Hose Repair

I took pictures, so I might as well use them...  :)

One problem with garden hoses is that, if you don't turn off the water, they tend to burst.  I had a 2nd episode of that recently (last one many years ago, so it isn't routine).

I looked out the window a week ago one morning to see water spraying from a broken hose.  I ran out to shut it off of course.  Totally my fault.  

But there are connections to fix such damage and I have a pot of various types.  The usual is a ribbed plastic piece 3" long you insert in the undamaged parts and tighten clamps to seal.

But hoses come in different sizes and I didn't have the right one.  So, maybe off to the DIY store...

Suppose I just considered the cut up hose as "2 hoses" in need of connections?  There are also connections that fix hose ends.  I had a male and a female connector of thge right size for the hose!

So, here is the busted section and the freshly-cut ends to be connected.

I attached the metal male connector just fine, but the female part would simply not push in the other open hose in spite of lubricants and pulling, yanking, and pushing.  

But I had a plastic female connector.  It worked!  

My broken hose now works just fine, 1' shorter.   

Motorcycle Man

I'm a fairly quiet person.   I prefer sweeping a floor to vacuuming it.  I prefer electric yard tools to gasoline ones (but love my gas-riding-mower for speed).   When I bring my portable stereo out to the garden to listen to music or a baseball game, I walk 50' away to make sure I can''t hear it from that far (so as not to bother the neighbors.

Not that they have the same concern, of course.  One plays music in their car so loud I can hear it indoors with all the windows shut.  Another neighbor 2 houses away plays loud music that does the same.  Another mows the lawn at 8AM every Saturday.  I get it, I'm SUPPOSED to enjoy hearing what they like (coff, coff).  

And it isn't that I'm getting older; I've always been that way.  I tend to think neighbors' rights end at the property line.  And it isn't that I have especially good hearing, it's average.  Noise intrusion here is better than when I lived in apartments.  There was always SOMEONE who needed 120 decibels to enjoy their music.  One time, I tracked down the source of loud noise and it was 3 stories above me.

So it "was" better than it used to be.

But then Motorcycle Man arrived somewhere down the street...  OK, let me say I'm not a great fan of motorcycle noise.  In fact, I understand that for some motorcyclists, part of the pleasure is the deep rumbling noise they make.  I worked in a department store auto-aftermarket section for a couple of years.  Guys would buy motorcycle exhaust pipes and return them because "they were too quiet".  Sure, who doesn't want insufficient and unnecessary noise?  😕

So Motorcycle Man drives back and forth on the street endlessly.  Over and over and over and over again (consider there be many more "over agains").  Almost all day with some brief breaks (meals, I assume).  All perfectly legal AFAIK.  But it is maddeningly repetitive.  He is like the neighbors' dog who barks and snarls endlessly every time I work in my garden.  Never-ending...

And recently, I noticed he was driving several different motorcycles.  I wonder if he has an unlicensed repair shop going?  I may just take a walk down the street when he is most active to see where he lives and see if he has set up a repair shop in the garage or something.  

I have a long history with motorcycle noise here.  For years, my next door neighbor would go to work on his motorcycle.  That's OK, of course.  But he would start it up in his driveway and spend 15 minutes doing stuff (cleaning and tuning?) before he drove off.  At 6 AM!

I asked him one time if he would do that IN his garage to reduce the noise slightly, and he did for a week.  But his wife complained about the increased noise, so he resumed doing it outside.  I fully understand that I ranked WAY below his wife.  Fortunately, he got divorced and moved a year later.

But apparently, every neighborhood needs a motorcyclist.  When my neighbor moved out, another 4 people moved in across the street and 2 of them were motorcyclists.  At least they just got their's going and drove away.

So, I've seen Motorcycle Man a lot.  He looks about college age.  If I am very lucky, he will be leaving soon.  If not, I am going to have to check County noise restrictions.  The noise is loud, but the repetitiveness is driving me nuts.  If he just WENT somewhere, it would be a normal part of neighborhood existence.  

If I could choose, I would prefer the snarling barking dog.  At least I have a fence between us.  And I escape that when I go inside...

Yard And Garden

 Some pictures from the yard and garden...

The daylilies are from a week ago.  They are fading now.  But lovely while they last.

The Black-Eyed Susans are blooming.  It hasn't been raining much and they wilted briefly, but they are native and used to it.  They recovered quickly after just a 1/4" of rain the other day.

The Queen Anne's Lace is also a native and blooms through droughts.  I'm moving to native plants more and more.  With some exceptions...

I mowed the Spring Bulb area and plan to cover it to smother the weeds that have crept in.  Which won't bother the Daffodils and Tulips as they like being dry in Summer and Fall.  The stuff growing at the bottom are the Daylillies but there are weeds among them that I need to pull.

I lost control over this area.  Time for hedge trimmer and lopper work!

Always "something".  I got behind last year, and then there was the ladder fall in January, so I stayed behind.  I'm catching up, though.

The good news is that the Black Eyed Susans are spreading and I can take up many as transplants in Fall (the ones growing in the garden paths) and get the meadow bed re-established with them and some other self-sowing flowers in a cleared area.

Cooking

 I love to prepare food and cook it.  I find it satisfying to do the knifework, plan the timing, handle the food, and then eat it (and preparing food and eating it are two different pleasures).  I don't know exactly when that started, but I remember being in the kitchen as a young teenager.  Mom listened to Broadway musicals and that probably lured me in to start.  But I've always enjoyed good food.  

So when I asked "can I help?" I got a few minor jobs.  Peel potatoes and carrots.  Mash the potatoes.  Watch the timer.  Eventually, I got to actually cut some veggies.  I got better at stuff.  

It's not like I liked it better than a lot of other activities (golfing, bowling, building simple wood stuff, HO trains, Marvel comic books, reading sci-fi), but it was one.  And both Mom and I enjoyed classical and Broadway music.

I had always been the primary dish-washer (being eldest child) and baby-sat the younger siblings (being eldest child).  But one of the pleasures of baby-sitting was that I was also trusted to make a simple dinner at 12 (Chung King Chicken Chow Mein in the old double cans was my favorite, being easy to manage).

I was a Boy Scout.  And I had this idea that a guy should be able to do anything it took to get by day-to-day.  I would have taken Home Economics in school, but that was reserved for girls (guys took wood-working shop) back then (mid 60s).

I came across a funny phrase back then; "If you like bacon, you have to get down in the mud and keep the hogs happy".  Meaning, if you want something, you have to be able to do it yourself.  I liked good food.

I've probably mentioned this before (you blog long enough and you can repeat yourself) but Mom was a very average cook and seldom met a vegetable that couldn't be boiled for too long.  When I discovered stir-frying and steaming later it really opened my eyes to food.

In college, I earned money and/or free meals by cooking sweet&sour pork for other guy's cheap dates in the dorm rec room.  

There's a slight story behind that.  Male dorms never had stovetops in the rec rooms.  Female dorms did.  In 1969, the Univ of MD arranged for a coed dorm by application and approval.  I was approved.  WOW, there was a stovetop (and a bathtub in the shower room BTW).  

Well, I had nothing to cook WITH, so I took a job selling cookware.  Great stuff.  Stainless steel inside and out with a layer of copper in between for heat diffusion.  But if you sold one set, you got to keep the sales kit.  I sold one set and quit and had a full set of cookware that was worth a year's tuition!

So I was able to cook meals at the new coed dorm.  I told the other guys in the dorm that I could cook sweet&sour pork.  The cost was either $5 above ingredient cost or I would buy enough to feed "them and a date and me too.  I had dropped out of the dining hall expense and bought a mini-fridge (good for beer and cheap steaks).  Fed myself better than the dining hall did, and cheaper too.

A business major on my floor of the dorm arranged to sell cheesesteak subs for 2 hours each night for his major.  I cooked a LOT of those.  He offerred better than minimum wage and 1 free sub each night.  So, I love to cook.

Anyway, here was dinner last night.  Cubed smoked pork with smothered onions, broccoli, bicolor corn-on-the-cob, and a nice tossed salad.  With zinfandel wine and leftover cocktail.  I love variety in a meal.  

A bit of pan-frying adds taste and appearance to corn...  Well, there was oil in the pan, so why not use it?

And it makes a salad better when you have variety to choose from.

Dessert was assorted cut-up fresh fruit.

Catching Up

Sometimes, you get behind plans.  Sometimes, there are just too many plans and too little time.  Sometimes, it takes all you have just to make the daily meals and do the laundry.

I've been lucky lately.  Kind of caught up on some things.  Still behind on others, but "catching up" is good.

On the good side:

1.  Picking beans now.  Yum!

2.  Picking wild blackberries in the backyard.  Yum!

3.  Went loose with the hedge trimmer and lopper.  Cleared out some big weeds and brambles that grabbed at me as I mowed the lawn before.

4.  This will seem weird, but my electric mower has 2 batteries and they don't last long (bought cheap - always a mistake) and they are difficult to remove.  So I tied a twine loop around them.  Those came loose, so I used duct tape to hold the twine in place.  Duct tape solves almost everything.

5.  Was missing hearing old CDs because my connections are all messed up (GOT to pull out the rack and fix that).  But then realized my portable multipurpose portable stereos can play them (DUH!).  Been enjoying Simon & Garfunkle all night.

6.  Gave the tomato plants a good soaking of foliar spray.  If that is unfamiliar, it means adding nutrients to the plants on the leaves.  It soaks in.

7.  Had some newly-leaking hose connections.  So I took every one apart and wrapped them with plumber's tape.  Thin plasticy stuff that gets squeezed into the hose threads.  Works great.  No more leaks.

8.  The cucumber and melon plants are beginning to climb the wire trellis.  

9.  I can expect a Tonkinese female kitten in mid September.

On the bad side:

A.  The back yard is "bramble city".  I HAVE to get the brush mower working again.

B.  I need to redo my Will.

C.  I need to get the car in for scheduled maintenance.

D.  I REALLY need to mop all the floors and they are SO clutterred.

E.  I REALLY need to completely redo the stereo/TV connections.  I mean I still have a VCR attached!

F.  I REALLY need to learn how to clip The Mews's claws.

G.  I am very overdo for a dentist visit, an annual physical, and a haircut.

H.  The kitchen ceiling fixture needs to be changed from attached-to-the-ceiling to "suspended".  It never works in Summer because of the hot attic.  Or maybe I need an attic fan.  I'm not sure which is easier.

I.  Weeds have taken over too much of the flowerbeds.  Periwinkle, English Ivy and Poison Ivy mostly.  Thanks to my neighbors...  I might just dig up the best and cover the whole area with black plactic for a year.

J.  The garden beds are probably infested with tomato-killing diseases.  One plant is already entirely yellow.  The solution is to surround the beds tightly in clear plastic for a year for over-heating the soil from trapped sunheat.  It's called solarizing.  I should have done it last year.

K.  I have old furniture.  Some  much of which is junk.  Time to get rid of a lot of stuff.  I've been living like a broke college student for too long (my desires are simple).  Not that I need "house beautiful" with rosewood tables and granite counters, but I could some better stuff.  

L.  Too many junk trees on the edges of the yard.  One day, there is a spling.   Next thing I notice it is 12' tall.  And the neighbor's maple tree roots are making mowing the lawn like driving over railroad ties.      I need to get them grinded out of my lawn.

Isn't there always more on the "To Do List" than you can do?  I'm just going to hire a general contractor to come in and do everything on the list I'm making.  3 bids, of course....  I think my major D-I-Y days are over.

Getting Illegible

I print now because even *I* can't read my own cursive anymore.  It is completely scribble these days.  Writing a check is a serious thing;  I have almost everything on autopay.  But the water bill has to have a check (or a $5 surcharge for online paying).  You should see me write that one every 3 months.  It is an exercise in "careful art"...

My signature is nearly useless.  It goes every whichway these days.

3 successive tries...

(Removed for security reasons)

Yeah, it is THAT bad.  The basic elements of the signature are still there.  The M, the looped S, the 2nd letter. 

Damn those DDT sprayer trucks in my youth!  It was supposed to be safe for humans.  Several of us kids rode our bikes behind the fogger truck because it was fun going in and out of the fog.

A year later, I discovered I was having trouble assembling simple model kits.  A couple years later, my teachers were saying I needed to practice my handwriting (cursive) more.  I hadn't had a problem before that.

When I was forced to try to learn to play a musical instrument, I failed completely.  My fingers and brain did not communicate well.  I couldn't learn to type.  By college, I could only write (legibly) slowly.  I would always get a "B" on essays because I didn't provide enough information".  Well, yeah, I had to deliberately form every word on paper but there was not enough time.

Seminars were great.  I was always A+ in those.  Speaking was easy.  I learned to hunt&peck on the typewriter well enough but I had to look at the keyboard all the time.  I think I got to 40 wpm doing that.  

Same in computerworld.  I can type a paragraph easily.  But then I have to look at the screen and see the couple typos and go fix them.  And it is getting worse.  Typing looking at the keys is bad enough, but gradually getting older doesn't help.  I have some bad finger habits.  

If I start a sentence with a capital T, I get a capital H right after.  Guaranteed.  And the newest annoyance id the Caps Lock key.  If I go for the A, I add the Cap lock.  And I tend to think ahead of my typing.  So "wouldn't" get shortened to "would", and the same with many contractions.  You can imagine the problems that creates for me on discussion boards.  :(

I spend half my time fixing errors...

I'm "healthy as a horse' generally.  I matured slowly, and I seem to be aging slowly.  I'll probably live into my late 90s.  But it is going to be awkward and difficult.  My typing will get worse and I will be more misunderstood as time goes by.  

As Mom said "Getting old isn't for sissies".  She had Parkinson's, Dad had dementia, I have DDT tremors and vertigo.  

Life is good until the end.

A Good Past Couple Days

As the title says, a good couple days.  Started Tuesday grocery-shopping.  I'm not happy without fresh fruits and veggies, and holidays always throw my shopping schedule off.  People come out in masses for picnic, BBQ, and travelling supplies.  The lines are long.  So if I forget to shop 3 days before, I wait til the day after.  And I forgot that (since July 4th was a Sunday) July 5th would be an "observed Federal holiday" and govt contractors general follow the Feds (for the practical reason that there is no one for them to talk to).

So I shopped Tuesday.  It was nice to have broccoli, asparagus, and buttercrunch lettuce.  It was nice to have peaches, berries, cherries, grapes, and oranges.  

In the afternoon, I FINALLY planted a lot of flower seedlings in the newly-cleared bed where I planted pole beans a month ago.  The beans are 6' tall already.  But because they are on a trellis, they only use a 6" strip at the edge.  So there was all that extra space.  Those green things in the bed are pulled weeds, brushed off before I planted.

I had all these perennial and self-sow seedlings, so in they went!  I got 3/4 of all my flower seedlings in the ground.  It doesn't really matter if they do all that well this year.  They will be good enough for transplanting to more permanent spots in the late Fall.  After planting them, I watered them deeply.

I had done some repair work on a fan-sprayer a few days before.  The holes were clogged and poking a needle into the holes didn't improve things much...

So I drilled out all the holes.  Unfortunately, my smallest drill bit was larger than the original holes, so the water didn't spray very far.  But I realized I had made a high-volume, low-pressure fan nozzle.  That has been quite useful.  Had I realized the consequences of the larger holes, I would have done it deliberately before.  I still have 2 other fan sprayers that work as intended, so nothing but a gain in this.

Yeah, I built the tripod it sits on...  Very adjustable.  So I replaced the 2 nozzles with a stadard fan nozzle.  The drilled fan nozzle is great for raised beds as it waters from edge to edge quickly.  The round nozzle is on the deck hose since the round spray suits the round planter pots well.

Which left the next major problem the overgrown daffodil/tulip bed.  They don't care about the weeds, but there were blackberries and loosestrife invading the bed.  The bed is about a 30' circle, and there are daylilies growing along the edge, a sunflower bird-feeder in the center and a 4x4" post to level the stepladder I need to fill the feeder.  

So I took out the riding mower to clear the weeds and blackberries.  It was awkward guiding a large mower in a small space, but fortunately this new mower has a button that allows the engine to keep the blade turning while in reverse.  And the blade deck is slightly offset to one side so you can get at edges with the wheels getting in the way

I was able to (slowly) mow almost everything I didn't want down close to the edging.  There were places I couldn't get at.  That's where the hedge trimmer came out.  I was able to cut down the weeds and grass right up against the edging.

More importantly, I was able to slide the narrow hedge-trimmer blade between the daylilies and cut off the wild blackberries near ground level.  In a couple of days the cut stuff will turn brown and I will know what to rake out.  That will let me see which weeds and canes I missed for another go with the hedge trimmer.  The battery was running down and needed recharging anyway.

The riding mower was set at 3" height (there is a path of  pavers and I didn't want to chance hitting one with the mower blade) .  Now that most of the weeds are cut down that low (and I can see where the pavers are),  I can use the small electric mower set at 1" to cut them down further.  Then I will will cover all the non-daylily area with permeable black fabric to kill the weeds by next Spring when the daffodils want to emerge.  

I covered it with solid black plastic a few year which worked OK except rain pooled on depressions and mosquitoes grew there so I kept having to poke wholes in it.  THe permeable fabric will solve THAT problem.

The transplanted flower seedlings seemed a bit beaten down by the sun,  so I watered them again.  It is amazing how much water dry soil needs sometimes.  The first watering a couple days ago had an inch of water pooled on the top before it soaked in.  Even then, my moisture meter today showed it was dry 6" down.  So another full inch of water on them.

And I put up a shade cloth for them.  The pole beans provide some dappled shade in the morning, and a couple of trees provide late-afternoon dappled shade, but mid-day is full-on sun.  So I stuck a a couple of 6' stakes in the ground and clipped a shade cloth on them.  Covers most of them.  By complete lucky coincidence the seedlings that want the most sunlight aren't covered.

I wish I had more pictures to show.  I forget when I'm doing gardening stuff.  Too-focussed, LOL!  If the transplanted seedlings survive the shock, I will have pictures to show in a few days.

I have a dozen Balsam flowers and a few Maltese Cross to plant.  I have a few places I can put them, but haven't decided where yet.  I think about that tomorrow.

Repairs

The vaccuum cleaner suddenly sucked.  By which I mean it failed to.  It's not like I overuse the poor thing.  :)

But I vacuumed the bedroom carpet and was still stepping on "bits"  (Ayla likes to eat in the bedroom).  So I checked the bag.  Empty.  I disconnected the hose and checked it.  Empty.  It's a cannister vacuum so I checked and I disconnected the tube from the head and hose.  Empty.

"SIGH*  I know what that means.  The Power Nozzle (that part on the floor) was clogged.  So... I took it of the push-tube and examined it.  There were 6 bolts holding it together.  I coudn't see what the heads of the bolts were but guessed at phillips-head and was right.  

Took a while to loosen them.  The 2 halves of the power nozzle still didn't want to separate.  Well, usually anything that is put together can be unput together, so I examined it for a while.  I could see the different halves of it (different colors made it sort of obvious) but I couldn't get them to separate.

I finally realized that 2 bolts I thought were loose weren't.  I went at them harder (they didn't want to release at first).  But succeeded.  And it still required some prying and pulling.    It gave a liitle, so I knew it wasn't locked in place with catch-pins (those evil things that are designed to connect together once and never to be unattached except with special tools).

I got the final 2 bolts ("machine screws" technically as they don't have nuts on the other end and are more like untapered screws).  And finally the 2 halves of the power nozzle can apart.

It was packed full of cat hair.  I shouldn't have been surprised, I suppose, but isn't that what a vacuum cleaner with a powered brush is SUPPOSED to remove successfully?

Talk about a mess!  The entire thing was packed with cat hair (and around here, that is what "dust bunnies" ARE.  It's not like *I* shed much.  :)

The brush roller looked like a cat hair brush used too often.  And when I removed that, I discovered the entire 10" of tube leading to the hose was packed.  The cat hair wasn't even GETTING into the sucky tube, nevermind the collection bag.  

I was amazed at how much cat fur I pulled out of the power nozzle.  I think there was a "Marley-volume of fur".  But with pulling some out with needle-nose pliers and pushing at the back end with the handle of a screwdriver, I got it all cleaned.  There were some deep corners with fur and the pliers got those too.

But to be sure, I took the power nozzle out on the deck and banged it on the rails.  Bits of dried food and grit came out!  Quite a lot.  So I took it back in to reassemble the power nozzle.  

The brushbar didn't want to stay in place.  So I thought of what the part HAD to look like and went back out the deck to find it.  I did, and was exactly what I thought it would look like.  Fit back perfectly.

I screwed all the machine bolts back in but was missing one.  Damn, more searching.  Finally found it on the lawn below where I banged the grit out on the rail.  Whew!

Then I re-vaccuumed the bedroom carpet.  Worked perfectly.  So I tied a label to the hose "Not Working?  Clean power nozzle".  I don't have the world's best memory, so reminders help.  10 years from now, when I've forgotten about this, that will give me a clue!

Garden Plantings

I don't know why I am so late this year (but the ladder fall, limping around, feeling tired, staying in bed late , and bad weather when I had the time to plant) all added up.  Things kind of got beyond me a bit this year...

Anyway, I have finally felt more active lately and got some useful work done.  Yay!  Well, better late than never.  At least they have time to produce SOME harvest.

The tomato seedlings are planted.  I had laid down permeable fabric beforehand and cut Xs where the seedling would go in; then stuck markers in the ground and pulled the cut-to-fit fabric aside.  Then I gave the soil some care.  I take a good few shovelfuls of soil into a bucket and mix organic fertilizer in as I add it back.  That way, there is basically a 5 gallon bucket of well-mixed loose fertilized soil for the seedlings to go into.  The tomato roots don't spread further than that.

So then I put the fabric back on and use a bulb-planter to make a hole for the seedlings.  Tomatoes grow roots from asny buried stem, so the deeper the better.  Early roots are better than early top growth!  [An exception is grafted plants.  The graft has to be above the soil line].

So I got them all planted this week.  I can fit 6 tomotes in a framed bed and there are 2 of them.  Here is one...

A close-up of one seedling. ..

The cage is made of concrete wire mesh.  22" in diameter and 5' tall.  I made them 25 years ago and they are as sturdy as when new.

This isn't new this year.  They are broccoli and purple cauliflower plants.  I planted them last year and they didn't do much.  But they survived the Winter and I' have hopes they will sprout.  There were more broccoli, but the ones that developed heads (and then smaller side-heads) were harvested and pulled.  One neat thing I've discovered is  that the green cabbage worms don't like purple leaves.  They are too easy for predators to find.

I'm trying an idea with the pole beans.  I made a frame of concrete rebar and bent some leftover wire mesh at an angle.  The idea is that the beans will hang down from among the leaves and will be easier to find and pick.

The beans are growing fast!  One month and they are 6' high!  I read a study once that suggested delaying planting of many crops.  The idea is the cool weather slows their growth and later-planted crops often surpass the early ones in total growth and productivity.  Well, I guess I am sure testing that this year (unintentionally).

I also planted small-seeded cucumbers, cantelopes, honeydews, and watermelon along the framed bed trellises (more concrete wire mesh).  Those may seem rather heavy fruits to grow on a trellis, but I have a bunch of plastic mesh bags to support the fruits.  Vertical space IS free, after all.

And after all that, I weeded the remaining areas of the beds.  If I have been late to the Spring-plantings, I am ready for the Fall plantings in late July.  Most people ignore Fall, but it has some advantages.  Summer warmth promotes fast growth, and Fall temperatures actually improve the flavor and extend the harvesting time for some crops.  I can have a second crop of snow peas, and most root crops turn starch into sugars, much as fruits do.

As farmers do, I fear the worst, but hope for the best.  Some years are better than others.  ;)

Humor

Some people demand that humor be socially and politically "correct".  I don't.  I can laugh at the most outrageous things.  I can appreciate good wordplay and sarcasm and "between the genders" humor.  Humor doesn't work unless there is some truth to it.  But it doesn't mean I will post them to others who might not. 

So I try to stick to the odd or surprising or extremely convoluted.  There is a mostly daily column about local life in Washington DC in the Washington Post newspaper.  That is rather unusual, since the Washington Post is generally a national and international newspaper.  The author talks about local history, parks, animals, flowers etc.

So he raised the question of what people call "flip-flops" (those rubber-soled sandals).  I remembered them (and hated them) and seldom wore them.  But the different names interested me.  A lot of people called them "thongs".  That was awkward as I think of them as underwear unusual people wear and I can't imagine doing.  I mean why give yourself a "wedgie"?

Other names were "scuffles" because they come off if you don't.  Another was "clicks" for the sound they made.  Another said "toe-clenchers" because you had to do that to keep them on.  

I'm mentioning all this because of a joke at the end of the article when the author said he always knew them as "flip-flops".  They go flip, flop, flip, flop...

"A guy with 2 left feet walks into a shoe store and asks "Do you sell "flip-flips"?

I cracked up!

  -----------------------

BTW, for the funniest convoluted joke of all time, I like:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson decide to go on a camping trip. After dinner and a bottle of wine, they lay down for the night in their tent, and go to sleep.

Some hours later, Holmes awakens and nudges his faithful friend.

"Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."

Watson replied, "I see millions of stars."

"What does that tell you?"

Watson pondered for a minute.

"Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets."
"Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo."
"Horologically, I deduce from the position of the moon that the time is about 3 am."
"Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow."
"What does it tell you, Holmes?"

Holmes was silent for a minute, then spoke: "Watson, you idiot. Someone has stolen our tent!"

Cavebear

Garden

 Well, I finally got something done in the garden today.  Between last year when it just stayed cold and dry and nothing thrived (I mean 2 TREES died) and this year when I fell off the extension ladder and couldn't get started until late in the season, it has been a bad 2 years.

I have seedlings of various veggies and flowers large enough to plant.  But the framed beds were weedy and the paths between were invaded by Horrible Vines.  It was a mess.  So the first thing I did was attack the vines.  They are a "gift" from a neighbor 15 years ago.  Some invasive type almost impossible to kill due to the depth of the roots.  

The neighbors killed their's because they could just keep mowing it.  Here it is mingled with flowers and the veggie garden.  It has a flower like this.

I SWEAR whatever a dumb neighbor does never causes them long-term problems but I suffer.  I have poison ivy and english ivy all around because of careless neighbors.  I don't hate my careless neighbors, but I sure "resent" them sometimes.

So, I have an electric string-trimmer.  I have a gas-powered one, but I'm afraid of the damn thging and I HATE the noise.  So I went after the vines in the paths with the electric.  You have to work at the vines from the top down, because otherwise they wrap around the shaft and stop it from turning.  I actually got pretty good at it.  

Which is sad I have to do that.  I bought an electric mower when I built the framed veggie beds.  Just enough room to move the mower between them.  Sadly, I didn't realize I could turn the corners.  I have to lift about 40 pounds to change direction.  I did that.  But it left vines on the sides.

So, the string trimmer.  It took 2 hours fighting to chop the vines (1/2 the time unwinding vines from the trimmer-head).  There are some corners I couldn't get at, but I will use the hedge-trimmer to take care of those.  

And the outside of the enclosure will take more work.  Vines grow up the sides of the enclosure and "shade is bad".  I'll have to use a pruner and cut them off at ground level and slowly to the ends.  Every photon matters to a veggie.

SO, after I whacked the vines I needed to prepare to plant tomatoes.  For several years, I used a red plastic groundcover.  It was supposed to reflect sunlight back up and cajuse insects to leave.  It was also solid plactic sheet, so I couldn't water through it.  I was watering individual tomatoes through the cut part around and that took a lot of time .

This year, I have 100 yards of permeable black plastic mesh 4' wide.   

 I can just water all the plants at once.  And it will suppress weeds.  So I rolled it out on one bed and anchored the ends with bricks, cut it to size for that bed (my beds vary) and dragged my tomato cages out of the weeds (Everything grows here).  There are maybe some disadvantages to being organic; every weed loves the yard too.

I set them on the landscaping fabric-covered beds for spacing.  But it was 6:30 and I needed dinner, so I put everything away for the day.  

Tomorrow, I cut slices in the fabric in the center of the spaced cages, remove the cages, and plant tomatoes (and bell peppers around them) and cukes and melons and squash.  If it is too late, well, I'll still try.  And there is still time for a Fall crop of minor veggies like spinach and radishes.  

I am PRETTY much recovered from the ladder fall.  I no longer have the even think about walking normally, getting into the car is like it used to be, and I only notice it in bed when a part of my shoulder sticks up.  But at least it isn't stopping me from gardening.

And, next to the cats, gardening is important to me.