Slug Shorts Out Air-Conditioner Capacitor - Explodes, Just in Time for 100 Real Feel Day

These look better than slugs -
Sweetheart caladiums.

Sunday became warmer and warmer. I knew something was amiss. One circuit was tripped and the condenser outside would not go back on.

Monday brought relief from the same repairman who fixed the unit once before, on a similar impossibly hot day.

He brought in a roasted slug in his pliers. The slug complete the circuit and blew up the capacitor and himself, but also mucked up some of the connections.

The condenser is near the water faucet, so the slugs have a constant supply of moist organic material to feast upon. I will have to clear out more of that and host another beer party for them.

Copper will not stop slugs. Eggshells will not slow them down. Diatomaceous earth may help and even be a deterrent, but it washes away in the rain (when the slugs party) and when watering the plants.

Slug poison will kill other creatures - not a good idea. I am sticking to beer traps and diatomaceous earth, which is used in food products and also consumed for health reasons (no thanks).

The repairman said earwigs were a serious invasion this year, although I have seen very few. I believe our beneficial insect balance has reduced them. An earwig is very tough to kill, because of its outer shell, so they also short out air conditioning units.

I mentioned the little brown beetles to him, which are numerous in the house. Once it rained, 10 more were in the bathroom, not crawling all over but dead or dying. He called them flying tanks, because they fly into him while he works in his repair shop outside. They are round, fat, and well armored, more so than earwigs.

Tomorrow blueberries will be planted.

I bought blueberry bushes at Almost Eden and received a quick education on caring for them.

Today I needed to stop at Lowe's to get peat moss to make the soil more acid. That is the key to berry production. Sassy went inside with me and got an enormous amount of attention. That is her favorite store, and a new group of people will fuss over her each time. Many of the staff know her by name.

I will need netting later when the berries ripen, and I may dedicate one bush to the birds - no restrictions.

One reader mentioned not watering when it was super hot - due to evaporation. That is a good point, and a reason why the deeper bird baths are so popular. I put water in the shallow baths, but that is gone later in the day. The community pools lose water but remain tempting and popular.

One myth is that water droplets burn plants in the sun. That is physically impossible and also proven to be false. Evaporating water is cooling, not burning, or all the ponds and cricks would be on fire.

Diverse Planting
The basic message of hosting beneficial creatures is:
Avoid all poisons.
Diversify the planting.
Provide water, shelter, and overwintering places for the next generation.

This has been quite an education. Before I would look at retail store plants and wonder why anyone would plant them. Now I go through the Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden book and shop for them.

Walmart had lots of bee balm, so I bought some more. This morning a bee was working the new blossoms as I watered some plants.

Coreopsis was just a name until I learned it was great for beneficial bugs. Now I have some in various places in the yard.

I always liked dill, but this summer I was purpose-driven to get dill started, along with its cousins Queen Ann's Lace and Laceflower. The whole carrot family seeds itself for the next year, so I will continue to enjoy them.

People look down on dandelion, ragweed, goldenrod, pigweed, and plantain, but they are either medicinal or good for harboring insects.

Sunflowers are a favorite of mine for bird seed, but they are also early exploiters of EFN - that extra sweet nectar created away from the flower to lure the pollinating insects.

She is in the photo for the cream later.

Planting the Blackberries

Sassy and I took our morning walk, and it was cool and breezy, ideal for planting. When I get help with the blueberries later today, it will be very hot and humid, but in the shade.

Every time I start digging, I think of the Russian tale, How Much Land Does a Man Need? He gets to walk around the perimeter to earn free land, but he over-reaches and dies from trying to get back to the starting point.

I had gallon pots of blackberries, the ones coming out of every window of the Ichaboat, so I only needed six of them.

One of the most pleasant occupations is re-arranging a little of God's Creation to have a new effect. I had plants galore in the back, including a vine with unusual growth, ampelopsis I think - not poison ivy. The vine is subtle. From a narrow stem it reaches up for sunlight and spreads in every direction. I snipped that initial feeder and the whole vine began wilting. False doctrine is like that - find the weakness and everything dies with it, but the seeds spring up later to try again.

The idea is to have a solid green fence that also bears fruit.

I planted a Beautyberry near the original Jackson Bird Spa.I am building up bird and insect friendly plantings near the spa.

The rain kept the baths full for a time, and they were really dirty. The Community Pool was used by starlings - even on rainy days. They gave back some of the seed and suet they have been eating, and I fertilized and watered the sunflowers they will soon be eating from.

The abundance of stored rainwater means I could give favored plants a boost. The wilted big store plant recovered right away with rainwater.

I soak plants before digging them in, if I have time. Otherwise I add rainwater afterwards.

A reader sent me a story about water for birds in the hot weather. They showed a typical bird bath, really just a sipping bowl. I have 12 of those - very useful. The two community pools are appreciated more. The birds like to get plenty of water around their feathers, wash the grit off, and shake dry. Then they preen in a private location up in the trees or on the fence.

Birds take dust baths, whether to eliminate bugs or - who knows. I have seen groups of birds getting their baths in the dry ground. There are little clouds of dust. If all the birds do this, that would explain the amount of soil at the bottom of the pool.

The Cult, the Personality Cult, and the Legacy of Stephan and Walther

We happened upon a TV special about the guru James Arthur Ray and his robotic followers. Three of them died at his spiritual warrior sweat lodge event. Many went to the hospital.

The "law of attraction" came up as a basic theme of self-help. Simply put, positive thoughts attract positive events while negative thoughts invite negative experiences. This was promoted in a best-seller called The Secret.

I do not know why this is a secret. Norman Vincent Peale plagiarized it from an occult woman's book, and Robert Schuller spun it into Possibility Thinking.

All this comes from the occult, from paganism, and doubtless is drawn especially from Asian religion, which is also imbued with the notion of material success.

Herescope:
On page 162 of A Time of Departing, Ray Yungen explains the important background information to this scenario. He noted that George Mair's book, A Life with Purpose, which was a "positive account" of Rick Warren's life, stated that:

"New Age prophet Norman Vincent Peale was at the foundation of the church-growth movement and furthermore 'many of Peale's uplifting affirmations originated with an "obscure teacher of occult science" named Florence Scovel Shinn.'"
One of the mediating influences is the Masonic Lodge, which is the basis for the Mormon Church, where future grooms are considered for their PEP, as one father told us - Potential Earning Power.

Where the Means of Grace are absent, all kinds of nonsense rushes in to fill the void. That is why this is especially noticeable in Mark Jeske, coming from an anti-Confessional sect. WELS considers the Book of Concord to be a quaint, boring, irrelevant book, which the clergy never study and the laity know nothing about.

Jodi Arias believed in the "law of attraction" too.

One can listen to the Jeske guru a few minutes and hear the New Age swami talk coming through his patronizing, stained glassed whisper. Attaching some Biblical words to his nonsense is part of the spin. Millionaires eat this up - it is their compass in life and business,  which happened to work for a time. After all, now they are rich and have young wives. That alone validates The Secret, they imagine.

The cult mindset is one of robotic obedience, which is excused by saying, "We will entertain no negative thoughts." How else can anyone explain Bishop Martin Stephan leaving Dresden in a ship with his mistress in the next cabin, his sick wife and children back at home? Clearly, as Walther explained "confidentially," the fault was Mrs. Stephan's (Walther - Servant of the Word).

CFW Walther and his brother never noticed - they were busy kidnapping their niece and nephew from their parents' home. The cult followers of today excuse this, "The kids wanted to go to America." Try that on the modern court system and see how soon the handcuffs come out.

Positive thinking really means - abandon all critical thinking. That allows any text to be re-interpreted  in opposition to the harmony of Biblical truths.

Various WELS, ELS, LCMS, and CLC (sic) leaders hated on me for criticizing their precious Church Growth Movement. They never stopped to wonder why they were meeting ELCA leaders at those same Fuller, Willow Creek, and Trinity Divinity training events.

If they had said, "We want to adopt paganism and magic and visualizing success, because it works," they would be driven out with pitchforks and burning torches. But instead, they wanted the church to grow and anyone who did not adopt their gimmicks was lazy.

I suggest

1. not reading about abusive cults
2. not reading about the New Age groups
3. not reading the real history of the synods.

If you do, the stark truths will appall and dismay. Many clergy stopped talking to me when I published about this. Some of them woke up and said, "It is far worse than anything you said." But they got their brains re-washed and went back to Holy Mother Sect. They are far more content now than ever before. Their gurus gave them a new way to not think about all this.

One of the James Arthur Ray followers said he spent a small fortune on those seminars and cannot pay his bills. He said, "I am putting it out there. I need more money." He was saying, "If I visualize the need and tell the universe about it, the money will come." And if the Prince of This World gives him his desires for a moment, he will be even worse off than ever before.