Around your house 7/11/07

Kitchen:The man who gave us a photographic chronicle of everything he ate for a year has turned his focus on what you are eating, especially if you are a man of dubious kitchen skills. Tucker Shaw's new book "Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens" is an irreverent cookbook (it includes discussions of his friend's cleavage) aimed at enticing anyone ill-at-ease in the kitchen to start cooking. Recipes such as baked ziti are familiar and no special equipment is called for. This isn't health food (the refried doughnuts with cream cheese dip attest to that), but it is good, real cooking that's rarely dull. -- AP

Garden

Provide water in the garden for the birds, especially during dry weather. Remove infected leaves from roses. Pick up fallen leaves. Continue fungicidal sprays as needed. While spraying roses with fungicides, mix extra and spray hardy phlox to prevent powdery mildew. Newly planted trees and shrubs should continue to be watered thoroughly, once a week. Fertilize container plants every 2 weeks with a water soluble solution. Keep weeds from making seeds now. This will mean less weeding next year. Spray hollies for leaf miner control. Prune climbing roses and rambler roses after bloom. Apply final treatment for borers on hardwood trees. Divide and reset oriental poppies after flowering as the foliage dies. Dig potatoes when the tops die. Plant fall potatoes by the 15th.

-- mobot.org

Home

If you turn on a faucet and all you get is a trickle, or streams squirting left and right, the problem might not be in your faucet at all. It might be the small device on the end of the spout called an aerator.

It's there to mix air into the water stream and to provide an even, splash-free flow. But its screen traps all kinds of debris, from rust particles to calcium deposits. The solution is an easy one. First: To unscrew the aerator, wrap it with masking tape to protect the surface, then use pliers for a solid grip. Once it's off, remove the gunk from the screen (soak overnight in vinegar, if needed) and screw it back on.

-- AP