We're silly with berries

Most of the leaves are off the trees, but we've still got berries everywhere for the birds to eat. These little guys belong to the Euonymus we have growing in the beds off the back patios.

Out in the front LipsYard, the Hawthorne (Craetagus phaenopyrum) is having one of it's first bearing years.

And out back, the Snowdrift Crabapple (Malus Snowdrift) still has fruit available.

On the flipside of the fruit available coin, are the opportunities for the Bush administration to salvage any kind of positive legacy for his 8 years in office, so he's had Condi put together a big Mid-East conference to try to get peace to break out between Israel and Palestine. "I'm optimistic" says our president. Good Luck with that.

First Snow of the Season

Thanksgiving morning brought us the first snow of the season. The Witchhazel (Hamamelis vernalis) featured on Wednesday at the edge of our green lawn, is now surrounded by a white blanket. No shoveling needed on this day, as it didn't stick to pavement, but we are going to gas up the 8hp blower and make sure it's running fine.

Be Thankful

The Witchhazel (Hamamelis vernalis,) is a hearty green in spring and summer, alive will color in the autumn, and keeps brown foliage as cover for birds all winter. Our view of the LipsYard always includes this stalwart plant, as it is closest to the house.



We're very thankful this Thanksgiving:

• For Family, Neighbors, and Friends


• For our Music-Making organizations offering us a creative outlet


• For the Freedoms this country affords, allowing us to question our leadership and not blindly follow


• For our Health and Happiness, may you be so blessed!

New Neighbors

The LipsYard neighborhood is pretty stable, but over the last couple of years, there has been a steady turnover of home-owners. Across the street from us are Mary and Jim. Nothing unusual about picking up leaves this time of year, except Jim has always had "People" do his yard work. Imagine our surprise to see them out doing it themselves.

Jim told me "I found out they wanted money to do this!" Plus, he had just got a new Black and Decker "bad boy" leaf sucker and had to try it out.

An hour or so later, he had changed his tune to "They're called leaves because you're supposed to leave them on the ground." Mary wasn't buying it.

President Bush is going to have another new cubicle neighbor, as another rat has jumped ship. This time it's Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend, the leading White House-based terrorism adviser who gave public updates on the extent of the threat to U.S. security. She's stepping down after 4 1/2 years.

Townsend said she hates to leave when figures like Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, remain at large. "Do I wish that I was going to be standing here when they are captured or killed? Absolutely. But I have no doubt that we will ultimately be successful."

Her departure continues an exodus of key Bush aides and confidants, with his two-term presidency in the final 15 months. Top aide Karl Rove, along with press secretary Tony Snow, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and senior presidential adviser Dan Bartlett, have already left. It wouldn't be too much of a bet to say she won't be the last, either.

Family to Family Thanksgiving Live Drive

Here we are at Sentry Hy. 100 and National for our Family to Family Thanksgiving "Live Drive" to help provide a great Thanksgiving meal for those less fortunate families around us.

Click here to donate online

This is Tyler, and he was here shopping with his mom and sister. His favorite part of Thanksgiving are the drumsticks. Mine is stuffing and gravy.

This is Elizabeth, Benjamin, and Nathan (I'm pointing at him, he's a corn and carrots kid) who had their mom bring them in from Brookfield to make a donation for Family to Family Thanksgiving.

Jane from Aurora Family Service explains how they don't just give food to families in need, but also follow up to find out other areas that they can offer assistance in.

Carly from St. Alphonsus school drops off the donation from the chore-drive

For 11 years the Dept. 56 collectors club of Milwaukee has made a donation and this year is no different.

Another annual donor, and our largest to date, is Quarles and Brady, brought by $12,000! Laurie and Dayle tell us they've given over $99,000 over the years.

Ted Majdecki owns this Sentry store, and another in Menomonee Falls, and made a big check presentation to Family to Family Thanksgiving.

Kathy from Deloitte dropped by their annual donation, this year nearly $4,000! They've been with our program for 10 years.

Green Thursday: The Heat Is On

During our annual furnace check at the start of the heating season, we got the bad news that our old Lennox Pulse furnace had a bad combustion chamber, and had become a carbon monoxide hazzard (do you have a working CO detector?)

Out with the old...

...and off the truck with the new. This Lennox is a step up from the old Pulse model. It is 95% efficient compared to 92% on the old one, so it will use less natural gas. It also has a DC fan motor that is much more efficient than the old AC model.

First job is to cut a hole in the side for the air intake SpaceGuard filter.
The new furnace is more compact than the old.
Here it is ready to heat our home to a brisk 69 degrees.

We opted to upgrade because of the Bush Administration's energy policy: "Find more - Use more - raise the prices for our business buddies." Energy Czar Cheney pooh poohs conservation, probably thinking it's for "ninnys," and pushes ahead for more drilling in wildlife refuges.

The price of oil has gone from $25 a barrel at the start of the "W" regime, to nearly $100 today. With the neocon's set to attack Iran, prices will only go higher.

"Ninnys" that we are at the LipsYard house, we've opted to the conservation side of the equation, and hope you will, too, when your Old Paint needs replacing.

Every Green Thursday, we post issues vital to the future of the planet.

Shrubs on Fire

Goldmound (Spiraea) on 'fire' in the LipsYard. That wacky purply Kale (Brassica oleracea) is looking good, too.
We have Spiraea in several beds around the house, providing green color and blooms all spring and summer, and beautiful color in the fall.

The beautiful colors take some of the edge off the latest numbers out on the real cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, estimated to total $1.6 trillion -- roughly double the amount the White House has requested thus far, according to a new report by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee.The report, released yesterday, attempted to put a price tag on the two conflicts, including "hidden" costs such as interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars, lost investment, the expense of long-term health care for injured veterans and the cost of oil market disruptions.The $1.6 trillion figure, for the period from 2002 to 2008, translates into a cost of $20,900 for a family of four.

A Frosty Morning

At the LipsYard House, we wait for a frosty Fall morning to spread our Winterizer on the lawn. That's so we can see where we've been with the drop spreader.

This will be the 2nd time we've used the new "No Phosphorus" product on the lawn.

That's why the middle number on the bag is '0.' Here in Wisconsin, the ground is silly with Phosphorus, so we don't need to add any more.



Frosty, and darn near frozen is the relationship in Pakistan between opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, again under house arrest behind barbed wire on the orders of Pakistani military leader Pervez Musharraf "for her own protection."


She's called on him to quit as president and military chief of staff so true democratic elections can take place.

Great Brittain has joined a Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group 10 day ultimatum for him to end emergency rule and quit as army chief. What have we done? Nothing. The Bush administration continues to seek a delicate balance; criticizing Musharraf's crackdown on basic freedoms, but standing up for him as a vital ally against terrorism who has shown support for democracy (up to now.) Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was headed to Pakistan to urge him to cut it out. Good luck with that.

American Idol in the house

Jordin Sparks, the latest American Idol, stops by the WKTI studios to talk about winning the big show. Click Jordan's picture above to watch the interview!

The 17-year-old Sparks is very poised and outgoing. She credits her parents for supporting her dreams of being a singer, and giving her the freedom and independence to learn things on her own.

She doesn't have a Tatoo (the title of her hit song) yet, but as soon as she turns 18, she'll have her brother's initials, PJ, inked behind her right ear (ouch!)

Jordin signed our white board on the way out.

Green Thursday: Online Banking Saves Trees

Switch to online banking and bill paying and help save the planet. That's the message banks and businesses will soon be using to persuade us to go paperless.

If all the nation's households just received and paid bills electronically, they'd save 16.5 million trees each year, or the amount of lumber needed to build 216,054 typical single-family homes.

We're almost totally paperless in the LipsYard house, and it saves on buying stamps, too.

Every Green Thursday we post something helpful that can also help save the planet.

Time keeps on slipping into the future

Having trouble adjusting to the time change from last weekend? Me too! The alarm goes off at 6:00am, but my internal alarm clock has been waking me up at 5:00am.

Research has shown that the part of the brain that controls our body clock is about the size of a kernel of corn, and mine must be buttered, salted, and ready to rock!

Here's some tips I found to help reset my internal clock:

Exercise will stimulate a serotonin release in the brain that resets the clock.

Pick up a melatonin pill, which functions similar to serotonin, from your local drugstore and pop that right after your walk. I have not turned to pharaceuticals yet, but I'm warming to the idea.

Finally, when you get up in the morning, expose yourself to a reasonably bright light for an hour or two. Does the computer screen count?

I'll probably be thinking about you tomorrow morning between 5 and 6.

Last plant standing

This year, the award for "last producing plant standing" in the LipsYard garden goes to: Swiss Chard! (Beta vulgaris) Everything else has been touched by frost, or dug up long ago.

Similar to spinach and beets with a flavor that is bitter, pungent and slightly salty, Swiss chard boasts an exceptionally impressive list of health promoting nutrients. Although Swiss chard is available throughout the year, its season runs from June through August when it is at its best and in great abundance at the local market. Our warm fall has kept this plant going strong.

Charmaine usually stir fries it, but we've also blanched it, then folded Goat Cheese inside it for a wonderful grilled appetizer.



Last person standing from the original Bush (W.) administration is Vice President Dick Cheney, now that Karen Hughes has resigned from her job selling the values of America to the world's Muslims. Talk about a thankless job! This is a liason position that should have been in place right after 9/11, not created in 2005.

Oak Alley

The West side of our house is known as Oak Alley because of all the leaves. None are ours, by the way.
They come from this tree on Rex's yard next door. and there are still a lot up there.

Handy dandy tool time: The Toro leaf vacuum. We prefer to suck ours up, rather than blow them around.
The bag gets emptied onto the LipsYard garden, to be tilled into the soil so it can decompose all winter long.
Those that didn't fit in the garden go into the mulch bin, to be mixed with green garden and lawn waste for next season.

A Chill in the Air

Global Warming has finally given way to frost in the LipsYard.

This Carefree Beauty shrub rose (Rosa 'BUCbi') lowers it's blooms in deference to the cold.

Our frost is like the chill that has come over the Capitol Hill hearings for Attorney General candidate Michael Mukasey. He was all on board the open, honest, non-political track until Uncle Dick and the neo-con gang at the White House had a chat with him. Now his opinions on whether 'waterboarding' is torture (duh!) are a matter of national security. Unfortunately, the Democrats will cave in on this issue and ultimately approve him for the post. On the bright side, he'd have to work pretty hard in the wrong direction to be as bad as our last AG.

Green Thursday: Low Flow Good To Go

Contrary to popular myth, plumber Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet. One of his contemporaries, though, did create the first toilet that prevented sewer gases from entering the home. Englishman Joseph Adamson's 1853 design — the siphon flush — eventually made obsolete both the chamber pot and the outhouse. Adamson's invention, like all modern toilets, relies on the tendency of a moving liquid to continue flowing, even in defiance of gravity: The tank is kept full, and during a flush, the water rushes into the bowl, creating a surge over the weir (or dam). The flow stops when the bowl is empty, and the tank refills in preparation for the next flush.

Originally, tanks were placed high above the bowl to get water moving forcefully enough to clear the weir, but by 1915, narrower, smoother porcelain passageways allowed quieter, 5- to 7-gallon tanks to be mounted on the backs of bowls. The next giant leap in toilet technology came in 1994, when federal law restricted tanks to 1.6 gallons per flush, but to those who used the first generation of low-flow toilets, this leap seemed more of a stumble. They often needed two flushes. Manufacturers largely fixed that problem by further modifying the passageways to move a reduced amount of water more vigorously into the bowl.

Here's the low flow solution in the LipsYard house. We opted for the elevated height - extended bowl (It's closer to ya!)

Not only are we saving water, we're saving money. Switching to water-efficient plumbing fixtures could save the average household as much as $50 to $100 a year on water and wastewater bills, and because of the new low-flow toilets, Americans save $11.3 million everyday on their water bill

This guy, Terry, rates toilets for a living (cool)

Every Green Thursday, we bring you a story that can save resources, the environment, and hopefully save you money.

Happy Halloween :)

:) It's the Great Emoticon Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! Happy Halloween

No need for costumes or ghost stories, there's plenty in the real world to be afraid of:
We're still in Iraq.
Britney Spears is a parent, of two!
George Bush is still President.
Global Warming.
Dick Cheney is still Vice President, and he's still hunting with friends!