And How Does Your Garden Grow????

Not very well if there are rabbits in your yard!

Every year I plant a vegetable garden because I love tomatoes right off of the vine, as well as other fresh veggies. 

In previous years, we've had a problem with rabbits and deer getting into the garden and eating the plants early in the growing season.  However, this year the deer hasn't been around (hmmmm....I wonder what happened to him?), and there was a hawk frequenting the sky around our yard during the Spring and early Summer.  Since we'd see the hawk, then find tufts of fur in the grass and didn't see any rabbits, we thought our garden would do very well this year. 

Well, we haven't seen the hawk for a couple of weeks, and last week I found that the bush bean plants had "nibbles" on their leaves and within days were totally devoid of leaves.  Because I really wanted fresh garden beans, I went to the garden center & bought pole beans thinking that if they were to grow up a stake, the rabbits wouldn't get to them.  How wrong my thinking was.....although the plants were fairly well grown, within one day of planting and staking the plants all of the leaves had been eaten.....and when I went out to water the garden this morning, the entire plants were gone - nothing left. Just the stake.  I had even bought rabbit and deer repellent at the garden center, but it certainly didn't deter those nasty rabbits.

I guess I'll be frequenting Farmer's Markets this summer in order to get fresh green beans since I'm not able to grow them myself.  Any suggestions for keeping rabbits from eating my bean plants would be greatly appreciated.

It's summer in Milwaukee.....Summerfest is here!

To me, the "official" start of summer is when Summerfest begins.  I love going down to the Summerfest grounds and eating and drinking my way through the festival.  Just wandering from music stage to music stage, watching all the people dancing and singing along to the bands and enjoying the view of Lake Michigan is my idea of a great way to spend a summer day!  Check out the link to the Summerfest site and come on down to the lake front for great food, drinks and entertainment!

http://www.summerfest.com/

Customer Service...is it a thing of the past?

I think it is - at least at one on-line company. 

My husband had broken the nose piece on his favorite sunglasses while on a fishing trip a few weeks ago. Since he really liked them, and because it appeared to be an easy fix - just unscrew the nose piece and replace it - I went on-line to see if there was a company that may be able to help with this problem.  After a little bit of looking, I found one, OpticsFast that's located on the East coast. Their site said they were able to repair the brand of my husband's sunglasses, so I followed the instructions to get a repair number, provide a credit card number for service and packaged and shipped them off.  After about a week and a half I received an e-mail saying they were sorry but were unable to repair the sunglasses, but were happy to offer a $20 discount if we were to buy a pair of glasses from them.  The e-mail also said they were going to ship the broken glasses back to me if they didn't hear from me by the next day.  I immediately sent a reply to them telling them not to bother sending the broken glasses back to me and that they were not to charge my credit card for any return shipping charges. Well, I was rather surprised to receive another e-mail from them a couple of days later giving me a tracking number for the shipment of the broken sunglasses. I immediately shot off a reply asking if they had not received my message to not return the glasses or charge my credit card.....no reply - so back to their website to see if they had a "comments" area where I could express my displeasure with their customer service.  It took some doing, but I eventually found an area where I could type a short message...to which I immediately received a very "cold" reply, pretty much saying that their policy is to always send broken sunglasses back and charge their credit card $20 even if the customer instructs them to discard the broken glasses and not charge their credit card.  Their reasoning is that they don't know if it's really the owner of the glasses sending the e-mail, but someone else telling them to discard them because they're playing a prank on the owner.  Give me a break....what kind of reply is that????  Not a reply like...."we're sorry you're not happy, but our policy is...", or "we apologize for not replying to your initial message requesting we not return your glasses we cannot repair, but our policy is....". Their customer service is definately not  based on the customer service principles I learned years ago when I was a customer service rep for a couple of companies. 

Enough of my "rant" about OpticsFast.  However, my final comment is that if anyone needs glasses repaired - don't use that company because you'll end up paying for shipping the broken glasses to them, as well as back from them with no solution to your problem - just a loss of cash. 

Oh, and by the way - I did not see anything on their website regarding their policy of returning broken glasses if they can't be fixed. But then, it's prob'ly buried somewhere in the teeny tiny fine print on an obsure page of their website.

Is it superstition or paranoia?

As you can see from my last post, my birthday was last week and I was quite surprised when a beautiful bouquet of flowers was delivered from my husband and two sons. With both my sons living out of town, I figured they would give me a call that evening, but the thought of flowers never entered my mind. 

Well, I did get a call from both of my boys....actually the youngest called twice - once to wish me happy birthday, and the second to let us know he had been in a car accident on his way home from playing softball.  Anyone who is a parent (no matter how old your children are) cringe when the phone rings any time after 10:00 pm.  Well, at 10:20 the phone rang and I immediately got a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach....I knew this would not be good news.  Fortunately, it ended up not being too bad - he was going very slow in a construction zone on the interstate when the guy behind him hit the rear bumper and tailgate of his SUV....no injuries to either driver - just to the vehicles. 

Soooooo......you ask why the title of my post: Is it superstition or paranoia?  Well, the last time I received flowers from my husband and sons on my birthday was about 11 years ago....and the same son who was in the car accident last week was in the only other car accident he has ever had.  He was on his way home from the garden center where he had purchased mum plants they were going to give me for my birthday that evening. Again, just a "fender bender" - nothing serious. But now in my mind, birthday flowers and car accidents go together.  Therefore, instructions have been given to all three of them to NEVER AGAIN buy or EVEN THINK of getting me flowers or plants for my birthday.

Call me superstitious or call me paranoid - I don't care....in my mind, my birthday and flowers/plants cause car accidents (but I must admit, the flowers sure are pretty.  Maybe they'll send me flowers some other day than my birthday....yeah, right....but I can hope....)



                      


 
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I'm Back.........

Well, it's been awhile since my last post, but I'm back - at least for a bit. 

I'm taking another class that requires blog posts, so I decided that rather than starting a new blog - I'd just pick up where I left off.....with random thoughts about any topic that suits my mood. 

So....for my first post:

                                    Happy Birthday to Me! 

I don't feel any older than I did yesterday...but I am. 
I don't think I look as old as I am...but I might.
I think I behave like a person my age should...well, maybe not all the time.
And I definitely hope I have a lot more birthdays.....