The Empty Cabinets of my Mind

Nick and Soak

If you saw the Before and After Shot showing how much my moonflower seedlings grew over an eleven hour period, you know I love moonflowers, aka Moon Vine (Ipomoea alba), not to be confused with Datura or Brugmansia

Of course, the flowers are going to be nice, but the true miracle of germinating a moonflower seed is to watch it turn from a wrinkly yellow wad into vivid monster leaves that grow so fast you can literally see the motion.

Many people have said, however, that they cannot get moonflower seeds to grow.  It is a great wonder to me that the seed packets do not inform the buyer that it helps to nick and soak these seeds to help them grow.

Some gardening articles recommend nicking it with a nail file, but I use a nail clipper instead.  How?  I just make a little cut in the side of each seed and then soak them in filtered water for a few hours or overnight. 

Rather than planting them in dirt, I put the soaked seeds in a heavy cloth bag and immerse it in water a couple times a day, letting it drain the rest of the time. Since Santa Clause brought me a Sproutman's Hemp Sprouting Bag a while back, I use that.  Tap water is not a good idea in many places as the chlorine in it might inhibit growth.  That is why I use filtered water. 

PS:  All parts of this plant are potentially toxic and should NOT be eaten.

Eat at Home and Dine Out!

There is a big difference between eating and dining.   Dining is OK once in a while, but that is something I like to do out.  Maybe that is why we have the expression "eat in" although my favorite place to eat is out on a deck or porch or patio.

Did you ever visit somebody's home where they have an elegant dining room, but everybody wants to hang out in the kitchen?   I'm lucky.  I don't even have a dining room.  The person who lived here before me tore out the wall and made the kitchen bigger.  No living room either, as I converted mine into an office.  I live in the office anyway, when I'm not in the kitchen.

That does not mean that I don't like Dining Room Tables though. I go simply gaga over them, especially the sleek modern designs with lots of glass on top.  Not having a living room means there is plenty of space for a stylish dining table in my office.   It is situated right next to my mini-trampoline and a little mechanical frog called Surfer Dude who signs Splish Splash I Was Taking a Bath.  

If anyone comes to visit me, they can stay at a hotel, thank you, because I converted the spare bedroom into a sewing room.   Why?  Because I live here, not the editor of some fashion magazine. 

Cloudy and Dark

It has been so dark and cloudy for the past few weeks that if I did not have all these AeroGardens to brighten up the place, it would be sad indeed.  When we lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I lit my kitchen with one of those Happy Lights.  It really did make a difference.  The AeroGarden planters have a similar effect, especially when they are filled with lively salad greens and/or beautiful flowers.  In addition to the plants that live in the AGs, the lamps nourish an abundance of potted plants that are set alongside. 

For instance, one of my little AG Mini's, with only three grow holes, is providing light for two gardenia plants and an array of ranunculus in addition to the basil and Swiss Chard to which it is home.  Usually I surround my AGs with hydroponic planters, but these are in dirt:

    

The gardenias fill my home with their lovely scent, and that takes the edge off the fact that it is still winter.

Too Much Stuff

When the weather gets nicer up north I have to make a run up to the San Francisco Bay Area and do something about a vacant property I left up there.  I dread going because there is a lot of stuff to go through. 

If it were only furniture and appliances, I could just call up some Orange County movers and arrange for a friend to let them in. But I left a whole bunch of paperwork up there, boxes and file cabinets full of stuff.  It might take a month.  This isn't a seller's market, but I need to get the place cleaned out and ready just the same. I hope to be able to rent it out for a year and then find somebody interested in a lease/purchase agreement.

When I get all of the paperwork figured out, then I have to think about how to find a good moving company. I wonder whether they disinfect the vans between jobs? I think about things like termites and other people's germs.

I'd probably want to choose a family-owned and operated business, too.  Well, one thing at a time.  Maybe the whole project will seem less daunting after the March winds are done blowing and the April rains have finished falling.   Anything looks better on a sunshiny day!

Route 66

I grew up hearing stories about the old-timers who drove the original Route 66 to California before the road was paved.  I guess some of it is still unpaved.  But it sure is a nice shortcut from Las Vegas down to the Palm Springs Area.  Here is a photo I took on my last trip:

It rained really hard that night and the next day was overcast:

What is Worse than Going to the Dentist?

Someone asked me that recently and I said Job Interviews and Weddings. What do those things have in common? For one thing, you have to dress up. I hate that. In addition to just not liking to wear fancy clothes, I don't like to spend a lot of money on something that will hopefully be obsolete by the next time it is needed.

I especially dislike having to spend more just for a dress or shoes to wear to someone else's wedding than I spent on the whole affair when I got married. But then, we only spent $40. Yep, that was the cost of one night in Reno, and the room came with a free buffet and a roll of nickels that we were supposed to use for gambling. We paid for our gas with some of the nickels and kept the rest. I might still have a few of them around someplace. Oh, and we packed peanut butter sandwiches for on the way, and I wore jeans and a sweat shirt. It was one of those "let's do it now before we chicken out" deals. Sometimes you just have to take the bull by the horns. Talk about a wedding on a budget! But the marriage lasted.

Unfortunately that is more than I can say for some of the fancy shindigs I've been forced to attend. Also, fancy does not guarantee civil behavior. A high school chum got married right after she graduated and her family spent a fortune on the wedding. But her mum only paid on the condition that the girl's sister not be invited. So just as the photographer was lining everyone up, the uninvited one shows up in curlers and a bathrobe, saying "I just had to see you in your wedding dress" and the water works began, and then the yelling and screaming. Ka-Ching! Extra money for touching up the photos afterward.  Aren't the guests the ones who are supposed to cry at a wedding, not the bride? 

I have also been to a few truly lovely weddings, though. In each instance they were second time arounds, modestly done, but with lots of family and friends.

Another Triond Article

Still testing the Chitika ads, this time with dashes:

From my understanding, these work for visitors outside of the US or Canada. However, I did not understand how to select keywords, so maybe it will default to keywords Chitika puts in for me, or maybe the ads won't run at all. Only time will tell ;-)

UPDATE: Today when Triond notified me of the publication of my article called Do you Use the CIA Factbook Online? I noticed that someone else signed up from the referral link I blogged about yesterday.

Let's see if this can happen three days in a row.  Here is the link again:

$$$ Like to Write? You will Love Triond! $$$
Pays Monthly

If you missed yesterday's post, Triond is a program that pays residual income on articles you write. They publish them online for you and do all the work of seting up ads from different clients they have, and then they split whatever they earn with you. I have gotten something deposited into my PayPal account from Triond every month since I first signed up in the summer of 2007. In fact, I have gotten way more payments from them than I have written articles.

One Potato, Two Potato...

I had been trying to find a tasteful way to monetize this blog beyond the few PayPerPost ads that come along, but the first giant company that I tried for context sensitive ads had too many confusing rules and the coding was too complicated, so I gave up on them. I think they were pretty glad to see me go, too, but I am very satisfied with Chitika so far. It was a good switch. It took me abut five minutes to set it up and they had my blog approved within an hour. That just goes to show there is more than one fish in the sea and hopefully, more than one potato in the pot. Speaking of potatoes, I wrote this little article yesterday:

Frozen Potatoes 

I also wrote an article called Lying with the Truth. 

If you were to visit either of those articles, you would see that some of the words have double underlining and if you hover over them, an advertisement comes up.  Those are ads from Kontera and if people click on them, then a delightful PTW (Paid to Write) company called Triond gets paid and Triond, in turn, pays each one of its writers half of what they get.  This is a good deal for Triond and a good deal for writers like me.  Triond also pays its writers a commission of 10% on the earnings of people they recommend who end up writing for Triond, too.  That is something new. So here is my referral link in case you would like to write some articles and earn a little Lunch Money:

$$$ Like to Write? You will Love Triond! $$$
Pays Monthly

Also new is a similar set-up that I have added to my gardening blog.  Gardening supplies are expensive, so I decided to monetize that one too, but there you will start seeing ads that look similar to the Kontera ads on the Triond articles.  But mine are from a company called InfoLinks. 

So I went over to my Lying with the Truth article to compare the Konera Links with the Infolinks and when I came back to look at this blog, Chitika displayed an ad asking me if I were interested in "Lying with the Truth."  Ingenious, I thought, but won't that scare some people? 

I want to explain it here so that my readers do not feel uncomfortable.   In addition to wanting to make money the advertising company wants to make the ads interesting and relevant to you.   Another thing I like about Chitika is that instead of burdening me with a zillion no-nos and expecting me to regulate who views my blogs to accommodate their paying advertisers, their smart ads only show to the readers they are interested in targeting.  If an advertiser specifies s/he only wants readers from Canada to click on the ad then Chitika simply checks your location and if you are not from Canada, then they do not activate the ad.    That is SO much more intelligent than displaying the ad to everyone and then getting mad at me if someone who is not from Canada clicks on it.  PS: I am SO excited, because while I was writing this, someone signed up from my Triond referral link. It works!

3rd Generation

The company I bought this Tender Green Edible Amaranth from does not always have the seed available, so I got to experience how easy it is to let the plants go to seed and save them to make new plants:

Amaranth seeds are tiny little things.

They sprout fast, then the seedlings languish for two or three weeks before taking off. 

This one is growing in liquid nutrient solution in an AeroGarden planter.  As soon as it gets big enough I will cut of the top stems and put them back in the grow hole to root, and move the original plants out to my new raised garden.  Then when the cuttings get big enough, I'll do the same thing with them.  

That way I will be assured of having enough of them to eat.  The leaves are good fresh in a salad, sauteed in butter, or sliced in soup. 

Test Link

I signed up on a site called Linkbucks and am still trying to find my way around:

Testing

I need to find out what happens when I click the link and also what happens when others do so. 

OK, I get it. If the people stay on the Linkbucks ad for 14 seconds before viewing my post the n Linkbucks pays me 4/100ths of a cent for each page view. Interesting...