Ronald Dunn's Blog, page 2

Reliving Memories of Our Childhood

I think you probably had one of these: well, the smaller version. Nothing like a Radio Flyer Little Red Wagon to bring back memories even if this is the larger version. Built upon a Toyota pick-up chassis, it is very detailed. Would love to go for a ride in it.

Spring Home Landscaping Tips For Your Yard

I’m a little late on posting this, but the info stays the same.

Even though we had a freeze last night (March 26th), I declare that SPRING HAS SPRUNG!  Being a practicing horticulturist, I would like to offer a few tips for your landscape....including some things that you might not know:

 

  FERTILIZATION – Now is a real good time to fertilize most of your plant materials, including lawn, shrubs, groundcovers and trees.  Don’t worry about having to deep-root fertilize your trees.  A good program of topical applications of nitrogen-bearing fertilizer does just as good a job of fertilizing your trees as the deep root feeding method; which incidentally is much more expensive.  Research has shown that nitrogen is the main element needed for healthy, sustained growth, so just purchase a product that is high in nitrogen, such as a 25-5-5 analysis; or something similar.  The first number in the analysis is the percentage of nitrogen in the bag; the second the percentage of phosphorus and the third is the percentage of potash.  Follow the label recommendations, as several light applications are better than one heavy one.  Let me give you an example----a 50 pound bag that is 25 percent nitrogen, contains 12.5 pounds of this element, and a good application rate would be 1.5 pounds of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet of lawn/beds.  A typical home landscape is approximately 4,000 square feet, so a 50 pound bag would provide approximately two complete applications.  The best spreader is a cyclone (rotary) unit, not a drop spreader that tends to produce skips in the application pattern.  If possible, apply half your fertilizer in one direction, and the other half at a 90 degree angle to the first.  This ensures against those dreaded skips that really show up later! WATERING – I know that many of you are under some stage of watering restrictions, so PLAN your watering schedule.  Planning involves watering as deeply as possible when your municipality allows.  The secret to watering is to water as deeply as possible, as seldom as possible.  This encourages a deep root system, which in turn produces plants that require less water.  I have large trees in my home landscape and during the summer heat, they each may be pulling as much as 500-600 gallons of water out of the soil each day, so the grass and beds under my trees require supplemental hand watering.  Most cities will allow unlimited hand watering.  So remember, your plan should include figuring out which plants require more water, and those that require less. PRUNING – If you are going to give your Liriope (monkey grass) a haircut, or trim your Asian Jasmine or other groundcovers, don’t wait too much longer.  DON’T  prune spring-flowering shrubs, such as Azaleas---wait until after the bloom period is finished.  Remember, don’t perform “Crape Murder” by cutting your Crape myrtles back hard.  All this does is destroy their natural form, and force the plant to work hard to reestablish vegetative growth, rather than using it’s energy to produce the flowers.  Just remove old seed pods and maybe thin the canopy lightly to improve air circulation (which helps reduce the incidence of the fungal disease, powdery mildew).  A good rule of thumb to follow when pruning Crape myrtles, is to never remove a stem/branch larger than the diameter of a pencil. WEED CONTROL – Right now, the primary weed that you are probably battling, is the broadleaf variety.  The broadleaf is one of the easiest to eradicate, as there are a number of good products on the market.  I advise you to use a pump-up type sprayer, rather than a hose-end unit, as it does a poor job of metering the herbicide that you are applying.  Most of the broadleaf weeds have a waxy leaf covering, so it is important to use a spreader-sticker to get the chemical to adhere to the leaf.  a capful of dishwashing soap, per gallon of mixture, will do the job.  Follow the label recommendations, as more is not better!  Make sure to apply your herbicide when there is little or no wind....you don’t want to kill your neighbor’s plants! ANNUAL COLOR – I love this time of year, when we have such a large selection of flowers to plant – Petunias, Impatiens, Geraniums, and many other species.  Remember, the best way to ensure success for your annuals, is to properly prepare the soil by incorporating enough organic matter to produce a light, well-drained medium.  Don’t over-water and use a good water-soluble fertilizer every 3-4 weeks.  Some plants, such as the tropical Hibiscus are heavy feeders and require more frequent fertilization. PLANTING – The ideal time to plant most trees and shrubs is from October through February, but it’s not too late!  As with the flowers, do a good job of preparing the soil, and mulch the root ball of your new plants (to conserve water, retard weeds and reduce soil temperatures during the summer).  I prefer the fine-shredded hardwood mulch.

Enjoy your landscape!  Remember, all those plants are good for us – they take all the carbon dioxide we generate and convert it into the oxygen we breathe!

Ron  

Meditating On God’s Law

Over the years I have worked with several congregations and several church schools and I have come to accept one thing.  I do not know anyone whose life was messed up by living by God’s instructions and standards.  Yet today we seem to have a country where God’s standards are an infringement on our lives. But in this world of desiring our personal freedom, we find that we are not getting better, but worse.  Do we need to be reminded that the Psalmist says that the man who is blessed is the man who finds that “his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night”.  You see, God’s boundaries are not meant to hinder, but to guide, protect, and to make life good.  You might want to find time today to “meditate on His law”.

This was received from my minister, R. Wayne White of Web Chapel Church of Christ in Farmers Branch, Texas.

Credit Card Scams

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by the fraud division of American Express to ask about certain charges that were being made.  I found out that somebody was making a number of high-dollar purchases.  Subsequently, they were removed from my account, and a new card was issued.  I received a new statement today, which showed more bogus charges!  I contacted AmEx and was told that these charges were against an OLD card; one even before the one that had just been replaced!  I asked the evident questions---why is a card not invalidated (taken out of their system) when a new one is issued?  How can someone get a merchant to accept OLD card numbers, when they certainly do not have this card?  Their reply was startling.....there are bogus cards out their, but the way this scam often goes down is, the perpetrator asks a clerk to slide a card, which doesn’t work.  The perp then states that something must be wrong with the magnetic strip, and verbally gives them the numbers to type in!  WATCH OUT!!!!

 

Photo Attribution: By U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class LaTunya Howard [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Reality TV From the Surface of Mars

I don’t really care for or watch reality TV, for life itself is real enough for me.  However, I believe that this guy has hit upon a great idea to finance his idea....don’t you know that a network would pay huge bucks for the TV rights to such a venture!  The ads that they would be able to sell would make the super bowl ads pale in comparison.  That being said, I think Lansdorp is overly optimistic when he states “All the technology we need exists already – or nearly exists.”  The logistics of such a venture are HUGE;  I say HUGE!!!  My gut feeling is that he is seeking publicity; maybe planning for another venture that is more realistic.  Time will tell, but I probably won’t be alive to see it...... if it happens.

Reality TV for the Red Planet - New York Times

Blizzard of 2013 in Claude, Texas

Claude, a little town in the Texas Panhandle is where I grew up.  It recently got 72 inches of snow!  Well, maybe it only drifted that high because of 70 mile-per-hour winds!  But this was nothing compared to the blizzard of 1956, when I could walk up and over my house on the drifts—true story!!  Incidentally, when I say that Claude was small....it had a population of 820 when I graduated from high school in 1959, with a whopping 26 in my senior class!!

Oops!

I thought the day was going bad yesterday when I found out that two clients were continuing to be late in payment of their invoices.  But things really hit the fan when, as I was editing TIME AWRY, my sequel to THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON, I goofed, big-time! 

I hit a wrong key and over-wrote the entire 75 pages with a blank page!  It would have been simple to retrieve it if I had just deleted it; but no, I had to over-write it!  James Pickering spent about 2 hours this morning trying to recreate it, but no luck.  The only saving grace was that, about 2 months ago, I had emailed  James the 62 pages of what I had completed as of that date.  So the thirteen pages I lost had taken me those 2 months to write. 

I hope that my brain can reconstruct those 12 pages!!  The word file is now entitled TIME AWRY-OOPS!  If you don’t get anything out of this post, but what I’m about to say, then this all might have been worth it (not!)----SAVE, THEN BACK IT UP!!!!!!

Heart & Soul 5K in Carrollton, Texas

Hey, it wasn’t on my bucket list, but I did something Saturday that I had never done before--I ran the Heart & Soul 5K race!  This is a race sponsored by the youth group at my church, and is staged to raise money for the various projects that they do each year.






Although I’ve been working our for the last year, I really had not trained for such a run.  Running on the treadmill at the gym is a lot different than pounding the pavement.  However, I did much better than I had expected, running the course in just under 39 minutes, and placing 38th out of 79 who ran with me. 



Shoot, if I had really trained, I might have finished 37th!


I was the oldest (71) who ran, and I won a third place ribbon in my age group...there were only 5 runners in my age group!  James Pickering has invited me to run in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Brain Tumor 5K this fall, so I’d better keep training!

Ron

Photos from the Heart & Soul 5K

Happy New Year

Just a quick message before the ball drops and I go to bed. Or maybe the other way around. Happy New Year to you and yours and may you leave the year 2013 in the same or hopefully better shape than which you entered it and most of all, with the blessings of the Lord in abundance.

Christmas Traditions

As I was growing up in the Panhandle of Texas, I always looked forward to the gag gifts that my great uncle would give at Christmas.  It was always junk...like rusty nails, a dried out cigar or even a few peanuts.  After uncle Frank died, my parents, but mainly my mother, took the concept to another level as it became “sacks”...brown grocery sacks with odds and ends that she collected over the course of the year.  Each member of the family would receive a sack with things like candy canes, trinkets and even a out-dated calendar and, of course some junk.  Over the course of years, mother began to search all the catalogs she received and send off for small unusual items that she would include in the sacks...sometimes they were interesting and even useful! 

Mother died in 2000 and I inherited the “duty” of the sack tradition.  Like mother, I spend the year accumulating and storing things in my closet.  However, I have changed the concept to include fun and unusual things.  Since my two children ,now 37 and 38, elected to leave all their growing-up “stuff” in the garage and attic, I can go through it and select things from their past that they haven’t seen for years...bringing about “wow, I haven’t thought about that for years...where did you find that dad?”  With three grandkids, I also have taken to buying neat toys and such for their sacks.  This year’s sacks will include a custom pool cue stick for my son...it was my dad’s, socks, used ties that I know longer wear, candy, cosmetics (for the granddaughter), Texas Ranger baseball memorabilia, some old (and maybe valuable) cookbooks for my son-in-law and many other trinkets and neat items.  I allow trading of sack items if both parties want what the other has received! 

My brother (who lives in Weatherford) and I also have a separate “sack occasion”.  We both have equal amounts of our mother’s “stuff” stored in our garages, and we have a lot of fun passing it back and forth each year.  I am sorry to say that since plain old brown grocery sacks are hard to come by (what ever happened to the grocery clerk asking if you wanted paper or plastic?), I have converted to large Christmas bags!  MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!