Fall leaves that were still sitting on top of the open pile (that now has pumpkin or squash of some kind growing in it!) Apple cores nectarine pit UCG from couple day's pots used tea bags from iced tea strawberry hulls and a few mushy berries soggy pasta left sitting in the water during dinner (but poured the water into the pan I nuked the meatballs and sauce in) cucumber peel from 1/2 cuke used tonight I've got a couple pounds of rancid whole wheat flour - can this be added? A little bit at a time, or stir in to it doesn't clump? I never put fats (not even buttered noodles) into the compost, so not sure about whole wheat flour. Plus we have bears (I sifted out 12 gallons of finished compost from the bin yesterday since a bear had torn it up overnight anyway). Thanks

Zinsser is neither more nor less effective than the Killz. One coat MAY do it, but two DEFINITELY will. Even if I were using the Zinnser (whichever way that goes, two n's or two s's, LOL!) I would still use 2 coats. It's better to just bear down and do what you KNOW will work than to take a chance thinking one coat MIGHT do it. I have no brand loyalty. Either will work. I chose the Killz because it is easier to find and costs less in my area. Coming along and claiming that "TSP will cause paint failure" and providing absolutely no evidence to back that claim up isn't going to fly. For every "pro" who claims TSP is awful there are others (professionals) who have used it properly and successfully for literally decades. Dirtex, btw, provides absolutely no deglossing whatsoever. I don't think it provides much in the way of degreasing to speak of either. TSP does both. However TSP can damage tile and grout so we'll be using something else in the bathroom once the tub has been hauled out of there. If TSP has caused paint failure for you, it wasn't the TSP that caused it. It was your incorrect application and use of it. Proper use can be finicky and time-consuming from the point of view of a professional who just wants to get in there, slap the paint up, and get out. However it is very effective and well worth the effort when you are the one living with the paint job and you don't want it to peel, blister, or otherwise fail to adhere in a few years. When we get around to doing the exterior, I WILL be washing the entire house down with TSP. It is the best thing I've ever found for getting rid of that chalky residue. I can't use a power washer or any sort of wire brush, nor sanding, because the exterior is clad in 60 year old asbestos shingle. So me, a bucket of rags soaking in TSP, and a regular garden hose will be doing it all. I've seen other houses in the neighborhood that are peeling, blistering, and have the new paint flaking off because the professionals they hired to paint didn't bother to prep, or didn't prep properly. MY house won't look like that when I'm done. I have had well over 50 years of success with TSP when prepping old walls for paint, between me and my father. I'd say 100 years, but I don't actually know how long its been on the market, LOL! @dchall_san_antonio - you did your paint prep with stuff I wouldn't have used nor would I recommend using it, especially for mitigation of cigarette smoke residue, but if it worked for you, great. And OF COURSE you had to prime - even using the correct cleaning methods and substances, you will never get all that stuff off. Any encapsulating primer will do. The 2 with which I am familiar are the Killz ORIGINAL (not the other primers they make) or the Zinsser BIN. You used the latter. I'm not surprised it helped. And I'm not surprised nothing worked until you primed over it with an encapsulating primer. I am surprised you got away with cleaning just the 2 rooms. There is tar and nicotine in every single room in this house, even the one no one ever smoked in because there was a parrot in there. They kept the door to that room closed. There was LESS of it, but it was still there and still not something you want to try to paint over. In the room where the chain-smoker lived (all 3 adults in this household smoked but one was a chain-smoker), I thought the walls were yellow. The same shade of yellow. They weren't. 3 walls had been painted a peachy cream, and the 4th wall was (supposed to be) white. That was tar and nicotine coating the walls, floor, ceiling and baseboards, ever surface in the house has this guck on it. Trust me, you are VERY lucky you got away with doing as little as you did, LOL! Good on you for taking the job on and seeing it through. @jn3344 - I thought that might have been what you meant. Nope - still working my way through this project. My son was too tired to go out yesterday or the day before so we've had a 2 day break, but we're off to the races today. I get tired too, but he's not used to this type of physical labor and we've both got a thing about heights, which makes doing the 10' ceiling kind of nerve wracking even on the scaffolding, LOL! So I'm careful to be extra meticulous up there. The only time I've seen the kind of blotchiness you're talking about was my very first paint job on my own, when I let a sales guy talk me into their one-coat (allegedly) primer/paint combo to go up on brand new unprimed drywall. Sure enough, it soaked right into the drywall like it was a sponge and looked awful. It was pretty obvious it was NOT working right away so I didn't waste much time or material on it, just went out and got a good primer, double coated with that (its a habit of mine to double coat with primer on new or very old walls anyway but this REALLY needed the double coating). Years later the new owners contacted me through friends to find out what I had used because they were just now getting around to repainting it and wanted to know what I had used that held up for over a quarter century, LOL! Hopefully we will finish the washing and rinsing today or tomorrow. Then I'll go around with the orbital sander to get the worst of the paint runs and any other problem areas while my son comes behind me to clean up the dust. Then I'll be stripping trim. Then priming everything. Then we'll be in the homestretch. In some ways this is the hardest job I've ever done, between my general debility these days and having to clean tar and nicotine off (that's a first for me, I've never seen this before, lucky me, LOL!) In other ways, its the easiest. This is the first time I've ever been able to paint a completely empty house. It makes a lot of things lots easier.

I always taste test one grape. I am testing for firmness. I've had too many times when I bought grapes and when I get home, I find out that they are soft (not fresh). That is the fault of the store, so I do not feel guilty about eating one before I buy. As for cut fruit, I would never buy a cut watermelon or any other cut fruit because of dirty knives and I don't want someone's hands all over it. Also, I only buy USA fruit (except for bananas). That means no grapes from Chile, etc. In winter I wanted to buy an orange and they were from South Africa. South Africa! With California and Florida growing oranges, I have to buy an orange from South Africa? I actually looked up on Google the distance from where I live to South Africa and it is almost 8000 miles. I complained to the manager and he said that the store buyers try to get the best deal for the shopper. Wrong. They are getting the best deal for themselves. I'm not crazy about produce from Mexico, but I've resigned myself to that, unless I can avoid it. For example, tomatoes from Mexico. I would never buy the onions from Peru. And absolutely no garlic from China. I bought some frozen strawberries and when I got home I found out that they were from Egypt. Egypt! Come on! Those went straight down the garbage disposal. By the way, I shop at a regular grocery store---Stop and Shop.

"Trees in the Borage family" makes me think of the now seemingly unobtainable Ehretia trees. Forestfarm, decades ago, briefly offered them based on a tip about where to find seeds in western Washington - from ALJ. My overall impression is the new Forestfarm, no longer directly run by Ray Prag, is less likely to chase down ultra-obscure stuff like that. They will grow in the southeast: https://jcra.ncsu.edu/horticulture/our-plants/results.php?search=Ehretia Embo why don't you open a mail order nursery!!!