Tony Brewer

I was driving to work this morning and heard on the radio that Virginia’s largest tree, named “Big Mama” has died and unexplained death.  I was just reading more about it on the Internet, having “googled” it, reading various stories.  It seems that it was a cypress tree.  I found that interesting because I didn’t even know that there were cypress trees in Virginia!  I don’t know why, I just always thought that those kinds of trees stayed south of the North Carolina border!  Anyway, the cause of death is unknown, which is a shame.  The articles were saying that a few months ago it was discovered oozing a red colored sap, but the article did not say that anyone collected it for a sample to analyze if it was a particular disease.  Anyway, I think it’s a shame that Big Mama has passed away.  She lived a very long life, maybe that’s just the average lifespan of a cypress tree.  What do you think?

We’ve fed the birds over the years, wanting to help hem to survive the harsh winter.  We’ve gone to great lengths to protect our bird feeders from raiding squirrels.  It has been fun watching the great lengths that squirrels will go to, trying to get to the bird seed.  We have invested a lot of money in bird feeders because those rascals manage to break them to the point where the seed just pours straight out onto the ground.  I don’t hate squirrels, and I don’t wish them ill will, I just wish they’d stop ruining the bird feeders!

Well, this weekend I was reading in the Sunday paper that there is a major shortage of acorns and hickory nuts.  In many areas there are no nuts at all!  This is highly unusual and the experts have no explanation for this strange phenomena, but the end result is that we are going to have millions of dead squirrels because of starvation.  So I am thinking about buying a couple of special squirrel feeders, and filling them with sunflower seeds and corn, trying to help the little guys make it through the winter.  I hope lots of other people will, too!

Several years ago Teri and I decided to stop using “live” Christmas trees, and only use artificial ones.  I don’t know what the “correct” environmental thing to do here, but we’ve always felt bad about killing live trees just for our holiday festivities.  So we have bought several artificial Christmas trees to decorate our house over the holidays.

Yesterday Teri and I went up into the attic and dragged out our big artificial Christmas Tree. We had forgotten how big and heavy it is - we didn’t set that one up last year (we used a smaller tree last year.) It sure was awkward! I remember now that when we hauled it up into the attic what a hard time we had! It barely squeezed through the hatch! We’ve agreed to store it in the basement from now on! It’s a 7′ tall tree, pre-lit. It only took a few minutes to put together, there were only three sections and the stand to assemble. Unfortunately, after it was all assembled and plugged in, we found that one of the sections of tree has a string of lights that won’t light up. We’re sure that everything is plugged in correctly, so we have to assume one of the lights is burnt out (or missing) on that string, or the string is shorted out.

I don’t want to spend hours trying to troubleshoot that string of lights, so I guess I’m going to just dig out a string of lights stored in one of the decorations boxes and string it on that section of tree. Yeah, I’m feeling lazy all right! But at least the tree is up, and hopefully we’ll be decorating it over the next couple of days.

I would really like to buy a hybrid car the next time we buy a new car.  I’ve always thought they were a good idea, saving fuel is not just an economic issue for me but it is also an environmental issue.  I really like the Prius a lot, and am leaning towards choosing that for my next new car.  I’ve been looking at a great website that sells a lot of Prius parts and accessories; I didn’t realize that there were so many different accessories you could buy for a Prius - several of them are Fuel Saving products that improve efficiency and performance even more than the car comes with!  One of them makes the car run on electric only until your speed reaches 34 mpg.  I thought that was really cool!

They sell a Ground systems for battery performance that also promotes better torque and better fuel efficiency, and a Hyper Voltage System that increases your horsepower, makes your headlights brighter, extends the battery life, and also increases fuel efficiency.  The site also sells great gift items such as bike racks, ski racks, floor mats, and green car care and natural cleaner products.