08November 23, 2017

It is almost Thanksgiving and each day people tell me that they can’t believe that November is almost over. Yet the leaves haven’t fallen off the oak trees and in many yards the leaves are still sitting on the lawn. This is one of the chores you need to do before the snow flies. You know it has to be done. Raking leaves is a good way to burn off all that turkey and fixings.

Have you put away your lawn mower and your other summer oriented gas powdered vehicles? Riding lawn mowers, motorcycles, motor homes etc. always seem to make a good home for the field mice. The mice can wind up chewing on the wiring and creating a headache for you come the spring. You have heard me talk about using Mouse Magic to keep mice out of your home. The Mouse Magic packet work equally as well at keeping mice from ruining these summer items. If you place the packet under the hood of the riding mower, in the motor home or around the engine of the motorcycle, you can keep the mice from damaging these items. If you replace the packets every 30 to 45 days, the mice will stay away. We carry this item in our store.

It’s probably getting to be time to put a wreath or two on the doors of your home. The problem is that the wreaths can dry out quickly if you put the wreath in between the storm door and the regular door. The rays of the sun can hard hit wreaths on doors that face west or south. In the last few weeks you have read in this column about using a product called Wilt Pruf to keep your shrubs from drying out. Guess what? You can use Wilt Pruf to spray your wreaths to keep the needles from drying out too quickly. If you are putting up evergreen garland outside or inside, you can spray the garland with Wilt Pruf to keep the garland fresher longer. If you’re really ambitious, you could spray your Christmas tree with Wilt Pruf to keep the tree fresher longer.

If you are planning on having paperwhite bulbs in flower for Christmas, keep in mind that it takes about 4 weeks from planting until the flowers bloom. If you look at the calendar, the 4 weeks is creeping up fast. One more chore for you to do. Right now, we have a good supply of paperwhite bulbs in our store. The problem is, there is a shortage of the bulbs again this year. We had to order these bulbs in June to make sure that we had some for the early winter season. My guess is that if you wait until mid December, you will have a hard time finding any of the paperwhite bulbs.

Well, that’s all for this week. I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving.

I’ll talk to you again next week.