Rose Cottage Ltd

To end the week on a positive note!

If the video won’t load you can use this link.

While some parts of the US are on fire, and other parts are drowning after too much rain – many of the rest of us are not having fun either. The 2011 drought in the Piedmont area of North Carolina has just about tapped all the water resources we had.

Here is a photo of the lake – September 2009:

And here it is – September 2011:

Same geese – different September!

Not the greatest pictures for comparison, but if you see where the pedal boat is sitting in the first picture, you can see its former location in the second picture – with about 10′ of dry lake-bed behind it. The boats haven’t seen this end of the lake since April.

This is great stuff for the geese since temperatures here yesterday were mid-90s. The former lake area is damp and cool and they’ll sit there and sleep for hours. They aren’t as dumb as people think they are.

This (normally) 4-acre lake is suffering not only from lack of rain this year, but we never really recovered from the last drought year of 2007. We “maintained” but never got back what was lost then – so we have less resources to fall back on in 2011.

Water meal continues to be a problem – although even it seems stymied by the lack of water in which to grow and prosper. My “Come On Labor Day” wishes for rain have so far, not yet been fulfilled.

The fountain is providing aeration to the poor fish, who are by now probably living a condo-type life – compacted into living areas that are the remaining deeper channels of the lake. But, without significant rain in the next week, I will have to unplug the fountain. By then, the fountain will not have enough water to function. Without the added aeration, I would expect to begin to see dead fish floating in what’s left of the lake.

It makes you stop and think how bad things can get if it doesn’t do something as simple as rain.

We, myself included, take clean water and clean air for granted – like breathing, you don’t pay much attention to it until you can’t have it or can’t do it. I don’t care whether you believe in global warming or not, but extreme weather conditions are impacting our planet to a greater not lesser degree.

Cause and effect?

Additional savings on products you’ll be looking for with Fall less than two weeks away. 15% Off – this week only at Garden.com.

Just under a year after purchase, I feel confident in making this item “The Best” of 2010!

The Women’s Classic Garden Boots (also available in Men’s sizes,) do not disappoint.

I’m not sure how I got along in wet Fall weather without them! For anyone who lives near a lake or pond, these boots provide a lot more flexibility when working the shoreline than does an old pair of sneakers – they also have much better grip on almost-always slippery wet surfaces.

Go out in the mud, rain and snow; these hard-working boots will keep your feet warm and dry. 100% latex rubber boots feature a side buckle, textured detailing and soft jersey cotton lining.

Do yourself a favor and add the black fleece liners for extra warmth. Your feet, in boots, in water – even in warm weather, can become chilled fairly quickly.

Men’s Boot Liners

Women’s Boot Liners

These liners will prove to be around $8.00 well-spent!

Don’t forget these loyal life-partners…any day.

When I first started the Rose Cottage Ltd web site in 2006 I wanted to share some of my thoughts about country/rural living. My efforts were not to say that living country versus living city was better – just that living outside city or even suburban areas could be a great choice for some.

This past weekend I got a shot of one of the downsides of really rural living so for those trying to make a decision to move permanently to the country – here goes.

When I bought my 7 acres about 50 miles outside Raleigh, North Carolina I knew that one edge of the property bordered a fenced and pastured field. There were no animals to be seen in the pasture for awhile after I moved in but in the last 7 years I’ve had the pleasant company of an aging horse – who really WAS put out to pasture!

Paint died peacefully of old age, laying out on a sunny bank in this pasture, 2 years ago this December. I still miss him.

Since then, the pasture has been occupied by groups of cows – sometimes of the female variety and sometimes bulls – big ones. They cause no problem to me, on this side of the fence. They sometimes meander down to see what I’m doing out in the yard but I feel we all peacefully co-exist in our environments.

The unfortunate part of this story is that this 14-acre pasture is a grazing ground for the cows which means it needs to have good grass for them to munch which means it gets fertilized a couple times a year. This is not a pleasant time for our little country community.

Before the local poultry house closed, my neighbor used to get chicken “leavings” from them which he then spread across a huge portion of this pasture as fertilizer. If you’ve never experienced this aroma – good for you. It is pretty nasty. The smell would hang around my property – which is downhill from his property in the normal breeze direction – for a week.

This year and in fact this past Saturday, the neighbor spread some sort of standard fertilizer product across the field. I’ve had a borderline headache ever since. And there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.

The 4-legged neighbors enjoying the day…

I’m not happy about this fertilizer or the headache. Think of walking through the outside portion of Lowe’s Home Improvement on a warm day – where the stacks of mulch and fertilizer are kept – you may get some idea of what aroma is hanging in the air here right now.

But, he is entitled to fertilize the field – as long as he applies the stuff no closer than 20 feet of the property line. The fact that the wind moves what he’s spraying is not something considered. I’m not happy about that either since it means my property, and my 4-acre lake, get “air-fertilized” whether I like it or not.

While this seems pretty bad right now, I still have to compare it to my last trip to a large city. The noise, the banks of cars more-or-less idling 4 rows deep on cramped city streets and constantly belching exhaust…

I had more than a borderline headache there.

So, knowing that this fertilizing process takes place only twice a year max, I’ll take a couple sinus tablets and wait for the aroma to settle. And still be glad I live in the country.

NOTE: I believe his spreading of this fertilizer would have a much worse impact had I moved out here in hopes of running a certified Organic Farming business. The USDA has some pretty tight requirements for organic farming and for products to be labeled “Organic” – which they should.

If you are contemplating certified organic farming and are looking for rural property, make sure you check out neighboring properties first – particularly farms or pastures. Just FYI…

I noticed a lot of people searching this blog for “ketchup mustard rose.” I figured since I wrote an article on the preferences of most people for either ketchup or mustard on National Mustard Day 2010, combined with the title of the blog – “Rose Cottage Ltd,” that Google was just confused.

Apparently not.

Here is an image of the 2012 “Ketchup and Mustard Rose” – photo from Regan Nursery:

I guess if you look at this image and squint a bit, this pile of color could be found sitting on a hamburger – somewhere…but I’d need more mustard!

I noticed about a 50/50 split between those searching for “Ketchup Mustard Rose” versus those searching for “Mustard Ketchup Rose.” The initial condiment controversy apparently continues…

As the lake has gradually become more shallow, its “local” heron has been seen more often and closer to the house-end of the lake. I was able to watch his food processing fairly closely yesterday and found it of interest.

Once the heron has caught a fish from the lake – especially a larger fish as he caught yesterday, he follows the same routine.

First, he walks the fish back to the shoreline. He then throws it on the ground and stabs it once or twice with that long beak. If the fish doesn’t move while lying on the water’s edge, the heron picks it up again and “tempts” it with a touch of lake water. He’s doing this in the image above.

If the fish moves, he repeats the process outlined above. If not, then he begins to gradually and in this case, slowly swallow the fish. It took him nearly 5 minutes before the tail of the fish finally disappeared down that long neck – where it remained – at least temporarily.

Looking at the heron from another angle you can see how small his head and neck really are:

I’m surprised he not only catches, but manages to swallow what looked like about a 7″ long Blue Gill. Although I did feel some pity for the fish, the heron is a natural part of the lake, only “hunts” for food, and wastes nothing he kills. As a certified Natural Habitat, I think the lake is working pretty well for the heron.

And the fish? In a lake that’s lost nearly one-third of its water capacity due to this year’s drought, losing a few fish per day to this heron is probably a good thing for those that remain.

Better late than never, this Sunflower is making a last run at Summer 2011…

Every once and awhile I have a conversation with someone who is spending literally hundreds of dollars per month, every month for…a cell phone.

Okay, maybe it’s for more than one cell phone if they have a spouse and kids.

But hundreds of dollars a month? I spend hundreds of dollars a month on food, and a car payment, and a mortgage. But not on a phone. In fact my total combined “phone related” costs – landline and cell, are less than $60 per month – and have been so for the last 7 years.

I had a more expensive service when I first moved to back to a rural area. I also then experienced intermittent service with static, “no service” messages, and dropped calls. I guess I can say my move to the country forced me to find a better way – and I’ve been saving ever since.

My “secret” is no secret – it’s a Tracfone.

The phone I selected cost me $19.99. About once a year – sometimes twice a year, I buy a card with minutes. In fact my phone was purchased with a “double your minutes for life” feature. So, each time I buy a card – which is easily done online, if I pay for 200 minutes I get 200 extra minutes. If I send a text it costs me 1/2 a minute – send an image to my Mom, it costs me a minute. Since I don’t live on the phone this works perfectly for me. It may not for you.

Here’s one with a TRIPLE your minutes feature – just for selecting this particular phone:

Did I mention these are No-contract cell phones ?

I have no contract with a lot of icky-tricky fine print. The last (other) cell service I had, that didn’t work consistently in my area of the country, wanted to make ME pay to get out of their contract. It was going to cost me over $200 to get out of service that didn’t serve. I managed to get around it, but “once bitten, twice shy” as someone said. Never again.

I’ve been using nothing but my Tracfone since 2004. I do still have my landline. No, I don’t live on the phone, so I don’t need to pay for 1,000s of minutes several times a year, but even if I did – I’d still be saving money and would not be held prisoner by a cell contract. So far, there have been maybe 2 instances where I went to use my Tracfone and had to wait a bit to get service. Two times – in 7 years – that’s it – compared to the nearly useless and high-dollar system I was in before – this is less than nothing.

No matter your level of cell usage, Tracfone is worth a look. Cell phones are all but an addiction for some people. In many ways, a TracFone may be a really good way to gain a little added control over the process.