Tuesday, September 18, 2018: Ants, icemaker and Acalypha hispida (chenille plant) Update

On June 8, 2018 I attended a propagation class at the MoBot. One of the plantings I brought home was a Acalypha hispida (chenille plant). I re-potted it into a 1-liter air pot and took it down to stay with Laura during my Iceland trip in July. I was very impressed when I got back that it seemed to be doing very well. When I got back home on August 9, the plant was 10" tall. Today, it is 12" tall and I decided to transfer it to a larger (3 gallon) air pot. I will take it down to Houston when I start my next European trip next week.

I have frequently been seeing ants crawling up the outside of the bay and disappearing beneath the window frames. Where they are going after that, I don't know. I have not seen any inside the sunroom except for occasionally on the bar. I have been shooting the ants with Raid, but they seem to come back almost daily now. Today, I called Matt at Rottler and asked if he could come out before I left town on Sunday. He said he would be here Saturday morning.

Bruce (icemaker technician) replaced the control board on the U-Line icemaker. The control board cost $389.22 including labor and tax. Hopefully, that will correct the problem. Bruce said the same board is used in virtually all U-Line appliances and he just has to put the correct code in for the board to know what it is used for. As for whether or not this type of failure is "normal", he said it is unpredictable. He could see not apparent damage to the board he removed. The warranty on the new board is 90 days!