05December 14, 2017

The roughly 6 inches of snow came as somewhat of a surprise. On the other hand, it is December and December usually means snow at some point in the month. Raise your hand if you didn’t get all the leaves raked up before the snow. My hand is in the air.

Many of you had houseplants outside this summer. You brought the plants into the house after you treated the plants for any insects that may have hitched a ride into the house. If you didn’t kill off all the insects, now would be about the time that those insects would have multiplied to the point of causing damage to your plants.

I know it is a busy time of the year, but you should take some time to check all your houseplants for signs of insects. This would also apply to those plants that didn’t go outside. Sometimes plants can have an insect problem develop just by being next to a plant that was outside. If you see signs of insects, you will want to apply an insecticide to control the insects before the insect population gets out of hand.

If you put up a Christmas tree, make sure to keep the tree stand full of water. Your tree initially will take up a lot of water. If you let that tree stand go dry, your tree will quickly dry out. Checking the tree stand twice a day and adding water as necessary will help the tree to stay fresher longer.

The cold weather has caused the snow we have, and the rain that we are getting, to eventually cause ice to form on walkways and driveways. Many of you have pets and many of the ice melting products can burn the paws of your pets if they come in contact with the ice melting products that have been applied to walkways and driveways. If you have been in our store, you probably have seen our Siberian Husky Juneau sleeping under the desk. After his walks, we wash his paws to try to minimize the exposure to ice melting products.

At home and at the store, we use pet-safe ice melting products to rid our driveway and walkways of ice. We have used these products for years and they work better than rock salt at melting ice in cold weather. We carry the pet-safe ice melter in 8-pound shaker containers and in 20 lb bags. We received a new product on Monday that we are going to try that is pet safe and comes in a 50-pound bag. I’ll let you know how well it works.

Well, that’s all for this week. I’ll talk to you again next week.