Discrimination: I arrived at the senior center on Nov. 3 to apply for assistance with my heating bill only to be turned away, saying that I had to make an appointment with Brunswick. That’s not the information that had been publicly printed. I made calls to Brunswick and to Atlanta to ask why this was happening. Finally, I was given an “appointment” for Nov. 5 to apply. Having been the first person in line, I expected to be approved by mid November. Guess what? My application was shoved to the bottom of the stack and was not approved until Nov. 19. Then, to make matters worse, I didn’t get approval in the mail until Nov. 28, one day after my November bill arrived. My two sons are now filing an appeal with a lawyer for discrimination. They are formally requesting a list of everyone in Liberty County that applied for this assistance, their race and when their applications were approved. You may be seeing this investigation on television and in the Savannah papers. Stay tuned.
They are not all gone: I continue to put out food scraps for birds on my deck and sometimes the food remains for days, but then I’ll see a redbird, a blackbird and even a woodpecker show up. I hung peanut butter filled pinecones rolled in birdseed and now those are stripped. If you have meat scraps, anything that shore birds can eat, put it out on your dock, only during the day when the birds will get it, never leave food scraps out at night as this will attract raccoons and possums. Stale popcorn, stale bread, hard cat food all offer sustenance for the birds and animals. Black sunflower seeds are fairly cheap and offer the “stay behind” birds food for those cold months when there are no berries, fruit or seeds. Some nocturnal animals are raiding my kumquat trees also.
End of the story: More than 25 years ago, when I would go fossil mining in Florida, I came across a defunct lime mine and decided to look for fossilized sand dollars. What I found was at the bottom of a 30-foot pit. It was a round, about the size of a bowling ball, but weighing over 40 pounds. I managed to get it back to the top of the pit and have tried over the years to get it cut to see what is inside. While working at St. Joseph’s Hospital, the radiology department tried to X-ray it, but it was too dense. Tuesday, I saw the owner of Bonsai Masonry working at one of my neighbors and stopped and asked if he could possibly cut it and I offered to pay him. I could not believe that it took over a half hour to cut through this potential “geode.” To my and his disappointment, there were no crystals inside, but there were two “things” inside that could have been a dinosaur embryo. At least now, after all these years of telling neighbors, grandchildren and passersby that a giant dinosaur stepped over my fence and laid this “egg” I can finally tell them that it was just an anomaly. The guy from Bonsai also found a “treasure” years ago on a construction site that I hopefully will identify for him. He said he has taken it to several museums over the years and no one has been able to identify for him. Stay tuned.
Eureka: I sent eight pictures to a mushroom expert on the Internet and finally I can now identify that “stinky” mushroom that appeared all over my property in October. It is called armillaria tabescens. If you have a computer, please look up this mushroom. It grows in clusters, starts decomposing three or four days after appearing (tabescens means decomposing) then some tiny insect lays it’s eggs in it and it begins to smell horrible. Nearly everyone in Lake George has had these mushrooms appear on their lawns. The main thing is to pull them up immediately when they appear and don’t allow them to decompose. There are two sites on the Internet that you can go to and view hundreds of mushrooms, Mushroomexpert.com and mycology.com. I’ve already marked on my 2009 calendar to be on the lookout for these stinky mushrooms in October.
Tomorrow: Hope to see you at PoJo’s in Midway tomorrow. Bundle up.
They are not all gone: I continue to put out food scraps for birds on my deck and sometimes the food remains for days, but then I’ll see a redbird, a blackbird and even a woodpecker show up. I hung peanut butter filled pinecones rolled in birdseed and now those are stripped. If you have meat scraps, anything that shore birds can eat, put it out on your dock, only during the day when the birds will get it, never leave food scraps out at night as this will attract raccoons and possums. Stale popcorn, stale bread, hard cat food all offer sustenance for the birds and animals. Black sunflower seeds are fairly cheap and offer the “stay behind” birds food for those cold months when there are no berries, fruit or seeds. Some nocturnal animals are raiding my kumquat trees also.
End of the story: More than 25 years ago, when I would go fossil mining in Florida, I came across a defunct lime mine and decided to look for fossilized sand dollars. What I found was at the bottom of a 30-foot pit. It was a round, about the size of a bowling ball, but weighing over 40 pounds. I managed to get it back to the top of the pit and have tried over the years to get it cut to see what is inside. While working at St. Joseph’s Hospital, the radiology department tried to X-ray it, but it was too dense. Tuesday, I saw the owner of Bonsai Masonry working at one of my neighbors and stopped and asked if he could possibly cut it and I offered to pay him. I could not believe that it took over a half hour to cut through this potential “geode.” To my and his disappointment, there were no crystals inside, but there were two “things” inside that could have been a dinosaur embryo. At least now, after all these years of telling neighbors, grandchildren and passersby that a giant dinosaur stepped over my fence and laid this “egg” I can finally tell them that it was just an anomaly. The guy from Bonsai also found a “treasure” years ago on a construction site that I hopefully will identify for him. He said he has taken it to several museums over the years and no one has been able to identify for him. Stay tuned.
Eureka: I sent eight pictures to a mushroom expert on the Internet and finally I can now identify that “stinky” mushroom that appeared all over my property in October. It is called armillaria tabescens. If you have a computer, please look up this mushroom. It grows in clusters, starts decomposing three or four days after appearing (tabescens means decomposing) then some tiny insect lays it’s eggs in it and it begins to smell horrible. Nearly everyone in Lake George has had these mushrooms appear on their lawns. The main thing is to pull them up immediately when they appear and don’t allow them to decompose. There are two sites on the Internet that you can go to and view hundreds of mushrooms, Mushroomexpert.com and mycology.com. I’ve already marked on my 2009 calendar to be on the lookout for these stinky mushrooms in October.
Tomorrow: Hope to see you at PoJo’s in Midway tomorrow. Bundle up.