Have you noticed that there is someone who will take the fun out of just about everything?
Mexican food. Chinese food. Movie popcorn. Now a cool pitcher of sun tea will make you sick.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, Alcaligenes viscolactis, a bacteria commonly found in water, can flourish during the slow steep of sun tea. And it can make you sick.
Who knew something as simple as sun tea could be so dangerous?
I sip tea all day long during the summer. Currently, my favorite concoction is a mixture of green and chai spice teas. And since I’m just a risk-taking, adventurous kind of gal, I have decided that I will continue drinking my sun tea. After all, I’ve made it this far without getting ill. Let’s just see what happens.
For the rest of you, you might want to follow some safety precautions. These include:
-Scrub your sun tea container with hot soapy water. (Frankly, I assume everyone does this anyway.)
-Don’t leave the sun tea to brew for more than three or four hours. (Being the crazy kinda gal that I am, I will continue to brew mine for six to eight hours.)
-Refrigerate and drink as soon as possible. (No problem there.)
-Don’t prepare more than you can drink in a day. Throw out the leftovers. (None left anyway.)
And on one website, they advise you to throw away tea that has turned thick and syrupy or that has ropy strands, which are bacteria. Whaaaaaa? Who would drink that anyway?
So there you have it. Go forth and be safe. As for me, I will continue to live life on the edge with a cold glass of sun tea in my hand.
Robin
I don’t usually make a habit of publicizing my laziness or gardening errors.
But sometimes something so serendipitous happens that I just have to share it. Here is a spontaneous garden container.
I neglected to clean out and put away this pot that was the home for a beautiful hibiscus last year. I had nothing else planted in the pot. At all. And this spring, some pansies have self-seeded. Then, hot dog and holy moly! A small sunflower seems to have sprouted from among the dead hibiscus stems. I was so intrigued by the whole thing, I have just let it go to see what happened.
And now, I rather like it.
What about that? I have an automatic garden! What if everything were this easy?
Robin
I call my lawn tractor Sitwell.
That’s because he sits around pretty well as opposed to riding around and, uh, mowing. He is an expensive piece of equipment.
Sitwell lives to sit around. In fact, just recently, he was one of the factors in the big lawn mowing fiasco that could only be accomplished by two men and a Sitwell mower. He sat out. They mowed with the John Deere push mower. And not well, I should add.
Please note that the grass has been mowed AROUND Sitwell. The mower needs his own mower.
As it turned out, the problem with Sitwell that time was his mower blade was bent, for some unfathomable reason, after a short drive with my 17-year-old son.
But after paying $398 to get the mower repaired and tuned up, I was dismayed, to say the least, when Sitwell decided to do another sitdown. After driving a mere 11 yards, the whole mowing deck landed flat on the ground bringing the mower to a screeching halt. That comes to about $36.18 per yard of mowing or $12.06 per foot of mowing.
I really can’t afford a Sitwell mower.
And because I was faced with another four hours of push mowing and raking because the push mower doesn’t have a mulching attachment, I was a wee bit put out. Okay, I am facing another business trip and tight deadlines, so I was even more than a “wee bit put out” when I called the mower man to come and cart Sitwell off to the hospital again.
Poor mower man. I reckon that this fellow doesn’t often encounter a woman as tall as I am in full dudgeon about her mower. After I gave myself the old “Robin, get a life” chat, I explained the reason for my pique—Sitwell is a slacker and I am tired of push mowing the lawn. This simply isn’t humorous anymore.
See, as you can see, Sitwell has a history of getting into trouble. He has no stamina at all. I need a mower with a bit more staying power—some umph!
Another Sitwell moment from history
Well, it also occurs to me that it’s come to this. I am now writing about my riding lawn mower as if it were interesting.
Signing off now to go get a life.
Robin
