It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBS Boston's news radio.
What a great segue by Nicole Davis. Nicole, as always, thank you very much. I am the aforementioned Dan Ray. Ready to rock and roll all the way until midnight tonight, or just a couple of minutes short of midnight, about eleven fifty eight. We have guests lined up, a guest lined up. We have many guests this hour for in fact,
and we have some great topics. We will talk with the Biden administration Regional administrator for the EPA here in New England about old power itch issues, power options here in New England for all of us, as we've just gone through a very cold winter, which is still kind of cold for late March in my opinion. Baseball just
around the corner tomorrow the Red Sox open up. The season actually underway already with the with the games over in Japan, so we got We will talk with David Cash, Dave Cash, former Regional Administrator the EPA here in what's called Region one, New England under the Biden administration. We'll also continue our conversation about.
The Yemen signal chat.
And all of the controversy that that has generated. I have strong opinions on it, and I'd like to share them with you, but more importantly, I want to hear your opinions. However, we have a four very interesting guest coming.
Up on a variety of topics.
Here, a little bit of financial planning, and we're going to talk about weight, drugs, Willgovie and zip Bound and going to talk about some budget tips for a budget friendly vacation this summer, and also a little bit about gardening. So we're going to start it off Chris Carosa. Chris is a certified trust and fiduciary advisor, senior contributor to Forbes, and author of Hey What's My Number? How to improve
the odds You'll retire in comfort? That is a question that if all of us, at some point during our life have to think about.
Chris corros So, Welcome to night, Satt How are you tonight?
Hey, I'm doing great over here.
How are you just fine?
I certainly do understand we're talking about the idea if there's a recession on the horizon. I'm not someone who anticipates a recession, but recessions do occur in our economy, and I have always thought that the cruelest tax on retired people seniors is the inflation tax, which of course is not a tax per se, but when an inflation hits and the cost of everything goes up, people who are in fixed incomes, who have worked all their lives,
they feel the front of it. The corollary of that is, can retirees perhaps have a little bit of a benefit from a recession? And most people probably would not look at it that way, But we're asking you to look at it that way, and I suspect that you're going to probably say, yes, what's your thought on that?
There are a couple of ways that you can benefit from a recession if you're retired again, it depends on your circumstances. If you're going into recession carrying a debt load, Generally, in recessions, interest rates go down, so it gives you an opportunity to refinance. Even on the inflation side, you do have some discretion on what you're doing with your spending,
and probably a little bit more than if you're working. So, for example, if you're working, you're going to have to travel to work, and that costs energy to do, and energy generally is inflation hits the hardest lot. I mean, anybody who buys gas will see that. So that's something you don't have to do you're in retirement. But there is one thing that I see more and more popping up at least interest in it, and I have done
articles on this too. I know it's a little bit different than what you're talking about, but the way that seniors will tackle inflation or just the need for extra money is by turning some other hobbies into maybe sort of like a side hustle.
Of a little bit.
It's not a real, like the intensive type of business where you have all the strategic planning and all that. It's really something like, you know, selling food on a fruit stand, the equivalent of that. It's easy to do. The markets are usually something that the person's very familiar with.
Like I say, if it's a hobby, they know what other hobbyists like, and they've probably got the experience where they can come up with ideas on how to turn that experience into some sort of product or service that other hobbyists would pay them to do. Well. I think that's certainly an opportunity.
Yeah, I think the distinction you're making is someone once said to me, find your passion in life. Find to find a way to work in your career and do something that you really like, and therefore you'll never really work a day in your life because I come to work every day.
I like what I do.
Uh, some days are tougher than others, I will admit, but I like what I do, and I feel that I've been blessed with a career in both television and radio, which you know has has carried me for more years than I care to admit. And if if a senior, you know the idea of retirement. When I was young, back as a baby boomer, you got to sixty five, you get the wristwatch from the company you worked for, and you had your sol security check and it was
you were all set. Well. I figured out sometime in my twenties that so security wasn't probably going to do it for me.
So I I and a lot of other people did as well.
I'm working well past sixty five by choice. I could retire if I want to, but I enjoy the stimulation. And there's if you do have a side hustle, even if you are now retired from that nine to five job or that forty hour week job, and you have a side hustle, even if it's something like I don't know, being sort of a handyman that can help some neighbors save some money.
So when they have a small.
Problem, instead of instead of calling a carpenter or plumber, you could be the handyman of the street who could get around and make a few dollars and save your neighbors some money. Something like that, I think is what you're talking about.
Yeah, you know, a lot of it is planning ahead, and I'll tell you just to piking back off what you said. I opened my book Hey What's My Number with a story about what I did when I felt when I was a kid, I would see people retire and then they would die very soon after they retired. So I decided very early when I was a kid, you know what, I'm going to try to figure it out a way not to retire. Maybe it'll prog along
my life. So I did exactly what you did. I picked a profession that I would enjoy doing that is more mental than physical, so I won't have that to worry too much about. But it's something that I could do well into really my seventies if I chose to and that's the sort of thing that I would like to do. But there's enough I already.
I will confess to you, Chris, I am well into my seventies, okay, and I still enjoy what I do. I will tell you. When I was very young, I thought about it'd be kind of cool to be a lumberjack. Took me about three days to figure out what a lumberjack does, so I kind of gave up on that dream.
You know a long time.
And I'm like you, I I talk for a living, and I know that, and I have to think and talk, and I know that you have to think and calculate for a living.
And so you know you're not developing callouses on.
Your hands, you and you're keeping your brain active. So that's tell us about your book. Here is your book available at this point it's the author is hey. I like that reminds me of Willie Mays to say, hey kid, what's my number? How to improve the odds you will retire and comfort? Where can folks get that?
So you can get it anywhere any bookstore, Amazon, wherever you go. The way I remember it isn't with baseball, it's actually with a Broadway. You know that song. Hey, look me over. It's like, hey, what's my number?
Yeah, sure, lend me an ear right? Yeah? Absolutely, Yeah, that's good. Now I get it.
I totally, I totally get what you're saying. Look, I really enjoyed this. And folks, can they get in touch with you? Some of my guests, they say they give out a website where people.
Can reach them. Are you willing to do that?
Sure, it's really easy. It's my name rosa dot com. Just go there and you'll see what I write about. And if you want to get a hold of me, there's ways to do that through that website.
So simply Chris C H R I S. And it's Corosa C A R O s A dot com.
That's right, that's great.
Appreciate the time, Chris. I'd love to have you back. I enjoyed talking with you. Thanks, thank you so.
Much, thank you.
Good bye, all right, bye bye, we'll come back.
We're going to talk about something that is really of interest to some of my listeners, and that is the popular drugs used for weight loss.
Uh.
And we're going to talk with doctor Lydier Alexander. So, if you have any thoughts about Wigovi or zep bound you want to listen carefully. We'll be back on night Side right after this. My name is Dan Ray. This is WBZ Boston ten thirty and your AM dial. You know you can lock us in in your car radio. You know how to do that, and you also can lock us in in the app. Just bring down the iHeart app, put it on your phone and you can make us your presets, so you will have WBZ with
you wherever you go. Three sixty five, twenty four to seven, anywhere in the world, anywhere, anywhere in all twenty four time zones, both north and south of the equator, I mean anywhere. We'll be back right after the break here on Nightside.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the window World Nightside Studios on wb News Radio.
Welcome back, everyone. Delighted to introduce you to.
Doctor Lyda Alexander. She's currently the president of the Obesity Medical Association OMA, a board certified expert in obesity medicine, lifestyle medicine, and internal medicine. Doctor Alexander, welcome to Night's Side. Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me, Dan.
So we're going to talk I know a little bit about some of these drugs. I'm familiar with with goovi, I've never heard of zepbound. Is zep bound a goovy knockoff.
Zetbound is an FDAY approved medication from a different manufacturer. It's a new kid on the black. It's been around for about a year or so.
Okay, so it's late to the game here. WEGOVI has been advertising so much. I mean, I think everybody knows WEGOVI and zep bound is. When I say the word knockoff, what I mean is something similar to wegov.
Yes, it's a it's the medication to treat obesity.
Okay, Now, what is the problem that we're going to talk about here? There was a they soon may become available. They may soon no longer be available because the US federal judge declined an initial injunction to allow compounding pharmacies to continue making versions. Uh these other versions of a coved and zip bound them a little confused by the.
Language and and and rightfully so, because it is confusing language to uh, definitely to to some medical providers as well as the public in general.
When govy and zep bound are both FDA approved medications that have that have been researched and uh and and are being and studied extensively, and they also have the under undergo FDA regulations and oversight when they're produced, and and they have to be certain strict criteria. Compounded medications compounded g LP one specifically that are knockoffs of with GOV and ZEB bound do not undergo f d A rigorous testing. They're they're not they don't have FDA oversight,
and so buyer beware on those medications. So what's happened is a judge has ruled that since the shortage of the real medications has ended, it is no longer okay or acceptable to UH to continue to make these medications to meet demand.
And in fact.
There's a gray market now of of other UH you know, other entities making these okay.
So excuse let me ask you a question.
If I can, and I know a little bit about goovy through the experiences of a friend of mine, WEGOV cannot be prescribed, as I understand it, for weight loss. If weight loss is a sign.
Go ahead.
So what GOV is actually FDA approved for exactly that condition to treat UH, to treat obesity, to treat for chronic weight management. And that's the one and only indication for WA GOV. The zep bound has two indications obstructive sleep apnea and treating weight and UH and so they so UH medical providers are allowed and should be prescribing these medications specifically for obesity.
Okay, then let me let me let me change my understanding that My understanding is that if it is prescribed for something like, oh, let's say someone UH has uh adema in their ankles because their heart is not functioning in one hundred percent capacity UH and they their ankles become endemic H or endemic UH, that the doctors have to make make it very clear for this to be covered from an insurance point of view, that the primary purpose here is not just weight loss, but it's medical benefit.
I hope I'm not wrong on that, because I think I'm correct.
Yes, you're yeah, you are correct on that. The issue is really not so much that the FDA hasn't approved zep bound and what go be to treat obesity and also to treat all the common chronic conditions that come along with obesity. So what you've mentioned, which is heart failure and also other cardiovascular disease, improves when we treat weight. So when we treat the root cause, which is way all the fruits of obesity improved too. And the issue
we're having is that insurance companies. Only about half of insurance companies are willing to cover obesity medications, and therein lies the big issue that.
So that's.
That is what insurance.
Yeah, doctor, that is what I was getting at that many doctors, at least here in Massachusetts, which I know best, cannot prescribe it for weight loss primarily for the patient unless the patient is willing and prepared to pay through the nose. And even in cases where some doctors have prescribed it for heart related issues which include a dema that that they get a little bit of a pushback. The other problem with REGOVI and I want to address this because I want people to know this. Okay, I
lost thirty five pounds ten years ago. I went from twoh five to one seventy and I've stayed there for ten years. I did it through a program called Awaken one to eight, which I firmly believe in nothing to do with medication, nothing to do with pills. My understanding is THEGOV a good percentage the pay of the patients have side effects, including specifically nausea, and that they have
to once they're on MCGOVY. On some of these weight loss drugs, it may sound like a pantas or initially, but my understanding is once you lose the weight, you got to stay on the drug because if not, the weight has the tendency to come back to you if you if you get off the drug. Am I right on those points?
Well, First of all, I want to commend you that that is absolutely wonderful to hear that you successfully lost weight and maintained it for such a long period of time and continue to do so. There's actually an ongoing registry called the National Weight Control Registry that followed individuals who have done exactly what you've done. And I lost weight successfully and kept it off for more than a year.
Signing up, Sign me up because I weigh y?
Yeah you should.
No.
I weigh in.
Every month, and I have weighed in every month one hundred and twenty months nearly now, but it's about one hundred and sixteen months, always under one seventy with clothes on. So but put that aside. Come back to the side effects of we'll go over because I want people to realize that that you can do it. A lot of different ways, but if you try to do it with pills, it's not maybe as simple as it as it sounds.
And that there's also a difficulty of maintaining the weight when you lose that with pills, because if you don't stay with the pills, which can be expensive, the weight in most cases are going to come back again. If I'm wrong on this, I don't want to be giving people bad advice. But I've learned this through friends of mine, and I hope that you can either confirm or correct me.
So the answer is that it is correct that weight that weight loss and keeping it off for a long period of time can be done without medication for some individuals. Not everybody is able to achieve that, even if they've been implementing all the different lifestyle interventions. And I'd like to highlight here the lifestyle the importance of intensive lifestyle interventions, similar to what you have been implementing over the course
of the last decade. It's really important to keep on top of things to have, you know, to have a good nutritional pattern, physical activity, behavioral modification, whether or not you're choosing to take medications. And the reason for that is because it decreases the side effects of the medications, and it also increases the lifespan of the results that we're trying to achieve, which is to keep the weight
off for a long period of time. The difference here for some people is that for many people, in fact, their weight regulatory system can be broken, and it can be it can be temporarily broken, or it can be
like permanently broken. And so when you you know, when you unravel some of the you know, some of this vicious cycle, reverse type two diabetes, treat sleep apnea, decrease stress, and improve your lifestyle and weight comes off, there can be a virtuous cycle where you're undoing some of that damage to the weightness, to the weight mechanism, the bodies innate innate weight mechanism system. And for some people that works and then they are able to manage their weight
effectively with fewer medications. For other individuals, it's not possible. And they have been trying for years. They've done they've they've been to this, you know, to this rodeo many many times, and then the weight comes on and it feels so frustrating to them because they blame theirselves that they are not trying hard enough. And they don't have enough willpower to keep it off, when in fact, you know, we wouldn't blame the patient if their thyroid stopped working
and we had to give them thyroid medication. And this is the four month.
Doctor Alexander, I just want to get because I don't often to get a chance to speak to an expert like you.
There are side effects for MCGOVI, including nausea.
Correct, that's right, that's right. These medications do you have side effect?
Okay?
I appreciate that. And if you do lose the weight through prescription medication, when you achieve whatever weight you would like to get to, you have to stay on that medication in order to stay where you got to. My understanding is that some of the stuff you have this is you're going to be with it for life.
Well the answer, the short answer to that is we don't know. Okay, some individuals will need to be on it for life, and some maybe may need to be on it for several years, and some people may be able to come off it sooner, But we don't know
the answers to that. If we think about obesity as a disease similar to treating blood pressure or sweep, that go yeah, with that, then we know, yeah, then we know some people will be able to successfully come off their their cpaths, or their blood pressure medicines, or their or their antidepressants. Some people just need any depressants for a few years, and some need them lifelong, Doctor.
Alix, I'd like to have you back for a longer segment.
We went over here about three minutes, which of my producer is going to be very mad at me, but I am fascinated by the subject. I'd like to maybe bring you back and maybe talk with some listeners during one of our later hours. Is there a way people can get in touch with you? Is do you have a website that you'd like to tell us about?
Well, yeah, absolutely they can. They can find me on on Instagram under doctor dr dot Lydia.
L y d i A.
And I'm also the chief medical officer at Anara Health. It based in the San Francisco Bay area, and they can they can find me at www dot n r e n a r A health dot com. And I'm also president of they would be c Medicine Association, so you could find me in multiple ways.
Well, we'll get back at you and we'll have it we'll get you back, and we'll have some listener questions as well. I've been immersed in this stuff for ten years. I'm not a doctor, no do I play one on radio. But I know my question is probably a little bit more pointed than most people would expect under these circumstances. But I just want to make sure people know the pluses and the minuses. It's as simple as that. Thank you so much.
Absolutely, they were. It's my pleasure, Dan, thank you, Thank you very much.
We get back.
We are going to talk about twenty tips for a budget friendly vacation. Vacation is just around the corner, you know the song V A C A T I O N. Back on Nightside with Dan Ray after this, It's.
Night Side, Boston's news radio.
Welcome back.
I'm delighted to be joined by Alissa Giacoby. Alyssa, how are you tonight?
I'm good. Thanks, how are you great?
I'm sorry I'm a couple of minutes late here. You are a contributor to the Boston Globe magazine and you have an article. I read the Globe, but I tend probably not to. I pay more attention to the sports page in the news than I do to the Globe magazine. Has this article been out or said coming out this weekend?
Is that article is already out. It's been out actually for a couple of weeks.
Okay, that's good, so people can still find it.
Twenty tips or twenty or more tips for a budget friendly vacation and five costly mistakes. We've all been on vacation, and we're all at the end of the vacation, say, I spent more money than I thought I was going to spend there, what's going on? What are the tips to make it more budget friendly? Give us a couple of the week and hang our hat on Melissa.
Yeah, I mean I think that the biggest takeaways for this, especially right now, is price is are rising generally across the board. To book as early as you can at least three months out, so right now is when you should be starting to think about summer already. You can use booking trackers like Hopper, Kayak, dot Com. Google Flights has some tracking apps so you can check flight prices. And then it's also a little bit about avoiding the peak times, which may seem obvious to some less obvious
to others. People who are sort of bound by school vacations may not have that much may not have that much choice. But otherwise, if you can not travel on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, either coming or going, you're gonna save a lot of money. You can use something midweek if you cannot travel the first you know minute the kids get out of school in June, and instead save that trip until the end of August, you're gonna do better.
The other thing that I've noticed is that whenever the kids want to go get an ice cream, you better bring a big amount of money with you because ice cream cones are nine dollars, and I think it's much more fun for the kids, depending upon their age, and also a little more economical to buy some ice cream, have it in the refrigerator wherever you're staying in some ice cream cones, and have the kids make their own ice creams. I think they will have more fun with it.
Is that realistic in your opinion or no?
Yeah?
Sure. I think that that's one reason that a lot of people are choosing to use vrbo or Airbnb short term rentals is it allows you to not have to eat all of your meals out and so you can have the ice cream you can do breakfast at home, you can have lunch at home. You also you have access to a kitchen and a little bit more space, and generally you can fit a face family or even you know, a couple of couples in one space instead of two hotel rooms.
So yeah, absolutely, and you can kind of relax when you're in hotel rooms. You got to get out so they make up the room for you and whatever. I agree with you on that. So what about you said this five costly mistakes. I don't know if we've hit one of them already, but if we haven't hit all of them, is there a couple more of costly mistakes that we can learn from your article in the Boston Globe magazine a couple of weeks from a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah, I think you know a lot of people wait and bank on a last minute deal. They think that they're going to wait and book their hotel, their flight for the very last minute. But if you have your heart set on going somewhere, it can be disappointing when that doesn't pan out. Also, a lot of times you won't be able to You might be able to fly there for cheap, but won't be able to do the things that you want to do. One trend that's happening is people are doing sort of a reverse engineer of
a trip and they're backwards planning. And that just means that booking a trip based on wherever you can fly the cheapest and then sort of going back from there. But you know, that might be a budget airfare, but it also may not work out for you know, you may have to pay extra for the places you want to go, the tours you want to do. However, many people you've got with you.
Okay, what about what about this?
Okay, those of us in New England, most of us, I think, stick around New England. We might go to the Cape, we might go to New Hampshire. Maybe we'll go up to Maine. Some people like Vermont. Some people go to the Berkshires.
Uh.
And there's also beaches. There's a big coastline in Connecticut. Is there a substantial cost differential one area a little higher or another area a little lower and you can still have the same thing. You can have the amusement park nearby, you can have uh, you can get to a beach. Uh. They're not all the same. I mean the Cape gets a little pricey, right, I.
Think everywhere in New England gets a little pricey in the summer. But certainly if you can make your way inland and you're not necessarily drawn to drawn to the coast, you can save a little bit of money. Generally, the ocean front and ocean towns are going to be more expensive than lakes, but there's a you know, there's many great lakes and bodies of water that are going to sort of give you that ocean feel without having to do that. That's you're going to find that in the
north of Maine. You find that all throughout Vermont. New Hampshire has got a bunch too, So I would say that I'm just sort of thinking a little bit outside the box and and also maybe also looking at a lot of ski resorts. Generally what we think of as ski towns are doing a lot in the summer months to attract people and usually have just like in the winter time.
I'm sure the Cape is a heck of a lot less expensive than is the winner. That's that's some real reverse engineering. Those are great advice, some great advice. Alyssa Giacoby, Boston Globe Magazine writer, Alyssa, where can follow you? Can they they check out some of the body of work at the Globe of a website, we can we can send people to or.
No, yep, so you can read this story at Globe dot com Backslash magazine. It's recent. And then I have a website. It's just a lista Jacoby dot com, but you can you can read my work on the Globe through the website.
Sounds great, Alyssa, thanks very much. We we got to you a little bit later, so we stayed with you a little bit longer, and I just want to thank you very much for your patience and your time and your advice.
Great advice.
Thanks Alyssa, thanks for having Okay, welcome, all right, coming back, we're going to talk about if you're sticking around at home, you're gonna have a lot of fun in the backyard. We're going to talk about the twenty twenty five gardening trends and basic gardening tips for beginners.
I need gardening tips.
I don't think I've ever really gardened, and will answer the time old question, when is it a good time to start preparing your gardens in New England?
I suspect it's right around. Now we'll find out.
Katie Timony, chief marketing officer of Monrovia Plants, will join us on the other side.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World, Nice Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
All right, our fourth and final guest, those of you who are gardeners out there, and I'm not talking about Chauncey Gardner. I'm talking about real gardeners. Let me introduce Katie Timony. Katie, have I gotten your last name fairly close?
I hope it's pretty close. It's Tammany. I'm Katie, Tami.
Nice to be here.
So no relation to Tammany.
Hall right, No different from Ireland.
Yeah, okay, So so gardening this is for me.
It's a challenge. I've never really I.
Have tried the garden, but without success. So if there's people out there tonight, whether they live in the suburbs or they live in a city, what can they do with they'd like to cultivate a little bit of you know, vegetation of some sort, maybe even a plant or two.
How do we start off with this? How do we get going?
Sure, well, a lot of people are a little bit scared, you know, it's over. It can be overwhelming. But I'd say start with good quality plants. You know, make sure you buy plants that are well rooted, they're a good shape, you know, start with a plant that's in good condition before you put it in the ground. That's step one. And then now is a great time to think about the condition of your soil, to really make sure that
where you plant something, you've got good quality soil. So I'd start with those basics.
How do you figure that out?
I'm looking at soil and it looks looks like soil to me. Can you do a test or something?
What can you do?
Yeah, you can test the pH in your soil and then go to your local garden center and say, you know, I've got you know, a soil type that's more acidic or more alkaline. What do I need to add to it?
Yeah? How do you do that?
Though, I'm saying if you're talking to someone like me, who I have no idea, I mean, how do I know?
If it's what do I do to have to that's? I get a little chemical kit or something like that.
Yeah, so there's a little there's little test kits that you can pick up at your garden center or your hardware store. And it's a really simple, you know, inexpensive tool.
That you how deep do you dig down to?
I assume as you take the soil off the top, that might give you a false.
Reading, right, you want to you want to sort of get a sample of your soil? Do you want to dig a little bit deeper? You know, like the I big about six inches to get a good soil sample.
All right, So then when you when you bring the sample back to the gardening center, they're going to say, oh, this is too acidic, or this it's alkali alkaline level or whatever the phrase.
Yeah, and they'll suggest amendments that's what we call them, to improve the quality of your soil.
Kind of like the Constitution right in an Okay, that's.
Good, uh huh.
And so what's the easy stuff that people can You know, right now here in New England, the weather hasn't quite turned. We're still like thirty at night, forties. Okay, wait, can you really start getting out there and start I guess you can pull some soil up now and.
Take it to the god.
Sure, now it's a great time to look at your soil. Sure that that's what you want to do now, But you want to wait until at least mid April, when the tempts are consistently above fifty degrees to start cleaning up. Yeah, you want to wait to clean up your outdoor space because actually you're even You know, the dead stuff right out right now is protecting over winter. Bring pollinators. You know, bees and other important insects are hanging out in dead
flower stems and underleaves. So don't prune anything, don't don't dig anything up just yet.
Wait, I have I have written that down because that's the excuse I'll be using this weekend when my wife.
Say nope, it's a little too early.
The March madness is still on, and my friend, the garden lady told me not to do it, So thank you for that.
Now, what is the sort of stuff unless you love.
Tomatoes or you want cucumbers, what is some sort of a vegetable that you can grow in your garden where you have at least a chance of having it become real sometime in August or September or whenever it becomes real.
Tomatoes are pretty easy, you know, in a sunny spot. Yeah, tomatoes can be very easy. Herbs, you know, lots of herbs are really easy. Basil is mary. But one vegetable monrovia actually doesn't grow vegetables. But one vegetable that I always used to grow with my kids that was very easy is carrots. Okay, starting carrots from seed, that's a super easy you know.
Okay, the rabbits won't be attacked. The rabbits won't be attacking the cat.
You want to you want to protect your edible garden, you know, with something you know again garden center or online, you can buy you know, simple screening to protect your edible garden from deer, from all kinds of critters that want to get in there.
Okay, electric fence.
Well I wouldn't got that far.
Okay, barbed wire, nothing like that, right, but how tall should the fence be?
At least three or four feet?
Well, you want to cover. You want to also if you're trying to keep you know, you know, other critters out, you want to cover the top of your edible garden. If you're doing a raised bed. Yeah, so you can even buy kind of a screening fabric to put over your raised beds.
Okay.
Okay, so yeah, and someone climbing up the fence and then hopping over the fence.
Okay, that's what you know, and.
Then to put up like a to put up a fence, as you're probably gonna tell, I'm not the most mechanically astute talk show host you're going to talk to this spring. So you're going to buy some steaks, right and they yeah, And you're going to hook the fence onto the steaks, and then surround the perimeter. You gotta surround. You can't leave one side of the fence open, obviously, right right.
You have like a raised bed garden that's like three to four feet you know, square, you would you would just put like PVC pipe on the edges. You could do that. You could put a tall kind of steak on each corner and then just lay the sheeting over that. But if you don't want to plant veggies, if you want to plant fruit, which minrovia grows, I would suggest
blueberries would be great. That's an easy shrub. You just need your soil to be a little bit acidic, and the Sunshine blueberry or Bountiful blue great one to plant, produces lots of juicy fruit, so you get wonderful yeah, you get you get wonderful productive berries from those shrubs. And you can plant those they stay compact. You can put them in a container on your patio or in the garden and they just need a lot of sun.
Sounds great, sounds great.
You said your Monrovia Plants.
Are you in Monrovia, Pennsylvania by any chance or no?
No, Actually the nursery was founded in Monrovia, Southern California, Monrovia near Los Angeles. But now we have nurseries all over the country, including in Connecticut and a.
Great we're heard in the eastern half of the US right now. We got people listening everywhere.
So how could people get more information from Rovia Plants.
What's the website?
So it's Monrovia dot com and we have a great tool called my plant Finder where you can type in your zip code and what you're looking for in a plant. You know, maybe you want to attract bees and butterflies, maybe you want to screen out the neighbors. You just you just put in what you're looking for and you up pops the plants that will grow well in your area. So that's Monrovia dot com slash my plant Finder.
Sounds great, Katie Tammany, thank you so much. I got that pronunciation the last time here.
You did you did you nail?
Okay? Thanks Katie, we'll talk again. I really enjoyed touchat with your fun.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, thanks, take the thanks.
When we get back, we're going to talk about where we're going in New England in terms of climate and what we can do. I've got a great guest. His name is Dave Cash. He was the Regional Administrator for the EPA up until UH President Trump took over in January twentieth, and we're going to talk about clean energies from a high school teacher. Is that he is a PhD. He went to Yale and Kennedy School. The government is a great guest.
Had him on before. Stay with us.
We'll talk about again energy in New England and what we can do, how we can.
Strike that balance.
Very important conversation coming up right after the nine o'clock News