap it isn't much in terms of cost savings, but every little bit helps in a drought.

It looks like we may have reduced our electricity usage some, too, possibly owing to less drying time. Compared to the previous month it's about a 13% reduction, but it's hard to compare month to month (average temperature, holiday cooking, etc.)

But the really good news is that CFLs, energy efficient washer/dryer, and other conservation measures have reduced our electricity consumption by 31% as compared to the same period last year. Last year's average temperatures during that period were 50.6 (high) and 31.7 (low), compared to 46.9 and 27.1 for this year, so the savings may actually be higher.

There's more stuff we can do to conserve, though, so we'll keep chipping away at it.

After about 23 years, our clothes dryer has finally gone on to the big laundromat in the sky.

Our washer is only a little over 10 years old, but it is starting to show its age and grumbles about it every now and then. We were thinking of replacing the whole shebang with one of these newfangled energy efficient front loading washers and a matching dryer.

I think we've narrowed it down to LG or Whirlpool. Frigidaire is a possibility, mainly because it will fit better in our laundry room. We looked at the new energy efficient top loaders, but they aren't nearly as energy efficient and cost about the same as a front loader.

Anyone have any suggestions or recommendations?

Have you seen any stolen hay? If so, law enforcement can use your help:

Detective Jeff Manis has been hot on the trail of hay thieves. He said a break in the case led to Trotter's arrest. "I got a tip from a citizen in Seymour yesterday morning and turned out to be correct."
. . .
More than 30 1,700-pound bales remain missing from the rightful owner, Jack McMahan.

Searching for it isn't an easy task, but Manis says there are ways to find the rest of the bales. "We could take a sample of the hay and the UT [sic] could compare it, tell from same field and same grass."

Sounds like a little CSI action is possible.

It's my understanding that hay prices have been above average due to the drought.

Link...

Interesting read about the battle between cats and birds, especially feral cats and rarer birds. I solve my part of it by keeping my cat indoors, but I do feel guilty about that occasionally. He is a hunter, and so may be a bit bored inside sometimes. But with other cats, I've had dead birds brought to me as an offering and that is sad.

Pam

From the previous discussion about starlings, this is a little ironic.

I was out on the front porch and I heard something scuttling around desperately inside one of the aluminum columns. I tried taking it apart, but apparently it really is load bearing and not just decorative.

Over at RoaneViews, WhitesCreek mentioned that LED Christmas lights save money and energy.

This sounded like a good idea, so we got some. They have strings of 50 at K-Mart on sale for $6.99. They also have them at Home Depot, Lowes and Target.

They look great, and use less than 5 watts per string as compared to about 25 watts for a string of 50 mini lights or 350 watts for a string of 50 traditional C9 lights.

The November issue of Southern Living Magazine reveals a nice little local secret. You don't have to travel to Italy to get some of the best Prosciutto.

According to the article the best chefs in the South are ordering it as well as country hams from Allen Benton just down the road a bit in Madisonville. Here is a link to their online article. Hopefully it will take you there; some of their online stuff is only available to subscribers.

I have spent the day attempting to resuscitate a heat pump that should have been released from its misery ten years ago.

It was ancient when I sold the house to my neighbor and friend seven years ago. I discounted the house a good deal because I told him that the first thing he needed was a replacement for it.

No matter how many of these I read, I always seem to find at least one new hint that I've never heard of before. This has some weird tips, but it's got a lot of good ones too. It's interesting to find out how many of these you already do...or will do...

Link...

All the carpet cleaners say you should clean your carpets every six months.

Does anybody actually clean their carpets every six months?

Seems excessive to me. We had ours cleaned today for the first time ever in this house. We've been here four years.

In early spring, the Mrs. brought home some plants for our annual doomed garden of stuff that will never bear fruit. She brought some herbs, tomato plants, and a "green pepper" plant.

The herbs did OK and the tomato plants are struggling, owing to drought and neglect.

The "green pepper" plant budded quickly and produced one little pepper right away.

We've been waiting and waiting for the puny little thing to become a full grown green pepper. After several weeks, the Mrs. finally gave up and picked it yesterday, and left it on the kitchen counter.

Tonight I figured it was too small to be of any use for anything, so I took a big bite out of it just to see what it tasted like.

Oh my God! It was like Satan lighting a blowtorch to the fires of hell in my mouth. I spit it out as fast as I could, but it was too late. My mouth and lips were burning, my eyes were watering and bulging out, my face turned puffy and red, and I thought I was going to have to go to the hospital.

I'm guessing it isn't a "green pepper" plant after all.

She already threw away the little tag that says what kind of plant it is, or I would recommend it to those of you who like habanero peppers and Atomic Hot Sauce and what not.

I am not one of you. I admit I'm a big sissy when it comes to heat.

This one won't apply to everybody, but we implemented another energy conservation measure about the same time we put in the CFLs.

Read more...

The endangered flower made famous in the nonfiction book "The Orchid Thief" and the fictional movie spinoff "Adaptation" is about 45 feet off the ground in a tree at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples.

"It's got a big, old root mass on it," he said. "We've just never seen it before. I'm sure it's been blooming, but they bloom in June and July, and that's when cypress are leafed out.

Bird watching can be very rewarding!

Just got our first full month electric bill since switching out our most frequently used light bulbs with CFLs (6 bulbs).

Along with other conservation measures, it looks like we had about a 15% savings compared to the same period last year, which for us works out to about $26 for a 30 day billing period at the current rates.

So basically, the CFLs have already paid for themselves (which doesn't seem possible, but there you go). Our savings may be higher because we work mostly from home so we are here 7X24 so our lights are on longer. Your mileage may vary.

It should also be noted that the average daily high temperature for June 2007 was about 2 degrees higher (88.5) as compared to June 2006 (86.6), so it's likely we ran the AC a little more this year than last.

Link...

It might seem far fetched to think anyone in Knoxville would end up paying high prices for parking spaces in front of or near their own homes, but many residents in cities and towns across the nation are doing just that.

In Houston, $225,000 will buy a three-bedroom house with a game room, den, in-ground pool and hot tub.

Parking in new developments is selling for twice what it was five years ago, said Jonathan Miller, an appraiser and president of Miller Samuel.

It seems ridiculous for cities to limit the number of parking spaces per unit, but with space being a premium there simply isn't enough room to include parking for all residents in all buildings.

Scarcity figures big in the escalating prices. Mr. Miller estimated that less than 1 percent of all co-op and condominium buildings in the city have private garages. The city also limits how much parking new buildings below 96th Street can offer, requiring that no more than 20 percent of the units have spaces.>

Paying for parking in front of or near your own home sounds ridiculous to people living in small towns, but future population expansion suggests this will eventually be a problem everywhere.

Peaches from Georgia (available at most produce stands), organic rhubarb from Boston (carried on the plane), and some wild blackberries sprinkled in for local content.

It's a beautiful day today, low humidity, light breeze, abundant sunshine. I hope you'll consider putting a load or two of laundry out on the line to dry. If you need more motivation, rent the video Kilowatt Ours which demonstrates what goes into making the electricity used to dry your clothes.

A few handy hints: don't use clothespins, they are a hassle. Fold the clothes over the line and the first step in folding is already accomplished. Hang shirts on a plastic hanger, if you stretch them taut they might not need ironing. Go ahead and put the small stuff in the dryer if you don't want that hassle to discourage you from line drying.

You may not have a place set up for outside drying. I hope this post motivates you to create one. It is supposed to be dry on Wednesday as well. Wouldn't it be great to celebrate Independance Day by declaring a little bit of independance from the utility companies?

Pretty tart .. but the ice cream (Breyer's French Vanilla) helps.

This was taken last winter during an ice storm in Hull MA., the town I immigrated from. Every time I feel like complaining about the heat all I have to do is stare at this pic awhile. This house was right on the beach a few streets away from me.