Garden update

The garden in general is not going to produce much this year.  That cold wet spring/early summer just completely shot it.  Everything’s alive, well, except for the Golden Jenny melon, which apparently I missed getting rabbit repellent on, but only about half the peppers have peppers growing on them, and I’ve not seen a single melon yet.  Tomatoes are producing, but aren’t nearly as big as usual.

Its not just the garden either.  Usually by this time the hibiscus are getting ready to bloom.  But not this year.

They’re not unhappy, as you can see, but they’ve got only the tiniest of buds on them.

The sunflowers are getting bigger.

The biggest is now at least a couple feet taller than Husband, who’s 6’2″.

The tadpoles in the rain barrels have started turning into frogs.

 

 


Antiperspirant

I’ve posted before about how I’m allergic to some antiperspirants.  I’d been using Almay’s hypoallergenic formula for years, in the solid form as I’m not a fan of gels or roll-ons, but a few years ago Almay discontinued the solid form.  I never did find out why, attempts to contact them failed massively.  Since then I’ve been using Dove’s unscented Sensitive Skin antiperspirant with no problems.

Till the past couple weeks.

The past couple weeks I’d started noticing my underarms itching on occasion.  It didn’t really penetrate my brain though, till this past Wednesday evening when I realized that my underarms were ITCHING.  Crap.

Dug out the stick of Almay gel antiperspirant I’d stuffed in the back of the cabinet.  I’m working a job that not only requires me to be outside in the sun a fair bit, but also requires me to do a fair bit of physical labor, and I absolutely sweat.  Not wearing anything wasn’t an option.  But thankfully the itching went away pretty much as soon as I switched.

But that puts me back to using a gel, and I’m really not a fan of gel antiperspirants, I really really prefer a solid.  If a deodorant worked well enough for me I’d totally be willing to go that direction, but not one of the ones I’d tried previous worked for more than a couple hours for me, even when I wasn’t sweating all the time!

But this time I noticed something interesting as I was looking at ingredient lists.  Almay’s aluminium of choice is Aluminum Sesquichlorohydrate.  The aluminium in most of the other antiperspirants on the shelves, including the Dove formula I’d been using is Aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrex Gly.  I’d swear that when I was checking back in 2008 that they all used to same form, but I can’t prove that.  Not sure when it changed either.

Going through the lineup of antiperspirants and deodorants at the grocery store I found one other antiperspirant that uses yet a 3rd form of aluminium, and one deodorant that says that it works for up to 48 hours.  I guess its back to experimentation time!


Garden Update

The weather has settled out some.  Several days of hot and dry and then some rain.  That I can live with.

On an amusing  note, apparently I didn’t need to worry about mosquito larva in my rain barrels this year:

There’s upwards of a couple hundred tadpoles in each barrel!

Went out to the garden today to do some weeding and thinning.  Came in with a handful of “baby” carrots, 5 or 6 early tomatoes, and then had to go back out for a handful of Miniature White Cucumbers.

The Hollyhock is blooming.

The Noir d’Comes Melon is taking off.

 

But most of them melons look more like this one (Kaho Watermelon).

 

Most of the giant Sunflowers are looking good, this is the biggest of the bunch so far, and its just a bit taller than I am.

The garden appears to be home to a bunch of Garter snakes this year.  I always see a few, but this year every time I turn around I see another, and they’re all different sizes too, so it’s definitely different snakes.  Everything from a little tiny fellow who was MAYBE 6″ long, all the way up to this one, who was bigger around than the garden hoses and had a head the width of a quarter!