What innovations would make my life simpler and thus improve my health ?

June 9, 2011

As I noted in the last blog post, sometimes it is the simplest thing that could make the world a better place. I talked about a ‘nose contact’ and I promised to keep track of innovations that seemed like they would help me. I asked you to do the same… Here is what I discovered this past week…

On the larger playing field, I discovered that I rely on the internet to answer a thousand little everyday questions. For example, it is the time of year when I am attempting to do a bit of patio gardening. And I moved my three-year-old geranium plant from the indoors to the outdoors… I saw my husband’s grandmother move her geraniums from a Missouri porch into her kitchen each year…and back outside each spring. I wouldn’t otherwise have thought about trying to do this.

But this year, the plant isn’t producing any blossoms…well, very few.  So I wanted to go online and see why. Only I couldn’t. The internet has been down more than it has been up at my house over the past week. Which is annoying since I depend on it for work and for information in a thousand other ways. Finally, we had to give in and have the cable company come over and check it out yesterday. Well, the signal is weak because the wire in the ground from the cable box has eroded. So–innovation number 1–why can’t someone make cable wire that doesn’t erode over a decade’s time?

And then there are my birds. I call them my birds because I feed them and have bird baths for them. I open my windows to hear them sing. I keep some bird houses in the backyard for them… two for blue birds and one for the martins. My mother’s mother had bird houses that are my earliest memory of the calm that comes from just watching and listening to these winged creatures.

At any rate, anyone who has fed birds from feeders on their deck knows that their seeds are a constant carpet anywhere nearby. As I was cleaning the deck for the season, I was shocked to see the literally pounds of hulls and well, bird poop that needed to be cleaned up as well.

Suddenly, having their feeders didn’t seem so wonderful. I looked online…of course… to see what others have offered in the way of solutions. Feed them only sunflower seeds without the shells… but realize this does nothing about the well, other end of the story.

I did quite an extensive search. Everyone just says move the feeders off the deck… Really? Can’t someone come up with a bird feeder where the birds fly into it, eat, are encased in a clear globe with entry and exit ports but the bottom half can catch the seed discards? Yes, that would be a solution to a dilemma that it seems I am not the only one facing… There are tons of online discussions about it.

And that would make my life simpler and thus improve my health…

Author: Roxanne

I have always loved to learn. After years of trying to pick a major as an undergraduate, I met a professor who guided me to graduate school. And from graduate school, I learned that I could always go to school and keep on learning. And so I have... View all posts by Roxanne