I am back home, mothers condo is going up for sale (long)
9 years ago
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I am so mad I am going to freak out; I have had it
Comments (21)Suebot - don't think i'm going to tell you anything that somebody else hasn't said, but since i've had too much experience with deer & rabbits, i figured i'd concur with the remedies that worked for me. i used to live/learned to garden on nantucket and martha's vineyard, where the deer are at least as unreasonably tame and probably more abundant than they are in ct. i've heard stories of people standing 10 ft away from them yelling at them while they chomp on their hydrangea flower buds. one woman i was talking to claimed she saw the deer attacking her dalmation!! anyway, my first thought about your original message was are you sure all damage is due to deer and not rabbits? - when they stand on their hind legs, they can eat quite high - on a couple of my client's properties on the islands, i had more problems with bunnies than deer, especially with my daylilies & echinacea. so, i also found success with the deer away spray products; i can't remember which one i used, but i believe it had garlic & mint in it and i actually liked the way it smelled. the directions said to spray every couple of weeks (??), but i found that i had to spray every couple of days or so & definitely after a rain. it was pretty time consuming. unfortunately, my other success was fencing in the gardens. i just tried to be decorative about it - i used nice cedar posts with caps, bird netting @ 4' high (you can't really see it, so the garden still looks nice), i hung rope along the top of the netting (for a nautical look...). I did throw netting on top of the gardens in the spring until things grew too tall, but i have to admit, the deer hopped in a couple of times (- that would've been a mess i kind of would have liked to see). i now live in maine and have a large cutting garden in my back yard, a good distance from my house and i use the bird netting as the fencing (simply because it was the only fencing i could find that would be high enough in one piece) and it works (doesn't handle snow load, though). i see deer in the back and they walk right around the garden. chipmunks are now my problem. unfortunately, my true feeling is that if the deer want to get to something, they will. sorry to be so lengthy, good luck. just out of curiosity, do you have phlox and is it being eaten - that always gets destroyed the worst for me. -mara...See MoreMother gets to go home!
Comments (15)Yes and no. Mother is by nature a complainer. She complained about the hot afternoon sun in her west-facing apartment before, and this apt, on the north side, is too cold. Yesterday really blew me... I got a cell-phone call from the head of Assisted Living. Mother had apparently stopped her to tell her that she "has no money", and is very unhappy that I can't be reached (huh?). And she told another resident that she has no money, and the woman she told doesn't have the best cognitive skills, and now THAT person is all upset. So, I was in town (we live about 12 miles away, out in the county), and I went right over there. Mother says that I told her not to call me... truth is that I told her I would not be visiting her all last weekend. She said she had no pocket money. There is $30 in her wallet in her purse, but she had not looked there. She stashes little bits of money in hiding places, changing it every day, but she never thought to check her wallet. Afraid that I lost my temper again. I told her that the staff is not happy if a resident makes other people upset (true), and if she does this again, then I don't know whatI can do to help her, but that she might have to move to Las Vegas, near my brother. Truth is, this is an independant living facility with assisted living services available for a fee. These are complete apartments. This is not a care-taking facility. They do not take AD patients, and if someone loses it too much to function well, they are asked to move. And there is nothing else in this community of this sort of place. She tells me how lonely she is, and I say I cannot help her there. There are 150 people right outside her apt. door, but I cannot help her. Then she sobs about "why am I cursed to live so long?" She is so negative in general (always has been) that she looks at the roses that my cousin brought her and says, "I hate to see them die." (Roses were still lovely; she couldn't say anything positive about how good they look.) Today was better. I returned with her laundry, and the VNA PT showed up for a first visit. The housekeeper was due after lunch, and the maintenance guy showed up to check her thermostats. That should tire her out completely. At some point, I realized that all I was hearing fom her was: I don't want to bother you, I know you did a lot of work moving me but you shouldn't have, I hate to be a burden on you, you shouldn't have to do things for me, I hate asking you for anything, etc etc etc. Never once did she say, Thank you. No wonder I get frustrated....See MoreI am crazy, I am going to demo in a blizzard
Comments (23)Hey Amberley, Scrappy, & Bmorepanic (& anyone else in this MD/VA/DC)...we have around 30" here in Western Howard County. Drifts are quite a bit higher...the one we measured was 36" high! My DH just started slowly snow blowing our driveway. We have a fairly long drive, so it's going to take awhile...he figures it will take him at least 2 days to do it all! Our dogs refuse to budge from the porch...we have to push them off to "do their duty" on the snow rather than the porch! My DD tried throwing Ruby (the female) into one of the drifts...but she stayed on top and daintily walked down & off the drift! Heavy snow! But, we have a fire going and I just made hot chocolate for the kids (they just came in from playing out there-13 & 15 years old and still playing in the snow, I love it!), so we're doing great! I also made a big pot of chili for tomorrow and now I'm making pineapple casserole (me) + Roman Holiday (DH & kids) for tonight's dinner! Amberley, it sounds like you're making good progress b/w the demoing and the snow shoveling!...See MoreI am not a clean-up-as-you-go cook...I need walls! LOL
Comments (26)Walls. Oh, dear deity, walls. I can remember buying my first home--as a single person, I was looking at condos. My guess is that 99.999% of condos just plunk the kitchen in a corner of the living room, adding a counter/eating bar to create "separation." My agent had a hard time understanding that I wanted a kitchen that was a separate room. Open concept may be great for entertaining or if you have kids. But I am home alone a lot more than I entertain and I don't have kids. What I want is walls to contain the noise of the dishwasher and doors to keep cooking odors contained. The idea of having the kitchen in the living room and the smells and grease getting into my nice furniture is not appealing. And there's the dirty dishes issues, as expressed by lavender lass. There are mornings I don't have time to wash my cereal bowl before dashing out to work. There are days when I eat dinner and just want to collapse. So while the dishes get done promptly most days, some days they don't. And I don't want to curl up in the living room to relax and have those dirty dishes staring at me from across the room, reminding me that I'm being lazy....See More
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