Only two hermits remain. The ninth hermit has been joined by a tenth. They live on a small ranch in Central Texas with The Dogs of Hermits’ Rest. He does not hang out in bars anywhere near as much as when he was trying to be Li Po.
Other than family and music and song writing, his interests include writing. He has authored many technical tomes, several short stories, and a novel. He does have a day job or two, and he re-publishes some of his writings for those here.
For more information, see the complete profile.
I wanted to catch up on the state of the garden this first day of March. Here is a teaser. I put more pictures up in a Facebook album.
The blue pansies to the right are in the front bed. I took the picture by holding the camera at ground level and snapping. Thank goodness for autofocus.
The flowers to the left are some of the wildflowers I planted last Fall. This patch did better than the others, some of which never came up at all. Hopefully, this one will fill ne more next year.
Today was the perfect day for working in the yard. The highs climbed up to the mid-fifties, and even though the wind was brisk, it was not too chilly to enjoy the sunshine.
Well, it was a little brisk, and I realized that I didn’t have a work coat that would stand up to the combination of temperature and wind. So my first task was a trip to Goodwill, where I got a nice oversized flannel jacket and a couple of sweaters.
Then I was off—to the knitting store! I stopped in to see Suna, and we went to Starbucks for a cup. Or we would have, but they were out of coffee. They emptied two different pots to give Suna hers and told me I was welcome to wait. I chose not to.
I dropped Suna back at the knitting store and went to the home center for some stuff. I got some fence boards for the repair, a night light for the hall, some cup hooks for the master bath, and some pier blocks to build a firewood holder. Then I headed back to the house.
Inside the fence and behind the repair was a pile of boards left over from when the evil neighborhood association made us tear down Beccano’s tree house. So the first step was to sort those out and remove the remaining nails. I know I should have done that a long time ago, but…
Next, I strung out an extension to the downspout that will run underneath the firewood holder I plan to build behind the part of the fence I hadn’t yet repaired. I noticed that these was a high point in the middle of the run. Since water doesn’t usually flow uphill, I got out the trusty action hoe and a rake to change the grade a bit. That left a pile of well composted dirt.
A shovel solved that problem. I moved the dirt to the new flower bed extension, but it still wasn’t quite right. Luckily, I still had the garden rake at hand to level the bed until it was just right.
By this time it was starting to get colder…and darker. I went back to the garage to find my hammer. It was finally time to take down those pesky rotted fence boards. I knocked down the bad one and damaged the one next to it enough that it had to come down, too. Then I aligned two of the replacement boards. That’s when I noticed that sometime between when this house was built and now, the standard size for narrow fence boards shrank from just under four inches to just under 3½ inches. That means any fence repair now requires removing at least three boards, replacing them with two different sizes, and using a table saw. Sigh.
I have a few of the wider boards left over from a failed attempt at rebuilding the gate (I put it together backwards). So I was set. All I had to do was knock down three times the number of boards I had intended to replace at that spot, meaning I don’t have enough to do the other repairs I planned. No problem there as it was now too dark to continue by the time I finished ripping the wide board to size and the old boards to fit through the chipper.
I did get one thing accomplished today, so I can say that this does not qualify for what one of my friends calls adult-onset ADD.
It’s funny how a small thing can lead seamlessly to a big thing.
Mr. Stripey has put out lots of wonderful foliage. (BTW, he is taller than she is, even when she stands at the same level.) He has even put out a few of those ugly yellow flowers, but so far, no fruit! I have begun to wonder if Mr. Stripey is shaking hands with Mr. Happy. I had always thought that was OK for tomatoes. Can’t they self-pollinate?
Well, just in case they can’t, Suna and I went shopping for a friend. We bought another variety of tomato, a pretty John Fannick phlox, and a trio of rose bushes. These are the first roses for this address. Of course, we don’t have any place to plant them.
So I took out a chunk of my original front flowerbed. I’m going to run it down the side of the house in a nice windy meander. And you know what? July is a freeking hot time of year to do that!
I didn’t have to add another course to the expanded front flowerbed, but it was a close call. Several stones ended up buried to the level of the grass, just above the high point of the grade. Keeping the grass out of the bed will require vigilance, but that is much less expensive than another course of stones.
Next project: tree trimming.
