The same company that brought us the fabulous Power Squid, seen left, now has a plug that lets you easily remove cords from walls with less strain on your hands and fingers.

The EZ Plug by Power Sentry seen below right, has an ergonomic lever up top. Apply slight pressure to the lever and the prongs eject from the electrical socket. The adapter can be used with 2- or 3-pronged electrical devices.

The EZ Plug could be key for someone with arthritis, where just trying to pull the appliance cord from the wall is painful if not impossible.

Vacuums, food processors and Marty’s blow dryer are particularly vexing.

You can often find the EZ Plug on eBay, but otherwise it’s difficult to find on the Internet and the Power Sentry Web site does not list retailers.

Eds. Note: We know you know this, but the photos above - or anywhere else on our site - are not to scale. A Power Squid - which is so handy we own four between them - is much more humongous, of course, than the EZ Plug. We’re fairly sure you also know the meaning of humongous. We’re highlighting it only because it links to a history of that word which Marty found interesting.

Reinvent it. That’s our philosophy of gardening.

Here we’ve put an old enamel cooking pot filled with Italian basil on a pedestal in front of our Purple Haze carrot bed, which is an old farm trough.

In a few weeks vines will have filled in the trellis wall behind the trough, the carrots will be bushy and tall, and the basil will have gone to pesto and salads and be replaced with ornamental cabbage for the fall.

Instead of having a few score of birthday candles to blow out, opt for these Roman Numeral Candles from Shakespeare’s Den which claims to be the Internet’s largest selection of Shakespearen gifts and theatre gifts on the internet.

Each set comes with four characters representing ages up to 89.

A good explainer on the growing number of inexpensive devices that let us monitor the energy our appliances, TVs, computers and heating and cooling system really use. The average home reportedly has 27 power-sucking devices that are always on. How many do you have?

Spectacular photos in the New York Times story about Light Emitting Diodes, or L.E.D.’s. We’re fans of L.E.D.’s and look forward to the day when they become cheaper to use throughout the house, especially down near floors and along walls.

Rick Manning of the Courier-Journal weighs in with his latest list of gadgets, including a twist-and-fold media tripod.

The next time you travel to a theme park ask if they have portable Global Positioning Systems - palm-sized electronic guides that help you navigate and save steps.

SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, for example, has Shamu’s SmartGuide which tells you - by voice in English, Spanish or Portuguese - of the nearest rest room, which restaurant has air conditioning, points of interest and how to get to the best view of the fireworks.

Some of the information is available on the park’s traditional paper map. What the GPS does is reorganize that information. For example, the entertainment lineup can be filtered by show name or by time of day. Rides can be divided into “thrill” or kid-friendly, family ride listings.

(via The Orlando Sentinel)

We’ve returned home from Alison’s Not-Too-Wild Animal Park with beaucoup llama poop and the vision of having seen, petted and/or fed docile Scottish Highland Cattle, baby llamas with their mamas, myriad geese, ducks, turkeys, emu and three deer, which raced across the top of a hill.

Cait & Marty bonded with the llamas, burros, sheep, ponies, dogs and baby kitties without adopting any and bringing them home to the backyard of their suburban duplex.

Of the eight kabillion photos Cait took today, she liked this one best, seen up top, of a female llama with attitude to spare. The one below is of Cait feeding a goat with a ear from the farm’s dried corn bins while our friend Courtney, who lives at the farm, lends support.

With the Gimpy Garden doing well, as seen above with some of our first harvest, Cait & Marty are heading out today to scoop poop from a llama ranch with Alison, our llama guide.

Come fall, the llamas’ gift will grace our raised asparagus bed and get topped off with a thick matting of straw to put that part of the garden to bed for the winter.

Rotted llama doo is exquisite as a fertilizer, as is the cow poop we fork into big buckets and bring home each year from the Madison World Cow Expo - the cow show of all cow shows. There is much Guano Gold for the taking at the Cow Expo, and even bales of straw that otherwise would end up in a landfill when tractors and garbage trucks roll in to clean up at the cow show’s end.

Combine that with the bedding from our chicken coop, the contribution from our worms, and the black gold from our Mantis Compost Twin and we’ve got a pretty good Slow Food movement happening here at G.G. World Headquarters.

Warning: Cait & Marty gush over Apple iPhone - again

Being gadget crazy yet technologically impaired, we are gung ho to control their home lights, appliances and security system with the iPhone Marty bought herself and then loaned to Cait, who hasn’t given it back.

We know bubkus about the X-10 wireless gadetry that makes this work, but we see how this could give you more independence at home.

For example, using Marty’s iPhone Cait could control her VCR and DVD, her TiVo (if she had one), her computer, her home security system and her lights - inside and out.

Using the iPhone as a remote control would save Cait extra steps when she inadvertently leaves the stove on and it would be lovely to light the bathroom before she walks in.

Again, remember, we know from bubkus of what we speak, but we have faith in Apple and Steve Jobs. For more information, ask anyone but us. Contact your local Apple store or seek a geek who worships All Things Apple.

To learn more about Steve Jobs, click here to read his profile in Dickipedia - a Wiki of Dicks.

Click here to see a brief video of the iPhone being used as a remote.

Eds Note: As we’ve noted previously, we have leaned on Apple products for years and appreciate their elegance, simplicity and intuitiveness. Apple, in our opinion, nearly has mastered the right side of the brain. Once software for Apple products easily and accurately translate speech into the written word, we will be in Code Monkey heaven.

Our Garden Cherub clearly is stunned by the generous gifts bestowed upon her by Mother Nature.

She’s usually front and center in all her glory in The Gimpy Garden.

These days, however, she’s rapidly vanishing under squash vines, as seen below.

The Cherub, a small concrete facsimile of a ship’s prow, has lived in Marty’s gardens for about 15 years now.

She used to live on Cait’s side of the Gimpy Garden, where Marty placed her under a tree thinking she would delight Cait. A year passed without Cait mentioning the arrival of the Cherub, so Marty asked, “Do like her?” and Cait said, “Not really.” So now the Cherub is back on Marty’s side presiding over vines as fertile and fine as she believes herself to be.

Marty fell in love with pencils when her mother, a school principal, let Marty mount a heavy, solid-metal, hand-crank pencil sharpener to the window sill above her childhood desk in her bedroom.

That smooth little machine turned Marty into a sharpening fool. And to this day, Marty cannot abide a dull point in pencils or people.

As an adult, Marty found electric and battery-operated sharpeners too zippy and their dentist-drill noise annoying.

Today, she favors hand-held pencil sharpeners by KUM, which makes a sweet two-hole sharpener, shown above, that first sharpens the wood and then sharpens the graphite to a perfect point.

As for pencil bias, Marty for years used thick-bodied, old-fashioned, soft-lead, architect’s wood drafting pencils by Dixon Ticonderoga and Sanford - especially the Sanford Draughting 02237 (should any of you ever fall on a stash and feel like sharing).

When those began to vanish from the market, Marty found elegant Palomino Pencils, in Paper Notes in a Digital World, the blog of a pencil perfectionist who found he preferred writing on paper to writing on a keyboard. (He had good things to say. We miss his posts.)

The Palomino line, seen here to the right, was created by pencil purist Charles P. “Woodchuck” Berolzheimer II, whose family firm invented the ubiquitous Duraflame log and now is the world’s leading maker of pencil slats. In Marty’s opinion, only someone integrated in the tactile nature of science and art could create a pencil as satisfying as the Palomino.

Now, sometimes, you just need to get down to fun and that is when you reach in your desk drawer and pull out a Smencil.

No. 2 graphite Smencil’s are gourmet-scented in Bubble Gum, Cherry, Chocolate, Cotton Candy, Grape, Orange, Root Beer, Tropical Blast, Very Berry, and Watermelon. Made from recycled newspaper, they come individually wrapped and will be a far greater hit with children than a Palomino - unless of course its the kind Roy rode.

Eds. Note: Cait notes that pencils have always been popular with ladies who manicure and now must be considered an essential Gimpliment in a world increasingly driven by the technological push of tiny buttons.

The reliable pencil, Cait says, is the perfect tool if your hand dexterity is wanting and you need to phone someone, text message or slide that slightly out-of-reach piece of paper closer to you.