Jeremy Herndon

I’m glad to hear that rain harvesting has once again becoming commonplace for a good amount of people. With our drought conditions that we have been experiencing these past years we really need to take advantage of any type of water conservation that we possibly can. There are plenty of rain barrels for sale these days. You can find tons of them online and from what I hear these wonderful rain barrels are selling like hot cakes.

My father used rain water barrels when we lived at the old home stead back in the day. I really never gave it much thought back then, but I do appreciate all of his efforts now a days. I plan on ordering some rain barrels for my own place come next pay day. If it will help with keeping our garden producing, I’m all for it. There has been a big effort to get this garden up and running and I look forward to a good harvest coming in soon.

I love this time of the year when folks are harvesting their gardens and giving away all of the extras that they have no need or use for. It’s all good!

I have always liked the look of tiles in various rooms in the house.  I like how easy it is to keep bathroom tiles clean.  They are very durable and classic.  I’ve seen some beautiful tile work done in many of my friends homes – some use them as kitchen backsplashes, and some use them on their kitchen countertops.  I’ve always liked the look, but I’ve often wondered about the difficulty in keeping the kitchen countertops clean! 
 
I’ve seen some beautiful table tops done with tiles as well.  I’ve been very tempted to buy a few of them.  The only thing that kept me from buying them is the practicality of keeping them as beautiful as possible – I can easily forsee food stains in the grout!
 
I think it is amazing how many different patterns and colors exist in the tile market today.  From subway tiles to floral, one can set the mood of a room quite easily decorating with tiles.

One of the things we really liked about this house that we live in is the fact that there was a gas fireplace in the living room.  I’ve had enough of the experience of burning really wood, but I love the ambiance of flames dancing in the fireplace.  There is something very soothing and hypnotic about relaxing in a chair by the fire.  I’ve always enjoyed doing that.  Many times I’ve fallen asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace! 

So having a fireplace in the house was a big plus!  We really didn’t care whether it was vented or ventless, because it is easy to buy Vented Gas Logs or Ventless Gas Logs.   Just recently we had a problem getting our logs to light, so we went online to see if we should call a repairman or just replace the logs.  We found some really fantastic prices on Peterson gas logs.  Now we’re even thinking about putting in a fireplit and Outdoor Gas Logs in our back yard.  I think it would be awesome to have a party area back there, and a fire pit would be a really nice touch.

The house that I grew up in had the best looking Window Box Planters in the neighborhood. My mother worked hard keeping those Decorative Planters in their best shape and condition possible. She had colorful flowers planted in them most of the year, they just seemed to grow well and keep their shape and color right up to the end of the season.

I have a few Indoor Planters around my place that seem to do pretty well. But I can’t seem to have much luck with an Outdoor Planter no matter how hard I try. I’ve seen some real nice High End Planters online that I’d really like to try and use to have here and the prices are pretty decent right now as well.

I’ll keep looking around a bit longer and see what I can come up with. I’ve got plenty of time to find the right one(s) for the right price. With this heat wave and drought going on there are a lot of sad looking yards out there.

After all these years since the E-911 went on board throughout the state, I am still amazed by how many people don’t have any address signs on their houses! The law states that in order to be in compliance, so that emergency personnel can locate a victim that needs help that an address sign needs to be on the house, clearly visable from the road. If the house itself is not visable from the road, then an address plaque should be beside the driveway that leads to the house.

Too many people think that having a rural mail box with their address on it is sufficient. Which would be great reasoning except for the fact that many people’s mailbox is not even on the same side of the road as their house! And what about those mailbox groupings where six or seven of them are all sharing the same post? How is an ambulance driver supposed to find you then? People are so numb sometimes!

Have you ever seen a Tim Sample performance?  In case you don’t know, Tim Sample is a Maine humorist, that gives performances around the state.  He’s good for a night’s entertainment when you get the chance to see him.  One of his funniest gags involves poking fun of one of my favorite household accessories – the tarp.  He talks about how just about every Mainer has something in their front yard covered with a blue tarp.  It’s been a few years since I last saw him, so I can’t recall the joke exactly, but the performance and the joke came to mind when my wife told me that she wanted to buy a clear tarp to use to cover the screening on the back porch.

I can’t remember a time when we haven’t had at least one or two things in the yard covered up with a tarp!  They are durable and versatile.  One of the great inventions of all time!

I keep dropping hints around the house that I want gift cards from Lowe’s or Home Depot for Father’s Day. I plan to be spending a lot of time this summer working on various household projects and I’ve been window shopping for the various hand tools that I’m going to want to be using. My cordless power drills have just about lived their life expectancy, and I’d like to buy a new one.

My wife has been suggesting that should consider buying a pneumatic nail gun, too. I’ve never used one before, but I have to admit that I’d get the work done a lot faster if I had one! I’m also going to be taking a look at the new saws on the market. I have to admit that I’m a total tool junkie!

My next door neighbor came knocking on my door today, asking my permission to pick dandelion greens from my lawn. She said that I had the most beautiful dandelion greens. I laughed and asked her what does she use them for. She eats them in salads, she said. She said that if you pick them when they are very young they taste delicious. Well, I decided to try one for myself, and I thought it was very bitter. I told her to help herself to all the dandelions she wanted!

Can you even imagine that the English settlers brought dandelions here on purpose! They were afraid that their honeybees wouldn’t have enough flowers to survive so they brought dandelion seeds! Well, we have plenty of them now! I wonder what dandelion wine tastes like!

For several years now Dean has been talking about how much he’d love to move to Philadelphia.  He had a college professor who was from Philadelphia and the professor kept talking about how the people there were so nice.  He kept saying that it really and truly earned its nickname of the “City of brotherly love.”  Since that time Dean has been looking for a job that would allow him to live in Philadelphia.  Since he is still young and single it really would not be difficult for him to move there if he got the chance.

I’ve suggested that while he is looking for a job there that he should also be taking a look at the options in Philadelphia apartments.  Knowing how much it will cost to live there should have an impact on what kind of job he should be looking for, in terms of wages.  And since this would be Dean’s first experience living away from his parent’s home, I’ve advised him to plan on a lot of things that he probably never even thought of before, in terms of living expenses.  He needs to find out if the rent includes the utilites, if it includes admission to any gyms or pools, what the neighborhood is like, how close it is to public transportation and grocery stores, and health care.  All of these things are important to consider when looking for a place to live.

 My wife asked me yesterday what I’d like to do if we could get a loan to do anything we wanted to do.  I gave her a funny look and told her that the only loan we could get right now would be one of those emergency loans that we see advertised on television that I’d really like to stay away from!  She sighed and said, no I’m talking about what would you want to buy if we had the money to use for fun!   She said the sky’s the limit!

After the first blush of buying a new John Deere tractor and a new Corvette, and a new wide screen television, I think that I’d like to build a custom made full sized storybook style castle.  Of course it would have to have modern amenities and be energy efficient, but I’d love to have a full moat and drawbridge, turrets, courtyards, and great halls for entertaining and dancing.  

Of course the castle would have the most modern professional commercial kitchen, with propane range tops.  I’d love to have windmills nearby to generate power!  It would be decorated with gold leaf thrones and lush purple velvet. Only the finest tapestries and carpets.  Inside the castle would also be an atrium with a wonderful spa pool to relax in.

Of course no castle would be complete without stables and fine horses and coaches.

Then I’d like to host Medieval Renaissance Fairs there every year.  I’d love to see some jousting tournaments in my very own courtyard!  And we could make some money by renting out the halls for weddings, parties and events.  Maybe even turn it into a Bed and Breakfast!  What a hoot that would be!

My wife has been talking about redecorating the guest bathroom in a fishpond theme.  She has found a nice looking Glass Vessel Sink that is a translucent crystal that she wants to buy and do her decorative painting technique on it to make it look like water lilies and goldfish in the sink.  She plans on doing a reverse painting technique on the backside of the sink.  We were looking online for prices on that kind of sink and found some very reasonably priced on the mrdirectint.com website.  I was really surprised to see so many different styles and colors and sizes of bathroom sinks!

I didn’t believe the weatherman yesterday when he said that we were going to get a snowstorm today. He has been wrong about our weather so much over the past couple of years! There have been so many times that school has been cancelled because the weatherman said it might snow (and it didn’t) that I just laughed when I heard yesterday that we were going to get at least an inch of snow today. Well, the joke is on me because we really are getting the first snow of the season today! And it is a beautiful storm; the flakes are very large and fluffy. It has been snowing for at least the last four or five hours now, which is very unusual for around here. We usually only a dusting. And yes, we have over an inch of snow. It is very pretty, and it IS making me think about Christmas being right around the corner!

We have been inundated with fruit flies over the past couple of weeks.  They started out in the kitchen, around the compost bucket.  So we’ve been emptying and washing the compost bucket every day, and put all of the fresh produce in the refrigerator, thinking that would get rid of them over the course of a few days.  Well, those little buggers have continued to multiply and are now in the bathroom as well as the kitchen.  They are driving me crazy!

A couple of months ago I decided to buy a couple of tomato plants.  I’ve never grown tomatoes before, and I didn’t know what to expect.  I planted beefsteak tomatoes, and they are ripening at a good comfortable pace so that we are not overwhelmed with fresh tomatoes.  I never expected fresh tomatoes picked out of our garden and eaten the same day would have so much great flavor!  My wife is surprised that I’m eating them because whenever we go to a restaurant and get a salad I order it without tomatoes, proclaiming that I don’t like tomatoes!  Well, now I’ve decided that I like them a lot, but it will be hard for a restaurant to come up with tomatoes that taste as good as what I’ve got growing right outside my door!

On the way home I noticed a wagon and young boy sitting under an umbrella at the side of the road. In the wagon were piles of fresh corn on the cob, cantalopes, and tomatoes. I pulled over and took a look. they seemed fresh and plump and reasonably priced, so I bought a few of each. I like supporting a local farmer and I like fresh vegetables, so it was a good thing all around.

I know that black snakes are not poisonous, but they can still bite.  So when I was clearing out the back yard a few days ago and decided to move a little bit of a brush pile, I was not happy to find a nest of black snakes.  And of course they were not happy for me to find them either!  They were defending their nest, and came right after me!  I started to smack them with my shovel to get them to leave me alone.  When I told my wife about it she was upset with me for hitting them.  She didn’t believe me that they came after me, but they did!  I wonder what she would have done in that situation!

Its getting so that almost everyone I know has a home alarm of some kind in their house.  My mother-in-law just recently installed a monitored home security system in her place after her next door neighbors house was broken into.  We all felt that was “too close for comfort” and encouraged her to put in an alarm system; especially since she is elderly and lives alone in an area where her house is not easily seen from the road.  It really could be quite dangerous for her safety if some criminal broke into her home – he could do a lot of damage and no one would know about it!

Lately I’ve been reading in the local newspapers and hearing on the television news shows about how crime is on the rise.  More homes are being broken into, more purse snatching going on in the local stores.  Unemployment is on the rise and that naturally causes crime to rise.  It’s a sad fact of life, but there it is.  Not much one can do about it but try to keep yourself, you family, and your home as safe and secure as possible.  The business of installing home security alarm systems is on the rise!  A very competitive market right now, with bargains to be had.

I wish that every garment sold in stores that has buttons had an extra button sewn into an inside seam.  I am always pleasantly surprised when I find a garment with an extra button like that; I think it is a mark of quality.  I really hate it when I have a shirt for a few weeks and then all of a sudden I notice a button is missing!  If the shirt doesn’t have a spare button sewn inside it somewhere, I usually can’t wear the shirt anymore because I can’t find a good match for the other buttons very easily. 

My wife has suggested that whenever I buy a new shirt to put a dab of clear fingernail polish on the threads of the buttons.  She says that will help to keep them from falling off.  She even showed me where she keeps the clear nail polish!  I think that’s a clever idea and I’ll try to remember to do that in the future!

Last weekend I was power washing the siding on our house and noticed that several of the vinyl shutters need to be replaced. We’ve had the house a long time, and I’m sure that the shutters that were on it when we bought it were old to begin with. Anyway, they have seen a lot of years and it’s time to spruce up the house and get some new ones.  I’m going to let the wife pick out what color she wants, I’m thinking that when you replace one, you should replace them all.