Jimmy Ball, of Calhoun City, sent me a clipping of the black Elephant Ear I had seen at Lake Tiak-O-Khata. The variety is Diamond Head and it is named after the volcanic cone on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
It has jet black leaves with a texture resembling corrugation.
The black and green ones that Kaye Ruth shared with me earlier in the summer are doing well. I plan to add the jet black ones next year.
Lisa McNeece
I had set aside one night last week to vacuum and steam clean my tile floors. The Shark steam cleaner was purchased after a recommendation from Julie Hendrix Baker of Big Creek. She gave me a couple of tips– use a spray bottle with diluted Mr. Clean or other scented cleaner to spray a small area of the floor before mopping and always use distilled water in the steam cleaner.
Number one was a great idea, and I do that every single time I mop. I didn’t do as well with the second, just because I didn’t have distilled water.
Sure enough, the night I was ready to mop, the cleaner was stopped up with what I knew was calcium build up. I tried using white vinegar in the cleaner to dislodge the clog, letting it sit for a few minutes, and saw a slight improvement. But I was impatient and went to the store to get the real deal– CLR (Calcium Lime Rust) cleaner.
I came back, filled the steam cleaner dispenser with diluted CLR and turned it on low in the sink for the clog to hopefully dislodge.
A side bar item: The estimated time I was gone to town less than 10 minutes. And in that 10 minutes, our yellow Lab Jack lost his collar and ate the only tomato on our tomato plant in the yard.
Joel and I had been watching that single tomato for a couple of weeks, waiting for it to get a little bigger. We shouldn’t have waited. Jack plucked it off the vine green.
His collar with name tag is nowhere to be found. He goes from the house to the back yard and I searched everywhere. I still think it’s wrapped up on a limb of our fig tree where he is constantly brushing through eating every fig in sight.
Back to the steamer, after I got in the house from searching for the collar, I went to do some work on the computer in the den. Then I heard a really loud swoosh and hiss from the kitchen which scared the dog and me.
The CLR worked its magic on the steam cleaner dislodging the clog too well. When I went back to cleaning the floor, the burst of steam that comes every minute or so blew the head off the cleaner every single time. The dog stayed in the back of the house until the floor cleaning was completed.
Joel’s parents came up Sunday from Clinton for the afternoon. We also had daughter-in-law Whitney’s dad from Memphis and my mother, which made for a houseful of fun.
I made BBQ pork with slaw, beans, etc. for lunch and tried a new recipe for the pork.
I got a pork loin roast and poured a can of Dr. Pepper over it in the crock pot and cooked it for 10 hours. I poured the Dr. Pepper off before serving.
It was really good, and could not have been easier. I had read another recipe that used Root Beer, and Joel’s mother said she had used Coke on a roast before. Either way, the soft drink serves as a tenderizer, and you don’t get the taste of the soft drink at all.
After Jack being in trouble for various things during the day, I was going to relate his bad behavior to 2-year-old granddaughter Ellie Kathryn.
“Guess who’s been in trouble today,” I said.
“Me,” she said.
I asked Marshall and Whitney, and they agreed that she had.
Our annual football contest begins this week with a couple of changes.
We have added another option for getting your ballot to us. In addition to mailing or dropping off, you can now text a photo of your ballot to 662-983-5690.
Ballots must get to us by Friday at 5 p.m.
The Pick ‘Em page will run in full color this year. We plan to use students as guest pickers each week and run a short bio with their photo. They will get a free t-shirt as well as the contest winner.
E-mail Lisa McNeece: lisamcneece@gmail.com follow her on twitter @lisamcneece