Bank mail do send it back!

I'm sure most of you get unwanted junk mail every day like we do. A day without junk mail is far and few between around here!

The worst offenders are the banks sending credit card applications and promotions. Seems criminal when we deposit money in the bank and we are lucky to get .05% on our money! Yet the credit card offers from Citibank alone had interest rates from 11.9% to 18.9% depending on which one you looked at.

Here is the bank mail we received in the past two weeks! Meg's ex even got one, though he has never lived here, he gets at least one a month. 10 of these were from the fine folks at Citibank.

So you know they all come with self addressed prepaid envelopes inside. The postage is only paid when the envelopes are sent back to the sender. Did you know hard mail costs a lot more than regular mail? I've a friend that told me he had friends that used to tape bricks to the envelopes and send them back. My shed is full of scrap wood. I found some 3/8 inch cuts from 2 inch lumber so I trimmed them down to fit neatly inside the envelopes, two to each envelope.

Here is the 14 envelopes I sent back today, 10 were to Citibank. Note in the photo below "Thanks - we're looking forward to your reply"

Going to make this an regular event sending these back. We have never requested any of this mail. Think of the millions of these they send out everyday, most of them returning either empty, stuffed with junk mail or blocks of scrap wood. Maybe they might end up selling kindling someday. OCCUPY their mail rooms!

Oh guess what, after mailing these today I came home and found another Citibank letter in our mailbox.

Coldframe harvesting now!

On Wednesday we started eating greens from our cold frames. BTW Meg's second grade class is building their own cold frames at her school this Wednesday.

Thought I'd give you a tour.

Here is my newer design, I combined two cold frames into one. You can see the frame at ground level is made of 10 year old reclaimed 2 x 6s from a deck I removed this past spring. These cold frames are both 6 ft x 10 ft.  I took the left over scraps and made 2 x3s out of them and attached the 2 x 3s to the 2 x 6s with 2 - 3 inch decking screws.

Once the 2 x 3s were attached I attached the 3/4 inch conduit straps on the inside of the cold frame and placed a drywall screw to stop the 1/2 inch PVC pipe from falling down. By attaching these straps up higher like this we get more head room inside the cold frame to climb in and harvest. The 1/2 inch PVC are 10 foot lengths and span 6 foot across as you see. 

 

 Inside of the most recently(three weeks ago) planted cold frame. On the left that is Arugula, behind it spinach, more lettuce mix and at the left back more Rainbow Carrots. On the right side we have Lacinato Kale, Mesclun Lettuce mix, more carrots and Swiss Chard. This is the first time we have had two patches of Swiss Chard which we both enjoy greatly.

 Here is what we have started eating. This is the Gourmet Lettuce Mix planted in the first cold frame, behind it is kale. Bad news about this frame Meg planted Larkspur in this spot earlier this year, it is all those weeds you see.

 Here is our Rainbow Carrots they are doing pretty good, each cold frame has carrots in it. Freshly harvested carrots are one of my favorite things in the garden.

Salad mix with lots of Mizuna in it, we are eating this. I love mizuna. This is Meg's planting in the second cold frame. Note she casts seeds everywhere and we harvest like crazy, forget those stupid rows in your cold frame, this is how to do it believe me.

Other news about the garden. 

Yesterday I set out the bird seed and 3 suet cakes for the birds. No bird visitors seen yet. 

The bees I fed them 4 pounds of sugar yesterday, guess there are still a lot of them. As the sugar syrup was gone in less than 24 hours. Some bees got in, my mistake, downed maybe 10 bees rescued perhaps 20. Today it reached into the 70s for a brief period, I did see bees carrying pollen, just a handful.