solarbird | plants and things (Reply)

This is actually pretty funny, which is surprising given the source. G'wan, clickie, you know you wanna.

Pseudoflowers

I filled the new garden bed with topsoil and mixed it in with some of the clay that was previously there and the usual soil prep stuff (aged/fully composted chicken manure and mineral goodness). I should really let it rest for a week now before planting, but I may try to cheat and plant some on Wednesday, since I'm sooooo late.

While I had the truck out getting topsoil, I stopped to get more Finale at McLendon's, but they told me the company that makes it has gone bankrupt and I'm stuck with Roundup. However, they also told me that Roundup is the same active ingredient, which I told them was wrong, but they insisted; getting home, I found that no, I was right. It's similar chemically, but not identical. Well, hopefully high-concentrate Roundup will work - it's supposed to, applied as I do, so here's hoping.

I also heard Ciscoe say on the radio this morning that if you keep completely up with it, two years of cutting horsetail fronds off at the ground level will cause it to die off. I certainly hope that's true.

Monday-Thursday tokens: 0.4
Friday's miles: 2.2
Saturday's miles: 2.1
Miles out of Hobbiton: 864.8
Miles out of Rivendell: 405
Miles to Lothlórien: 61.4

The truck needs a bunch of maintenance work - an oil change, a clutch spring, and the turn signal is broken in the sense that I was using it to signal that I was turning left and the lever came out of the steering wheel. I now keep it in the seat beside me when driving so that if Officer Friendly decides to bother me about using hand-signaling I can tell him that it's broken, and when he asks why I haven't fixed it yet, I can show it off and say, "no, really, it's broken" and escape in the confusion.

Something about the truck attracts attention. Possibly it's the fact that it's a 1969 Chevy C-20 that has clearly been a working truck. Possibly it's the contrast between my size (not very large) and that of the truck (hugemongeous). Possibly it's that it sounds like a small propeller aircraft. (A subtle vehicle it is not.) Today's attention was a guy who does tree removal (Something Nye the Tree Guy) coming over while I was at the gas station and talking about how much he loved my truck. Apparently he has a lot of old trucks at home, and he was driving a Ford of similar vintage at the time. He approved of my using it to go pick up topsoil.