Of plants and sinks

There hasn't been much going on at Ralph's House in the last 2-3 months, except for great new back steps and hooks I installed in the laundry room. Not nearly the progress that would be if money and health were normal. Especially money. It's better to be sick when there is enough money to buy basics, let alone get me a lovely new router table with 3hp motor and shaker cabinet door/45 degree joining bits.

So we'll focus on free things for a while. This is the butterfly garden I planted a few months back; now it's nice and overgrown. It has purple Swedish ivy, sweet potato vine, yellow moss roses, a leggy plant with striated leaves and tiny white flowers which the bees love, irises and random marigolds. It hasn't attracted any butterflies, but it has attracted bees, lots of them, where there were few before. Subsequently, we've had lots of tomatoes and bell peppers this winter, 3x more than in the regular growing season. Last week I made tomato sauce with a pound. I think I'll keep this plot around. It makes the vegetable plots and compost look more attractive.

Parsley loves mushroom compost.


The NY Botanical Garden grounds are free on Wednesdays. They say they have 90563 vascular plant specimens. When I went up last week to move my sister to Florida, we visited. How do you make these things in miniature for a tiny corner-yard?
























The bus from LaGuardia passes Demolition Depot, so we got off and looked. $$$.
















Since dreams are also free, this is my dream kitchen sink! I want to acquire one before starting the kitchen cabinets. Here in the south, it's harder to find the salvage you see in the north and midwest. Here, new construction is far more popular and old building salvage gets put in the trash; when you do find stuff like sinks, stoves, doors, it's silly overpriced or in very bad condition, usually from rots, rust and other water damage. As in many towns, lots of early 1900's stuff was torn out in the 60's and 70's, from cabinets and plumbing (my house) to entire Henry Klutho buildings. Currently, Florida is besieged by developers razing swamp ecosystems, farmland and trailer parks, and the Jacksonville City Council seems pretty susceptible to their needs in the name of slick progress, similarly to what happened here in the 60's. Without the internet and vigilant citizens' groups, much of the historical buildings that give downtown Jacksonville its character might have been razed in the name of building a glossy new downtown. I think true progress and revitalization in a city involves embracing history, rather than just building 10 new highrise riverfront condo structures to bring in the winter tourists.

Anyway, in looking for this sink on ebay, as I've been doing for 7 months now, all listings have been in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Michigan and the like. I kick myself every time I see a listing in upstate New York, where we used to live. If only I'd been psychic!