Mike's house has a fireplace and now that it's winter, all I can think about is building a cozy fire, but there is never any firewood. I can't stand the thought of spending $10 on a little bundle of split wood that will burn up in a couple of hours so I walk up and down his street collecting fallen branches from the old oaks, camphor and crepe myrtle trees that line the road.
And every couple of weeks I ask Mike if he has a saw I can use (he DOES build fences) and he always says no. Until yesterday.
Not only did he have a saw; he had my old school, cast iron base, 100+lb chop saw that I gave to him a couple years ago when I upgraded to a lightweight, aluminum based model. Normally he leaves it on job sites but this weekend, he had it at home so I made up for lost time. Beautiful fires every night!
This is NOT my mailbox.
But it's close. I took a pic of this one because I found it humorous that the owner spent a lot of time and money installing a heavy duty post and base and then opted out of replacing the hammered box.
Anyhoo...
I've been paying for a post office box for several years now because I live down the street from a middle school and the kids can't seem to resist the lure of my helpless mailbox. They scatter any mail they find in it, they stick gum under the handle (kids still do that?!), they try to jump OVER it, they bitch-slap it, you name it. The post office box gives me a sense of security at around $80 a year (prices vary by post office so yours may be more or less).
But I don't want to pay for a PO box any more and I don't want to have to drive downtown to get my mail and I've been considering investing in a locking mailbox with a solid post.
A Christmas gift card from Lowes turned my dream into a reality.
Just look at it!!!
I installed it in a stealth mode: I set the post while the kids were in school and the next day I waited until they had walked home after school before I went out and attached the mailbox to the plate.
What a beauty and fingers crossed, it will survive the abuse for awhile. I peered out the blinds the first day as the kids walked past and a couple of them seemed to notice it. Be strong, little mailbox!
It's winter and we've had a couple of nights where the temps have dipped below freezing.
Suddenly I HAVE to have more orchids! That makes sense, right? Maybe not but I started looking around on line for a site where I could buy another stanhopea and another schomburgkia. These 2 orchids have thrived on my patio and I'd like to find another variety of each. The examples I found on line were very expensive so I'll wait for the local orchid show in February to see if I can scout them out for less.
In the meantime, to mitigate my flare of orchid zeal, I decided to prep 2 starts from the beautiful schomburgkia I already have (which just started blooming for the first time last year).
Here's the original plant:
And here's the 2 new starts:
I bought the original orchid several years ago at the same orchid show I will revisit in February, and the seller showed me how to mount the plant on the bottom of a cedar orchid box. I'm not exactly sure why it's done this way but I'm not going to question success.
On an unrelated closing note, I felt amused and a little baffled by the label on this dish soap...
The pronouncement "14% FREE vs. 14 oz." doesn't scream "Value!" to me.
It just sends me down a mental rabbit hole...
...14%? What an odd fraction...
...14% vs. 14 oz.???...
...and so on and so on.
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