How to hydrate your plants

For years I was lucky enough to have a job that allowed me to work right next to my grandparent’s home. Many mornings I would stop by to visit for a few moments while they were enjoying their breakfast. Each and every day my grandfather would be eating a grapefruit and each and every day he tried to convince me that I should also eat one. He was convinced that it was the key to his good health. Although he was never able to convince me to begin my days eating the bitter citrus fruit, I did adopt his habit of starting my day by doing something healthy. Before I drink any caffeine, I drink two bottles of water. This guarantees that I drink at least half of the recommended daily amount of water before 7 a.m. Although I make a point of hydrating myself, this summer, I challenge all of us to make a point of hydrating our plants.

A carnivore’s dream come true

Since prehistoric times, men have hunted for meat and cooked it over fire. Fire and meat, good… What better way to make Jim happy than to take him to a restaurant that serves meat, and meat, and even more meat. I thought of a place to take him, but upon checking the website, the dinner would cost $59.99 per person and lunch would be $32.99 per person. Making him happy is not worth the extra money, so I decided to take him there for a week day lunch. The name of this carnivore’s “dream come true” is the Texas de Brazil Churrascaria at the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg.

Ask an Angel: June 29, 2023

Now that I’ve entered my 70s, I’ve been spending more and more time reading about men’s health. While I’ve mostly lived an active lifestyle, I’m finding that in retirement, I no longer have as much mental engagement as I was used to in my career. I read about early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related chronic health conditions related to men, and it terrifies me.

All the things you might or not say about roadkill

I guess you might say I have an affinity for roadkill.

Oh, it’s not something I’m proud of. It’s just that over the years, roadkill and I have often crossed paths, and I guess you could say that I took the path less traveled by most people.

But sometimes you know exactly to the moment when it happens.

The house where our kids grew up was in Schaumburg. It was ten years old when we bought it, so it had already been somebody else’s home, and as my wife and I toured it during their open house, we wanted to see what would make us feel that this house could be home to us.

A second chance at hello

As much as I’d like you to think that my Gentleman Friend and I have been married blissfully and perfectly happy for the past several decades, I’m going to take a risk and tell you that sometimes, we fight. Our fights aren’t typically the loud, plate-throwing variety. We’ve mastered the art of subtle tiffs, starting out as a tiny slight that grows into a stand-off —— and I am the half of us most guilty of this —— in an all-encompassing silence that can be louder than a freight train.

Nostalgia trips

Have you ever listened to a song and been transported to another time in your life? The pull of memory is one of the most powerful tools on which media thrives. Every thirty years, a new phase is rehashed with goals of reeling generations with wistful longing. The allure of our past youth shoved in our faces in hopes of attaining our attention and our wallets. Some, though, are created by those who remember it and want to reflect on as we would but in art. While conglomerates utilize it in more shameless ways. Let’s sort through some of these.

Ask the Woodchucks: Fix a leaky sillcock

You have two or more sillcocks on your house even if you don’t know the name “sillcock.”

They are the outside faucets where you connect garden hoses, and they often leak.

A stone’s throw away

Since we are retired and have the word “sucker” tattooed across our foreheads, we volunteer for everything and have absolutely no free time. We checked our calendar and to our amazement, we found a day with no appointments. With this new found free time, what is the number one choice for a senior mental health day? Going for lunch and to a casino!!! Some of you may not realize that there is a new Hard Rock Casino being built a stone’s throw away in Rockford at the site of the Old Clock Tower Inn. While this in under construction, a temporary location is open in a strip mall right down the street. Upon further investigation, we discovered a restaurant which caught our attention while Googling restaurants near the casino and found the Stone Eagle Tavern.

Gardening myths explained

For the past few days big black ants have been crawling on the floor of my office. I have been putting up with the presence of the ants because I thought they were needed to open the beautiful peony buds right outside my office window. It turns out though that it is a myth that ants are needed to open the flower buds on peonies. Ants, while can often be found on peonies, are not needed for the buds to open. Peonies buds can open on their own. This and several other gardening myths will be busted in today’s column.

Ask an Angel: June 1, 2023

I am writing to you today because I am an older adult who could benefit from home care, but I am scared because I don’t think it’s safe. I worry about letting strangers into my home and about the potential risks of having someone else help me with tasks such as bathing, dressing, and grooming.

You may ponder, you may wonder, but do you “sonder”?

My friend Lynn loves language, as I do, and she often posts an interesting or unusual word on her Facebook feed. But because she knows that I visit Facebook about as often as I visit my furnace filter or smoke alarm batteries, she sent me her most recent wonder-inspiring word via text.

The word was “sonder.”

Uninvited: Man vs. fowl

My husband is in a week-long standoff with a robin who insists on building a nest on the crossbeam of our porch.

We are a bird-friendly family. We don’t put chemicals on our lawn, put out birdseed in the winter, and we are delighted when our bird friends chirp happily from the branches of our crabapple tree out our front window. But even our bird loving has limits.

What?!?!

Nothing screams “date night” like an evening out with your significant other at a nice romantic Italian restaurant. “Screams,” being the operative word, will be explained later. Please read on…

Jim had a taste for his favorite Italian dish, Veal Saltimbocca, and the restaurant that made it the best years ago was Cucina Bella in Algonquin.

Girl power

As we head past spring showers into May flowers, the plethora of entertainment options start to widen. Even with the impending writers’ strike in Hollywood, enough material is in the can so as to stem any hiatus. Summer movie season is just around the corner. However, before that glut of cinematic cheese clogs up the multiplex, let’s look at some smaller films. These entries offer us some new perspectives as well as fresh takes on old stories from a female perspective.

#Plantsdothat

Sometimes it seems that negativity surrounds us. News outlets consistently report on the number of shootings the previous 24 hours, online posts glorify what in the past would have been considered by some inappropriate behavior and forecasters doom and gloom with respect to the weather and inflation. As humans our behavior tends to lead us to complain more than we express our gratitude. With all of this pessimism it is immensely gratifying to know that there is a group that works incredibly hard to support creativity and innovation as it relates to environmental, social and economic issues.

Ask an Angel: May 18, 2023

I am writing to express my concern about access to healthcare as I approach retirement age. As an older adult male, I have seen many of my peers struggle to obtain the care they need, particularly those with limited financial means.

Hovering on the edge of tears

I have been hovering on the edge of tears for the past several months, for reasons I won’t go into here but which should be obvious to anyone who has followed my column recently. But my son sent me over the edge recently when he texted me out of the blue: “I don’t know if I’ve told you this recently, but I love you, Dad.”

For the record, he tells me that often.

Somewhere in the ‘In-Between’

I never met a notebook I didn’t like. My bookshelf is crammed with journals with creamy white paper. Some of the books have beautiful covers with vibrant colors; others are simply notebooks, the kind with the spiral binding made of metal wire. On the pages, I scrawl goals, recipes, scraps of ideas that I write down quickly, thinking I’ll come back later and recapture some brilliant idea that I didn’t want to let slip away.

An interview with the Huntley Park District

For almost 60 years, the Huntley Park District has been a true community treasure. The 28 acres donated by Mr. Edwin Deicke in the 1960’s has grown to 175 acres that currently make up 15 parks. Tens of thousands of people of all ages have enjoyed spending time in the parks as well as facilities such as Cosman Cultural Center and Stingray Bay. Wesley Peete, the Director of Parks and Facilities, has graciously agreed to share some of his knowledge about the parks with our readers.

A hint of springtime

Mother Nature has been teasing us with hints of sunshine and warm weather to come. Because of that, our thoughts immediately went to outdoor grilling. However, we waited too long and a couple of hours later we were back to winter. Don’t you just love the Chicago weather???

Dashed plan

In the wild transition that is Chicagoland weather, we have gone through many a season over the last couple weeks. The calendar says it is April, but the barometer has been early autumn, late winter and, briefly, June. Despite tempestuous climate changes, the multiplex has been on a relative flatline. All the major releases worth seeing don’t come out until May. In an attempt to spare you (as well as myself) the review of Beau Is Afraid, the vote went to streaming.

Ask an Angel: May 4, 2023

I am writing to seek your advice on the conversations that I should have with my adult children. As a senior, I know that I need to make some important decisions about my future and my family’s future, and I want to ensure that my children are well-prepared for any eventualities.

Tax-time grimace – and gratitude

Tax time has rolled around once again, and before I raise my anguished voice to harmonize with your anguished tax-time voice, let me take a moment to thank the Internal Revenue Service for a memory that changed my life.

It was 1970, and I was just finishing up my Bachelor of Arts degree at Western Illinois University, about to start a career as a high school teacher. I was married with a very pregnant wife, and Barrington High School, where I had completed my student-teaching, had offered me a teaching job once my degree was complete.

Being productive

With recent reports out of Hollywood, studios may very well have run out of ideas. True, real films don’t come from producers but from writers and directors with actual vision that get snatched up from festivals and the like. But the news of Disney remaking Moana in live action after only seven years and WB reimagining Harry Potter as a streaming series has me reeling.

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