Jeremy Herndon Blog

Last summer I was disheartened to find Japanese beetles on our crape myrtle shrubs that we had just planted the year before.  I knew Japanese beetles were problematic with roses, but I did not know that they liked crape myrtles too! There were only a few beetles on the shrubs, so I left them alone but I am thinking that might have been a mistake.  Leave a few alone now, and you are likely to have hundreds the next year!

I have a very old floor lamp that I was given by a dear aunt. She tells me that she bought it over thirty years ago. I love it dearly, but it has finally given up the ghost. The socket died, and I decided it was appropriate to rewire the entire thing because the plug was the old fashioned kind that just was not as safe as the newer ones. So I went to the hardware store and bought what I needed to rewire the lamp. It took a couple of hours to take it all apart and rewire it, but I did it myself and it turned out fine.

I had called an electrician and asked him how much he would charge to re-wire it and he had told me it would cost over $100! The rewiring supplies cost me less than $20, so I’m thrilled that I saved $80 by re-wiring it myself! And I’m thrilled that I kept the lamp from going to the junkyard, so I did my part to save the environment today!

This weekend we are expected, once again, to have a great weather weekend, so I’ll be spending time out in the yard as much as possible getting things done that normally wouldn’t even been thought about for another month or so. It has been in the eighties all week long, crazy weather for the middle of March.

I have ordered some irrigation supplies that I need to get the yard ready for. I have wanted to get lawn sprinklers installed for some time now and when I got my tax refund check deposited into my checking account I went online and found just what I wanted and needed and put the order in in just a matter of minutes.

Working out in the yard is something that we take seriously around here. We like having a nice backyard that we can spend good quality time in all year round, which we have basically been able to do with this extreme warm winter weather that we have been blessed with this year. But during the summer we entertain a good bit and it always helps when people can relax and enjoy being out in the yard, front, side and/or back.

Easter Gift Baskets have already appeared on the store’s shelves, right beside the clearance Valentine’s Day candy. I noticed that last weekend when I dropped into Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. I was walking past the seasonal section and realized that it was the perfect time to score some discount Valentine’s candy to take home and share with the family.

One of the things that I’ve tried to do in regards to holidays like Easter is to reuse and recycle a lot of the “trimmings.” For example, the plastic grass, the plastic eggs, and the baskets themselves can be reused over the years. Just the thought of buying one of those cellophane-wrapped baskets that are intended to be thrown away a week later, filling up the landfills makes me cringe.

That is one of the things that I really admire about my mother, and about my wife; they are so creative and thrifty with their talents to be able to reuse and re-purpose items in such a way that it never looks like they are being “cheap.” In fact, some of the things that they re-purpose have turned into well-loved family heirlooms that will be in the family for-ever. For example, several years ago my wife took an empty plastic cool-whip tub and covered it with batting and fabric and turned it into a beautiful basket that was an Easter Basket one year, but now holds our remote controls in the living room.

Every summer my parents took us all down to their summer house for fun in the sun and the river. Those were the days that were the best times for us all and I have thanked my parents a million times for giving us this wonderful opportunity back then. They still own that property, and have actually moved down there permanently, although the log cabin (which my dad always bragged to us that Davey Crockett helped him build it) is long gone and a nice modern house has been built right on the waterfront for them to enjoy all year round with plenty of bedrooms for us to use when we come down for the holidays and family functions when we can travel that far.

We spent most of our childhood summers playing in that wonderful river water, swimming, diving, boating, fishing, water skiing, tubing, crabbing and any other type of water activity that we could think of. The only problem was the darned jellyfish that would come out towards the end of July, all most every year. Getting stung was a real bummer and we would go to great lengths in order not to get stung, but it was inevitable no matter what we did. The only real way not to get stung was to go to the private pool that my folks paid the hefty membership dues for so that we could be in the nettle free water that we so enjoyed whenever possible.

Back in the real world when we were not down there by the river we would nag our parents endlessly to please buy a pool for us and our friends to use in the back yard, but they were not having anything to do with that idea. They really were not interested in finding and purchasing all of the pool supplies and all of the numerous pool accessories that go along with owning, operating and maintaining your own residential pool, besides the liability issues that kids just don’t understand. Instead of a pool in the area that would have been perfect for a pool we ended up with a garden that kept us busy with all the weeding and all the other hard labor that a good sized vegetable garden requires. At least we learned the value of a home garden full of all kinds of wonderful fruits and veggies that we enjoyed all year round thanks to my mother’s large freezer in the basement that was always over flowing with the fruits of our labor.