Moving into May – and my isn’t this 2013 slipping by fast – the danger of frost is gone for most gardeners, but it’s been a wacky enough spring.

Last average frost date for our zone 6 area is about April 15th.  As usual, we were a little ambitious and set out tomato and pepper seedlings a week before, and got whacked for it.  We’ve had three days of near freezing overnight temps since then.  Besides shuttling young plants in and out of the house and covering young plants with black trash bags, there’s a couple of low-maintenance ways to protect them from the killing overnight cold.

First up, just simple rocks.

Get you some flagstones… Also starring in the photo: garlic, thyme, french marigolds, Bright Lights Swiss Chard, kale, and Bonnie Green peppers

Stones provide good thermal mass. If you’ve got the time and inclination, it’s a very good idea to build raised beds with brick or stone borders.  The stones (or bricks) absorb heat during the day, and release it slowly at night.  The Juliet tomato seedling shown above has come through the last three weeks with flying colors.

Not that this is a guaranteed method. Out of ten plants ringed with rocks and bricks, eight have had some form of leaf damage, and two have given up the ghost entirely.

Another way is to get a Wall O’ Water, or Wall-O-Water
(however the hell it is you write it).

Rocks and a Wall O Water

A Wall-O-Water is a round cylindrical array of water columns. Fill them in at the top, and then place it over the seedling. Water acts the same way as masonry, absorbing heat during the daylight hours, and releasing it at night. Come to think of it, you could take used water bottles, and arrange them in a circle around the plants, bet that would work fine as well. Anyway, get you a three-pack of Wally Waters, they work just fine. Follow the link above, get ‘em through Amazon, and this blog will be enriched by the princely sum of $0.15 per sale (or thereabouts… who’s counting?).

The red leaf lettuce isn’t bothered at all by the cold…

This tidbit might not be at all useful for folks in planting zones 6 to 9 (for North American readers), but anyone gardening north of us in zones 5 down to 1a, take heed. Sudden snap frosts might persist through the month of May.

Bonus photo! The creeping phlox is showing off. Roses and wisteria warming up on deck. On second thought, that’s a terrible name for a pretty flowering ground cover. Sounds like something you might pick up from a wild night in a Macau sailor dive.

This has been another gardening interlude with your host, incompetent tomato raiser 101 Centavos. Thanks for dropping in.

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Back from the Netherlands, where the Dutch had a hell of a party last Tuesday, and woke up with a hangover and a new King.

Queen Beatrix (now back to a mere Princess) decided she’d had enough of shaking hands with visiting nobility and other assorted heads of state, cutting ribbons and having to look interested at children spelling bees.  Beatrix handed the keys to the kingdom to Junior, and said good riddance, I’m retired.

New Dutch King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and their daughters wave to the crowd Tuesday from the balcony of the royal palace in Amsterdam. (There are oranges on the balcony wreath. Because orange is the Dutch national color, see?)

Not that every Dutch person is enamored of the royal frippery.   Our hosts at one venue verged on indifference tinged with hostility at the prospect of another royal leech, sucking away at the public purse without any redeeming value.

$ 7 Million is what it costs to have a royal figurehead.   Wilhelm-Alex, once known in his college days by the nickname “Prince Pilsner” for his ability to hold his drink, no doubt will faithfully discharge his regular duties of attending state funerals, shaking hands with the proper etiquette and deportment, and just generally looking royal and well-coiffed when waving from balconies.

For a yearly salary of EU 825,000, plus other assorted allowances and expense accounts, no doubt many folks might say, hey, I could do that.

Queen Beatrix, in earlier black-and-white times… maybe a hundred years ago, before color film was developed

Last weeks’s quick trip to Amsterdam was profitable enough, as all business trips should be. Direct costs (airfare, hotels, meals) and indirect opportunity costs should be a fraction of current and future benefits realized by being face to face with erstwhile email acquaintances. Press the flesh, break bread, establish relationships.

It’s maybe a sad commentary on blogging that even while traveling, downtime on a hotel room balcony meant catching up on favorite PF blogs on the iPad.  No matter, more grist for the Fish Wrap mill.

JL Collins in NH revisits the options on Vanguard, even if you don’t have the $10K minimum.

YOLO!  Free by 50 takes on another PerFI myth in that experiences have a certain type of value.  Not if they suck, they don’t.   Money Principle’s experience with lost luggage in South Africa seems to bear this out, even though it’s business travel and presumably on someone else’s dime.

Where there’s easy money, along comes government and regulates the snot out of it. So sayeth Money Mamba on the subject of Mortgage REITs.

Retired Princess Beatrix today, remarkably well preserved after a hundred years. It’s got to be the iron-lady hairdo: protection against the passage of time and ability to deflect small-caliber projectiles.

A good title deserves a look-see:  “The Opposite of Investing Naked“, wherein Financial Uproar covers the upside of investing in a solid ladies’ haberdasher.

Everything you wanted to know about bitcoins, part 3, over @ Timeless Finance

Suba @ Wealth Informatics joins the exodus leaving the Golden State, with Adios California! Hello Washington!  It’s just a numbers game.  California legislators, large and small, will eventually cotton to the fact that people vote with their feet, or rather, with U-Haul Trucks.  One-way U-Haul costs from less-free states to more-free states (say, from California to Texas) can indeed be more than double the other way around:  $874 for a 10′ truck from Los Angeles to Dallas, $1,980 the other way round  (true enough, see for yourself).

Any discussion of the XL Pipeline ought to include some knowledge of the difference between Brent crude and WTI, West Texas Intermediate.  Enter PK at DQYDJ.net, with another handy calculator.  Not all oil is created equal, you know.   Tunisian oil is no different.  Mich @ Beating the Index  looks under the hood of the Kulczyk-Winstar acquisition.  Not a name combination that just rolls off the tongue, by the way.  Quick, call Marketing!

Thanks for dropping in, folks.  New content here at 101C is as unpredictable as Lindsay Lohan having a sober and responsible week; as unreliable as a dozen dead-beat dads; and as entertaining as dozen headlines in the grocery store checkout line.  Email subscriptions are about as good a way to keep in touch as any, assuming Mail Chimp isn’t busy coming up with cute automated rejoinders when something doesn’t work. (damn monkey primate) Twitter is also swell.  Top right-hand corner of the page, and take your click.

photocredit:  Patrick Van Katwijk /DPA /LANDOV

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This one certainly has

Once more into the breach with Nelson of Financial Uproar.

Let’s talk about Canada for a second, eh? We could talk about poutine, maple syrup, round bacon, hockey, or even how it’s May and there’s snow expected this week. But let’s not, since one of those things is a little depressing. Instead, let’s talk about a recent change made in their currency.

To the untrained eye, there’s very little difference between Canadian and American coins. Both countries have the same change, with the exception of Canada moving to $1 and $2 coins in the late 1980s and 1990s respectively. We Canadians do tend to love our dollar coins, even though it makes going to the strip bar slightly more awkward.

In early 2013, Canada made another change to our change, and my goodness, this was the positive change of all positive changes. Are you sick of the word change yet? Too bad, I’m not gonna change.

Canada got rid of the penny.

The same economics applied to Canadian pennies as currently apply to American ones. When the Canadian government crunched the numbers, they figured out it costs the Mint 1.6 cents to produce a penny. Just by no longer producing the coin, the government is saving $11 million per year. That’s a lot of pennies, and that’s some serious savings.

The United States has an economy that’s approximately ten times bigger than their northern cousins. If I do the math right, that’s… carry the one… a savings of at least $100 million per year. Forever.

How do people buy stuff without the penny? It’s really simple. Cash transactions get rounded to the nearest nickel, while plastic transactions end up continuing to be down to the exact penny. So if you’re getting a meal at McDonald’s and it comes to $7.73, then you’re shelling out $7.75. If you manage to sweet talk the kid behind the counter to $7.72, then you’re down to $7.70. Unless you pay with a credit card, of course.

Yes, there was an adjustment. Most stores had to reprogram cash registers to automatically round up or down the change back to the customer, and that took a little time. Other stores with older systems are just putting it all on the shoulders of their staff to figure out, and I don’t think I’ve been ripped off once in the three months since the change was made. People in general aren’t very good at math, but I’m pretty sure a stuffed rabbit could figure this one out.

“The Penny Wedding”, by David Wilkie, 1818 *

There are other benefits too. Businesses don’t have to count pennies, saving all sorts of man-hours during the course of a year. They also don’t have to buy pennies from the bank anymore, making that part of the business a little bit easier too.

People are still allowed to use pennies, but they were essentially gone a month after the Mint started taking them back. You don’t have anyone using their pennies to pay for something at the local 7-11, nor are you ever stuck behind some old lady named Agnes who’s just making sure she gets rid of her pennies. Don’t yell, if you’re nice to her, maybe she’ll bake you cookies.

Oh, there’s more. You know how the government was losing money with each penny produced? If they start buying back 1.6 cents worth of metal for 1 cent, that’s a pretty good return. Maybe I should start a little sideline business paying face value for people’s jars of pennies? I’m not sure about the legality of melting down pennies for profit. Plus I don’t really have the facilities to do so.

Rats. That was the greatest sideline business idea I’ve ever had.

Getting rid of the penny has made cash transactions more efficient, it’s saved the government millions of dollars, and most pennies just sit in fountains or jars anyway. It only made sense to get rid of it, and it’s time for the U.S. Mint to follow suit. The only downside? Picking up a nickel for good luck just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Standard 101C fare will resume next week. Perhaps even a post from the road if I’m feeling adventurous.  Tune in to read all about Amsterdam hotels, taxis, hotels and meeting rooms, which is all about we get to see on quickie trips like this. Thanks to Nelson for helpfully dropping in like this on short notice (like my in-laws).

Questions for U.S. readers: getting rid of of the penny: good idea, or bad idea? A nickel for your thoughts.

* Wilkie chose to depict a type of marriage ceremony, common in Scotland, where the guests each paid a penny towards the expenses and anything left over went towards the couple’s new home.** The subject was already known, having been treated by David Allen (1744-96) in a painting in Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick. The idea of the subject would seem to be that no richer couple could be happier, more loving, gracious and handsome, and no father of the bride could offer hospitality more generous and convivial than this, laid on by the community as a whole. Money certainly couldn’t buy a better fiddler than Niel Gow (1727-1807), clearly recognisable here; Robert Burns’s description of his ‘kind open-heartedness, mixed with trusting simplicity’ would probably sum up Wilkie’s intention in the scene as a whole.

** back when homes cost something like say, ten shillings, two chickens and a sack of buttons.

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Let me tell you about a guy I know. Because it’s not going to be very complimentary, let’s call him Tony. mostly because the Tony Siragusa Depends commercial was on TV as I was typing that sentence.

Tony is, by most accounts, a nice guy. He’s gainfully employed, is generally pretty pleasant, doesn’t beat his wife, and so on. He and his wife own their house and drive a reasonable SUV that’s a couple years old. Like many young couples these days, they’re struggling with student loan and credit card debt. I have no ideas what the balances are, but I’d estimate they owe $25k in student loans and an additional $10k on their credit cards, and that’s not even factoring in their car payment or mortgage.

Just how much do actors in Depends commercials make anyway?

About once a year, Tony and his wife decide to get serious about fixing their finances. Since I’m the financially savvy friend, I’m always the first to hear about their newfound zeal. Like with any big sudden life change, their big plans quickly fizzle out before any major progress can be made, even with my encouragement. They throw up their hands and revert back to their old ways.

At this point, they’re on this cycle for about the fourth time, so it’s hard to get excited about their newest attempt to get their finances in order. I’m not sure it’s ever going to happen, especially since children are on the horizon.

You would think that Tony would be an extra motivated employee. His emergency fund consists of overdraft in their joint checking account. His investments consist of whatever he’s contributed to Canada’s version of Social Security. He might have a couple thousand bucks in home equity. If he or his wife lost their job, they’d be hooped in about a week and a half.

And yet, Tony, by most accounts, is kind of a slacker. Sure, he shows up and does his job, but not really that well. His work area regularly looks like a beaver dam after the guys from Duck Dynasty have been there with a couple sticks of dynamite. His job requires a neat and tidy appearance, and he regularly shows up looking disheveled (101C:  “Tony” might benefit from reading this.  On second thought, that would also be a major life change, and destined to fizzle out). His boss constantly complains about Tony. None of this stuff is enough to get Tony fired, but he’s not getting his name on an ‘employee of the month’ plaque anytime soon.

We all know guys like Tony. They’ve dug themselves a financial hole, and have no motivation to get themselves out of it. And even though they’re more dependent on their job than someone who has a healthy net worth, they often treat work like it’s an inconvenient chore, like jury duty for 40 years. I just don’t get it.

Folks, if you’re swimming in debt, your job is the only thing that’s between you and a trip back to your parents’ basement. I’d argue that anyone with debt should be looking for income opportunities outside of their job, but at least be the best possible employee you can possibly be.

Even if this doesn’t translate to a raise or a promotion, it still makes you invaluable, making you much more likely to keep that job you most desperately need. This can translate to all sorts of advantages down the road, like keeping your job through a series or layoffs or using your rock star status to secure a better job with a competitor.

But back to the original issue. I bet you know someone like Tony, a guy who needs that job yet does it kinda like Homer Simpson. Why are they like this?

Is it because their debt and financial difficulties stem from the same character flaws? A lack of ambition and planning for the future would be detrimental to both your job and your net worth. Is it because the Tonys in our life are secretly unhappy, and they’re just kind of going through the motions of life? Or is it because they just don’t understand finance, so they don’t fully grasp the consequences of the tightrope they’re walking? I’m thinking it’s a combination of these factors, with a focus on the first one.

This is going to make me sound as sensitive as a character from The Sopranos, (101C:  by coincidence, Tony Siragusa played the Frankie Cortese character on four episodes of the Sopranos.  Frankie was a driver and bodyguard.  Presumably he drove a SUV. Unknown if he had any student loans) but I hardly shed a tear when guys like Tony take a fall. It might be the only way that they’ll actually learn this lesson. For most people, as long as they make enough to make their minimum payments, life is good. Most of them aren’t reading this blog, but you probably know a Tony or two. If you’re like me, you want to help him out, but can’t really do much unless he realizes he has a problem.

Don’t become a Tony. Take your job seriously, or get out. Or better yet, put yourself in a financial position where you can call your own shots. That all starts with taking care of your money.

101C: Thanks for tuning in, folks. Come back later mid-week for another exciting post by Nelson, or perhaps a discussion on the best cigars for your money.  Anyone know any Tonys in their lives?

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What to do with this $78,452 windfall, or, what’s left after the trip to Vegas, paying off the credit cards and student loans, buying the new car for cash and the online shopping sprees? Why, start your own business.

Now is your chance to be your own boss, strike back at the Man, give him the finger, step up and out and grill some juicy steaks on your very own back deck (wrong phrasing, but I’m a little hungry right now).

Time to open that little gift shop you’ve always dreamed about.  Or a consignment antique store. Or a baby and toddler fashions boutique, or maybe even a quaint used book store, it’ll be so cute and perfect….

Stop it!

Just stop it. Those ideas are walking dead, zombie stores in the making. Strip mall tenant records are full of these failed ideas.  They spring to life with a nice spanking new “Grand Opening” sign on the grassy roadside strip, maybe a few balloons or flag strings, and a year or two later they’re pushing up daisies.  Stop it already with the gift shops, Kupcakz outlets and eBay storefronts.  It ain’t gonna work.

No customers for you… (that’s the clerk’s car) (Scratch that, it’s the clerk’s parent’s car.  Video store clerks can’t afford their very own car)

Based on purely anecdotal research (the best kind when writing unsubstantiated blog posts), here’s a few solid ideas for small store-front retail, gleaned from our own neighborhood, and guaranteed for longevity.  In no particular order of profitability, real or assumed:

#1:  WIG STORE

The local wig store has been around for the whole 13 years I’ve been driving past 71st and Memorial.  Quiet, unassuming, and still in business.  Adventurous dames that want to change their look, stupid men that insist on wearing toupees that make them looking they’re sporting a dead weasel on their head, and truly needy persons with disfiguring hair loss (alopecia or cancer sufferers, for example).  All are welcome at the wig store.

#2:  CUSTOM BRASSIERES

Writing as a man without these concerns, I imagine it must be hard to get the girls comfortable, and sympathize accordingly.  After a kid or two, the bosoms shape-shift into something that well, wasn’t that way before.  Enter the helpful custom bra depot.  Our own local neighborhood is the in the worst retail location possible, off the main road behind the Japanese sushi place, and yet, it’s always busy.   Again, it’s been in business donkey’s years.

#3:  FABRIC / SEWING / YARN STORE

There’s something about fabric that stimulates the deepest female reptilian brain.  Gotta have it, gotta hoard it.   Here’s a niche where the main players like Hancock Fabrics or Joann’s have got nothing on the small Mom-and-Poppers.  Little specialist stores with cloyingly cutesy names like The Quilting Bee or the Cotton Patch are usually busy, offer classes and advice, and for high-end high-margin products, can usually be counted on to be the area distributor of incredibly well-crafted imported sewing machines.

#4:  COMIC BOOK / GAMER FANTASY CORNER

With today’s passel of arrested adolescents, there’s no shortage of geeky, plaid-clad young men and pasty-faced Goth girls that periodically shuffle from one funky upstairs gamer den to this funky neighborhood store for  Pokemon battles or  Geeky-OH face-offs.  Whatever it is that they do, it must be profitable enough.  Our local couple outlets have been around for a long, long time.

#5:  SWIMMING POOL SUPPLIES

After dropping forty grand on a new pool, now that sucker’s got to be maintained.  Stocking anything from inexpensive chlorine tablets to high-dollar replacement filters, there’s a few here in town that have been making a good living off of homeowner’s desire for the occasional backyard dip.  I’m sure they also get a cut from every pool contractor they refer.  Why not, I’d do it.

#6:  TROPHY AND PLAQUE STORE

Now that the competitive spirit has been quashed from recreational and league sports, everyone gets a medal!  YEAY!  While this needlessly inflates the self-esteem of our precious little snowflakes, it also means lots of ching-ching for your local trophy store.   Buy assorted tchotchkys in bulk from China and Vietnam, invest a little capital in engraving and etching machines, and learn to love customer service.

7# NAILS SALON

The recipe for success for a nail and/or hair salon seems relatively straightforward.  A little capital, modest skills, good location, and good customer service. Even guys can get into the action, without even going to cosmetology school or turning gay.  Here’s how:  first, marry into an Asian family (a fantasy for many a lonely overweight white guy).  Then, after the first flush of the first married years has worn off, listen to the wife prattle on about opening Asian markets or a Chinese restaurant or a nail salon.  Resist as much as you can, then give in to preserve the domestic peace.  Hire as much of the extended family as the overhead can stand.   True story:  years ago when I worked overseas, our Operations Manager was married to a nice Vietnamese lady, acquired during his tours in Vietnam.  For his retirement, they planned on moving back to Oklahoma.  The wife, somewhat younger than her husband, planned to be active in business and open up a….. you guessed it, a nail salon.  They did just that, and remain successful to this day.  The customer base of growing nails that need to be shorn and decorated in tasteful and attractive ways is constantly growing.

That’s it for today.  We could go on, but you get the idea. Look around your own neighborhood, and see what works and what doesn’t for strip mall retail.  Do that.   That’s what Aunt Nettie would have wanted.

On second thought and better still, buy the strip mall itself, lease to tenants that will be around for a long while, and become a real estate baron.

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This post was featured in the Carnival of Wealth: Slump Busted Edition, over @ Control Your Cash

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Somewhat typical canal in China — water might be used for irrigation and/or fish farming and/or laundry… and as a dump for old bikes

Goodness gracious, who knows what’s in that candy bar. Stay away from that hamburger, and don’t even think about those Doritos.

It’s all going to make you fat, give you diabetes, rickets and high blood pressure, you know.

And yet, in Shanghai, Chinese shoppers might actually consider Cheetos and Ding-Dongs and pork rinds as health food.

China’s toxic harvest: Consumers flock to imported food

When Yuri Valazza started a small imported food shop in Shanghai eight years ago, his target consumers weren’t Chinese.

“At that time it was almost 90 percent foreigners,” recalls Valazza, sitting at a small table in shop in the city’s former French Concession neighborhood.

Not anymore, thanks to a rising consumer class and a string of scandals that damaged the reputation of China’s domestic food supply, nearly half of the business here at Valazza’s shop comes from local Chinese.

I mean, if the ingredients list on a package of Wal-Mart’s Great Value Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bars includes honest-to-goodness stuff like soy lecithin, sodium bicarbonate, modified extract of chocolate, and artificial flavor enhancer #5, U.S. consumers have a reasonable expectation that sure enough, that’s what they’re getting. That’s what the tireless heroes at the USDA are there for.

Consumers in China would seem to agree. Some are also happy to trust the USDA as the ultimate authority in food quality:

And that’s good news for American companies like Organic Valley, which started exporting milk to China three years ago. CEO George Siemon says his consumers in China aren’t just looking for the organic seal.

“You also have the USDA seal of quality control,” says Siemon, “So it really is a double premium that we’re able to offer people.”

In the U.S., we get all atwitter and point accusingly to the USDA when a  billion tainted eggs (give or take a few million) hit the market. Europeans erupt in indignation over a little horsemeat in their burgers. In China, they should be so lucky, they’ve got crops irrigated with factory runoff:

Crops Irrigated with Industrial Waste in China

Farmers in several areas of China’s Henan Province have been forced to irrigate their fields with industrial wastewater, because groundwater sources have dried up or been polluted by industry, according to state media.

The crops harvested from the polluted fields are all sold, because none of the farmers dare to eat their own produce, according to locals.

A report by Chinese state-run media Dahe described the wastewater discharged by Dongfeng Papermaking Co. in Dakuai Township, Fengquan District of Xinxiang City, as “gray and sticky.” A 200-meter-long open trench takes the water directly into nearby farmlands for irrigation without prior treatment, and a thick layer of pulp has settled on the surface of fields, it said.

Babies dropping like flies from melamine-tainted baby formula, cadmium rice and glow-in-the-dark pork.

The mighty Roman Empire was poisoned by lead in the aqueducts (it wasn’t). The Americans all got fat and couldn’t get out of their recliners (Wall-E isn’t really a documentary), and the nascent Chinese Empire gets cut off at the knees by intense environmental pollution. 

At a 30,000 foot level, we could say that a good diet leads to a healthy and productive life. Bad diets alone don’t sink nations, it’s just one variable in an economy’s health. The Spanish and the Greek have a swell Mediterranean diet, all mono-unsaturated olive oil and fish from a sparkling blue sea and all that, but their economy’s for crap.

The Chinese work hard and produce even more. But eat river fish laden with heavy metals, chase it with toxic noodle soup, and you might eventually tend to feel a little peaked.

So what’s the bottom line, the obligatory PF angle?  For me, not personally rushing to invest in Chinese food companies.  How about you, readers?

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No problem, here’s a work-around.

Start with three…

A few bags of good topsoil or potting soil is about all we need to get started. Lay them out in a 2 x 4 or a 3 x 3 grid, and cut some openings in the tops, like so:

Make sure that you don’t cut too close to the corners, otherwise the sides will slump and the soil will want to spill out.

Next, take a nice long screwdriver and poke some holes in the bottom of the bag. We want to have good drainage.

Now, plant what you like: tomatoes, peppers or herbs like basil or oregano.

With tomatoes, determinate varieties (as opposed to indeterminate) that are typically used for container gardening will probably work best. These varieties will grow to a bushy 3 or 4 feet high and can be supported with a simple tomato cage. Typical names are Husky Cherry Red, Golden Nugget and Patio.

After planting, time to mulch:

Here the tomato plants are mulched with wood chips, but we could just as easy use straw or glass clippings. Even easier would be skipping skip this last step, and have our soil dry out faster, stress the plants, and not increase soil fertility at all. No, not mulching just won’t do.

A word about choosing the right brand. The soil in the pictures is a great bargain at less than $2/bag, labeled generic “Top Soil” but really of “potting soil” quality: nice and black and loamy, full of organic matter. Some other brands we’ve picked up just seem to be silt and sand, probably dredged up from a river bed. The most expensive kind is the 2 cubic foot Miracle Gro or other brightly colored and well-marketed brands. These will go anywhere from $5 to $10 per bag, but will generally be good stuff.

So, this will get you started quick. You can lay these bags along a fence line, or pattern them out as you like. At the end of the season, just pull the plastic bags, and go about building up the sides of the raised bed. By that time, the grass under the bags will have been smothered and be long dead (and good riddance, too).

That’s it for today, folks. Hope you enjoyed this little bit of gardening how-to. Get out there and get your hands dirty, it’s good for you.

Note: astute readers will notice that there’s no lawn grass under the bags. This was done at the remote garden, just to see how it would work. I’d long read about this method, and I can now attest to it. Sure, it would be fine to get a few plants started for the season. After the pics were snapped, the soil went into a newly-built raised bed.

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Low-ball contractors, lousy service providers and crappy restaurants.  Idiots who should be meeting with a bankruptcy attorney or be hounded by collection agents instead stay around way past their expiry date, pissing off their customers and racking up debt.

Safety harnesses are for (bonded and insured) sissies!

Danger, 101 Centavos!

Tree care (trimming, pruning and removal) is a dangerous job.  Every year, both professionals and amateurs get to audition for Darwin Awards. Many a hapless do-it-yourselfer, with little regard to safety or common sense, will be featured on YouTube as dumbass fail! of the week, either felling a tree on their back porch (duh!), getting their pickups crushed or getting knocked off a ladder by a back-swinging branch.  Professional tree service people get their share too:  falling off trees, getting electrocuted or getting hit by falling limbs.

Man’s got to know his limitations.

With me, my limit is a back-leaning thirty-foot lace-bark elm with an 8″ diameter at breast height.  Getting that sucker down on the ground took more out of me that I might care to admit.  Despite doing all the things right (hey, I learned it on YouTube) with a good front notch, a proper hinge, and an angled plunge cut on the backside, the damn tree just. Wouldn’t. Fall.  I finally had to pull the it down with a thick rope tied to its top branch.  In the aftermath, with chest, legs and arms all aching and loudly clamoring for a beer or three, I conceded defeat and picked up the phone.   There was no profit in DIY’ing  the rest of the tree work.

Competitive Bids

The scope of work was straightforward: remove the other lace-bark elm* from the front yard and grind the stump; trim three large branches off the willow out back; grind the stump of the lace-bark elm from the back yard; haul away the branches and debris; make good the stump sites.   The twist was that one of the willow tree branches to be removed was right over the tender new Cornelian Cherry tree.  A little care was called for.

Bidder #1 was the highest.  After a brief site visit, Kevin the fireman and tree-trimmer in his spare time quoted a precise $486 for the entire scope, with the caveat that we had to be present to see and judge how the willow tree looked after one branch was removed.  He detailed how one of his (obviously insane) guys would shinny up the tree limb and take it down one little bit at a time, starting from the top.  The crazy worker would have all required safety harnesses and rigging.

Bidder #2 was a no-show, but later called and quoted over the phone.  $350 for the same scope, no problem.

Bidder #3 promised to call back, but couldn’t be bothered.

Bidder #4 was a total idiot.  This beer-bellied goober turned up on a weekday, unannounced, after missing the first appointment two days prior.  He barely looked at the trees, and low-balled the estimate at $200 even.  What this lecherous moron spent most of his time on was flirting with Mrs. 101, ogling her legs and making what he thought was winning compliments about how good she looked for her age.

Set that aside for a moment.

“Yep, I can do it for, hmm, right around two hundred bucks…”

Could this dude have done the job for a measly couple hundred bucks?  Sure.  Farm out the job to a crew of illegal aliens undocumented workers motivated hard-working future business owners Mexicans, cream fifty bucks off the top, and Bob’s yer uncle.

Good chances that this crew would have not been well-equipped.  Instead of commercial-grade stump-grinding machinery, they might have probably used chainsaws to “grind” and left most of the stump in below ground ($50 is commonly quoted unit price for stump-grinding).  Likely they would not have used proper safety rigging when climbing up the willow.  And certainly, they would have been sans the heavy-duty chipper that eventually left us with a nice pile of mulch for the garden.

Bidder #4 was not only stupid for flirting with a prospective customer (never mind the safety issue:  Mrs. 101 packs heat or pepper spray or both, and is backed up by a mean-looking dog who doesn’t much like strangers), but for offering potentially shoddy work.

Winning Bidder #1 showed up on time,  with top-of-the-line equipment, and his four-man crew was in and out in less than two hours. He was serious, knew his business, and perhaps most importantly, he was fully insured and bonded.  Not a small thing to consider in a business where workplace injuries are common, and you as the homeowner could face liability if a contractor gets injured on your property.

Four hundred and eighty six dollars might sound like a lot when compared to two unqualified bids of $200 and $350, but small money when compared to the full scope of work, done right.   With a limited sample of three data points, the “market” might tell us that the price for that job should have been around $300.  The “market” isn’t always right.

* A lace-bark Elm is about the worst tree to plant in your suburban lot.  The damn thing throws out hundreds of little seedlings every spring.  The ludicrously long taproots make these “weeds” almost impossible to eradicate.  Good riddance.

photo credit: Salim Virji via photopin cc

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DQYDJ.net’s Weekender

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The birds are thieving singing, flowers are blooming, the barn needs fixing, and Mrs. 101′s project/wish list grows ever longer… Longer than a list of a politician’s failed campaign promises. Longer than a sullen teenager’s litany of imagined slights from an older siblings. Longer than…. well, just long.

Must really find out what this hedge is… it blooms up something pretty in the spring

Springtime is just swell.  While some readers up in the great white north are still snow-bound, April is a time for planning and planting, and taking chances with putting seedlings in the ground and hoping that early frosts won’t burn them.  Well, they did.  We had a couple of late freezes that burned the blossoms off two peach trees and the apricot, and laid waste to the flats of seedlings that were hardening off.  Better than snow, though.

The garlic is going great guns, and we resolve this year to not let it go to flower.  Hardneck garlic will throw up what are known as “scapes”, the stalks for its eventual flower.  You want for the plant’s energy to be focused on growing a larger, stronger bulb, not expended on a flower stalk.   Having said that, it’s all edible and good:  the greens, the stalks, and the “bulbils”, the tiny little cloves that make up the garlic flower.   The greens can be chopped up and used in salsa or cheese dip along with green onions.   Garlic beds are also great places to plant young tomatoes.   Some common garden pests like aphids don’t like the smell, and are kept at bay.

This season’s crop of garlic

Hardneck garlic from last season, allowed to go to flower

The cost for the garlic “seed” this season was exactly zero. We saved some bulbs from last yeqr, packed them away in a cool dark place, and planted them last fall after the first frosts.

Investing

Mich @ Oil and Gas ETFs covers investing options in MLP and AMLPs, with “The best MLP ETFs for Midstream Exposure”

Stock markets are on caffeine-laced steroids these days. What to do, what to do?  JT @ Money Mamba with a few thoughts:   When Markets Only Go Higher

Financial Uproar with “The Problem With Buy What You Know.”  Not generally a good idea to invest that way.

Read this from Afford Anything, and then follow the links:  “The Only Two Things You Need To Know to Invest in Real Estate.”

Work and Retirement

Are you really retired? Try Pauline at Reach Financial Independence for some definitions, or Darwin’s Money for some lively banter in the comments section. Darwin’s title pulls no punches, either: “Extreme Early Retirement – Mainly a Myth Except for Hippies and Drifters.” Single Mom, Rich Mom has a different take.

Sometimes you get the boot from a present employer. That’s what happened to Jose @ WiseDollar.org. That’s OK, one door closes, another one opens. The story has an eventual happy ending, but you’ll have to read other posts on the blog to find out. “The Axeman Cometh”

Health

Last week’s post focused on health (and a bit of criticism to mainstream media), and here’s a companion piece from Righteous Investor. RI recently lost a great deal of weight through careful attention to a low-carb diet. As he points out in this article though, it’s physically challenging for diabetics and pre-diabetics with high blood sugar to engage in exercise. Diet change first, and then physical activity.

In General

John @ Money Principle takes a balanced look back on Maggie Thatcher and her legacies. What a dame!

Lessons in critical thinking from DQYDJ.

From Making Sense Babe, 5 Ways To Effectively Sell Your Car, And Yourself

Thanks for dropping in. This was meant to be Sunday Morning Fish Wrap, but gardening intrudes. On the runway for this week, a fast way to make garden beds, perhaps a bit on shotguns and home security, maybe the long-delayed third part to investing in business development companies or what cigars to buy for weddings. Can’t decide yet.

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( yes, the restaurant menu is not exactly from a Mexican hole-in-the-wall, but damn, these look good!!)

Based on simple observation from several trips south of the border, we assumed that the population of Mexico can be as portly as any populace, but not according to the headlines.  From breathless headlines, websites and blog posts, it seems that Mexico is breaking all records:

This recent one from The Economist’s website:

Eating Themselves to Death:  Diabetes in Mexico

… Mexico has become one of the most overweight countries on earth, even more so than the United States; a quarter of its men and a third of its women are obese. Indecorously, the country has even come up with figures on figures: the Mexican Diabetes Federation says that among women between 20 and 49, the average waistline is 91.1cm (35.9 inches), more than 10cm above the “ideal” size. Stores are now full of large- and extra large-sized clothing. …

This prompts a small-talk discussion with colleagues, after a satisfying repast of carne asada, queso and chile relleno at the local hole-in-the-wall.

“Hey, I just read that Mexico is getting tubbier and tubbier”

Generic response #1:  “With food like this, it’s not hard to see why”
Generic response #2:  “Yep, I read that too, Mexico is like the fattest country in the world.  Too many tamales.”

Google chimes in, and provides the following:

From Huffington Post, a video:  “Obesity Burdens Mexican Economy”

According to Medical News Today, the U.S. of A. and Mexico lead the pack, or rather struggle along way in the back, panting and huffing: “USA and Mexico Are The Fattest Countries in the World”

From Fox News, fair and balanced on the weight scale: “Mexico Becomes Second Fattest Nation in the World”

Here’s the Economist again, from 2006 (they must really have it for Mexico)

“Sins of the Fleshy“

The statistics are impressive, and alarming. According to the OECD, Mexico is now the second fattest nation in that group of 30 countries. A health poll in 1999 found that 35% of women were overweight, and another 24% technically obese. Juan Rivera, an official at the National Institute of Public Health, says that the combined figure for men would be about 55%, and that a similar poll to be carried out next year will show the fat quotient rising. Only the United States, with combined figures of over 60%, is ahead.

We could say that a Muy Gordo Mexico is pretty much conventional wisdom.

Except that it’s not.

Not even close.

Mexico is #15  and the U.S. is #7 in general lipidity, behind a gaggle of obscure South Pacific island nations, with names like Nauru (huh?) and Nieu (what?) and Samoa (ah, yes… no surprise there. Big ol’ offensive linemen are Samoan).  According to a BMI study and database maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO?), the USA and Venezuela are tops amongst scale-tippers, with Australia, New Zealand and even Greece  belly-bumping ahead of Mexico.

(Yes, yes, we know, studies are biased and slanted and have ulterior agendas, but as far as accuracy and reliability, if you can’t trust a bunch of nameless, faceless, supra-national technocrats in Brussels, who can you really trust?)

Here’s the neat interactive map:

and the list:

Admittedly, Mexicans are way on up there on the MTI*, much higher that clean-living Italians (#68), futsal-playing and samba-dancing Brazilians (#73), and basically starving Eritreans (dead last at $192).  But sorry, Fox News et al., they most certainly are not #1 or #2.

What’s the deal with all these South Pacific Islanders ballooning up?  The theory is that increased contact with western nations like New Zealand and Australia has meant the native diet of taro root, poi, grubs and fish being supplanted by delicious staples like pizza, Twinkies and pork rinds, washed down with gallons of Coke and Slurpees.  Compounding the problem,  on a small island opportunities for healthy exercise are limited (it’s a small place … start running, and you run out of room, you see?)

So is it the delicious albondigas and empanadas that’s making Mexicans twice as rotund as say, Macedonians?  No, not so very much.  Turns out it’s partially due to sugary, fizzy drinks.  Although it may kill you, all that high-fructose corn syrup the US produces these days has got to go somewhere.  Don’t blame KO and its sweetly growing dividend, it’s just the delivery vehicle.

Blame Earl Butz instead (who?)

Butz was the creepy** Nixon-era Secretary of Agriculture who admonished farmers to “get big and get out”, plant “fencerow to fencerow“, and was therefore almost single-handedly responsible for spectacular increases in grain production, driving small family-owned farms out of business, and inflicting Willie Nelson’s execrable nasal laments on the nation in Farm Aid concerts.

All that extra corn did go somewhere… and that’s about the time that waistlines started to get bigger.  Here in the US, in Mexico, and in Kiribati (huh, where?)

Not the whole story, but certainly part of it.

That’s it for today, folks, thanks for dropping in and visiting for a spell.  Go visit some other posts on food and agriculture, if that’s your thing (here, here and here).  Otherwise,  a simple subscription by Email  will deliver occasional updates into your inbox.  No spam, though.  Spam will make you fat, and who knows what’s really in it?

*Muffin Top Index

** Butz was fired for making crass, race-based gaffes.  Later on, he graduated from being a bigoted creep, to a bigoted tax-evading creep.  I’m sure that’s not the legacy he would have wished for, but there you go.

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