What’s with all these white spots on my tree-pruned Acoma crape myrtles? The myrtle in Pond South had its trunks spotted profusely with white, while the crape myrtle in Pond North only had a few spots. Turns out the blight has a name to it: crape myrtle bark scale.
Acoma Crape Myrtle in Pond SouthClose up of damaged trunks
After surfing for an answer, I used the jet option on my garden hose nozzle to spray off the scale, which seemed to work pretty well. Except that some peeling occurred at the base of the tree. The damage was concerning, but at least the evidence had been washed off. However, I had a hard time locating a natural option for banishing the pests, so I have horticultural oil waiting in the wings should the insects emerge.
I finally got around to repairing my Eley Hose Reel. I purchased the Eley Portable Garden Hose Reel Cart back in 2020 after I got weary of storing my garden hoses and needed a better way to keep them stashed. The previous cheap “plastic” storage reel kept leaking and proved hard to roll up with each passing year.
Apparently a common point of failure on the original Eley hose reels was the brass swivel. Extreme cold temperatures would cause the fittings to expand and contract, which basically caused leaks starting in 2022. The fitting finally broke off in 2023, which rendered the reel rather useless. I was able to troubleshoot my swivel issues and determined that it had been subjected to that expansion, whereby the swivel fittings had broken loose.
The new brass swivel took about 15 minutes to install; instructions on how to replace the part were clearly printed on the box. A YouTube video also helped clarify the replacement process. Once I swapped out the parts, the swivel worked perfectly with no leaks and I was back in business again.
I lost my plant-based website a few months ago, but didn’t realize that the hosting provider had deleted my instance until recently. When my integrations started complaining, I did some troubleshooting and discovered the loss. Yes, I should have paid more attention to the fact that a change in billing would have affected my host’s auto pay. But unfortunately the notifications stopped coming…because MX records for my mail host were also being hosted at the hosting provider.
Sadly, I came to discover that everything had been deleted, including my backups due to the length of time that the bill had not been paid (approximately 3 months). I had to start a new cloud instance and reload LAMP/WordPress install from scratch. There are few more tasks to do before my site is full resurrected again; so if something breaks, please be patient while I fix it.
Ah well, it was nice to re-learn everything again!
Craving more Cosmos, I picked up large packets of seed at Wildseed Farms, along with some other annuals I hope will germinate well.
Lady Bird Dwarf Cosmos Blend ×1 1/4 Pound
Mexican Hat ×1 1/4 Pound
Bishop’s Flower ×1 Ounce
Cosmos Dwarf Sensation Blend ×1 1/4 Pound
And because I couldn’t get enough Cosmos and nasturtiums, I picked up more packets at Johnny’s Selected Seeds. I wanted to also grow my own dill in case the aphid apocalypse hits my veggie gardens again.
Finally, I had strong feelings about growing more types of basil, especially the holy basil kind, so I surfed over to Strictly Medicinal Seeds to whet my appetite for some hard-to-find seeds.
TULSI (Holy Basil) SEED SET (5 seed packets): Amrita, Krishna, Rama, Temperate & Vana, all organic
1
Basil, Mtule (Ocimum suave), packet of 30 seeds, organic
