Dat Dere

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers do the classic Bobby Timmon’s tune.

Ain’t YouTube just grand.

Recycling the Recyclables

We love drinking water. And before I go off on what I was planning to write about, I have to sing the praises of Vancouver’s water. When we drink water, we drink Vancouver City tap water. I know there are some locals who would vehemently disagree, but I reckon the Vancouver waster supply is the best I have ever tasted. It is clean and crisp, pouring directly from the mountains into the reservoir. Glorious stuff.

We “manage” our water with four one-liter plastic Pepsi bottles which get filled and rotated through the fridge to chill. For a while now, my wife has wanted to get rid of the plastic because of potential leeching. A good idea made manifest when she fell in love with the Italian blood orange soda which happens to come in elegant heavy glass bottles. Now the water is kept in the glass bottles — and it tastes even better! But that leaves us with four plastic bottles to trash. But along comes a great idea from Instructables — turn the plastic bottles into growing pots with an automatic watering system.

Basically you cut the plastic bottles in half as neatly as possible. The bottom half will become the water reservoir and the top half will hold the plant. Then:

• Drill a small hole in the bottle cap and secure it back on the bottle.
• Pull a long string or wick through the hole until half the string (or so) is on each side. The string will act as a wick to pull water as needed into the soil.
• Put the top half of the bottle upside down into the bottom half of the bottle.
• Into the top half, put your soil and seed or cutting, mixed up with the string.
• In the bottom half put enough water not to touch the bottle cap.

I’m planning to grow a single Thai pepper plant in each one.

Freesias

Rich or poor, we nearly always have flowers in the house. I just love seeing vases of fresh flowers in the living room, the bedroom, on my desk. The look and the smell, of course.

For many years I was a tulip lover; I would buy tulips above all other flowers. I have done series of photographs of them. Occasionally, I would buy freesias just for the strong smell. Perhaps there is something in that scent as both my wife and I now seem to be addicted to freesias. There will be days when we both buy them separately, and the house ends up with bunches of them everywhere, the fragrance catching us with every step. The house is like that right now. Just great stuff.