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May, 2009
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Well, it was busy to say the least. Rich was working into the night preparing lessons and such; Spring Break wasn't much of a break since Rich went to a conference for several of those days.
There was the "flood", of course. Ground had not thawed much and we got a lot of rain. The photo at right shows a view across where our garden was to go. It's well-watered to say the least (so do we need to water it from the well? Well-watered? Oh, never mind.).
Starting from most recent and going backwards toward January:
Got a new tiller. Two of them actually, and one isn't new. Bought a brand-new Sears
tiller but it couldn't cut the mustard I mean hard-packed earth. Went online
(eBay) and looked for a Troy-Bilt. Now you need to understand that Garden Way went
bust in about 2001 so some other outfit took over; and, as most things go, they figured
out how to make more profit by using smaller shafts, lighter gears, etc. The biggest
Troy-Bilt is probably OK ($3000.00), but we have this super-hard clay soil and it would beat a
lesser machine to death. So there was an old (1973) Troy-Bilt "Horse" for sale on eBay, located
in Ft. Wayne. So I bought it for a ridiculous price, brought it home and started in
where the belt burned up on the Sears machine. We found the place OK, then had lunch
at Cracker Barrel up where Lima Road crosses I-69, then came home. The blackberry cobbler
inspired Kathy to buy some more blackberry bushes.
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Now this machine would by no stretch of the imagination pass the Consumer Product Safety Commission guidelines -- or EPA pollution guidelines either. I don't feel the least bit guilty: it will be used about 30 hours per year, max, and I know this thing could knock my teeth out if I have my face in the way when it hits a big rock. The guy who sold it to me is an engineer and loves to rebuild old equipment, especially these machines that were made out of real metal back then. Still runs like a top after 30-some years and a few part replacements, although I don't like Tecumseh engines, and will almost pull me over and I weigh two hundred umpty-ump pounds before breakfast. These critters aren't for the fainthearted or 95-pound little old ladies, or young ones either.
Once the major groundbreaking is done, you can walk beside and guide it with one hand, but the initial tilling is a killer. Go over a row about 5 times until the rocks start popping up to the top. Got pieces of brick also, including a couple of half-bricks I think the tiller broke in two. We'll work in some compost, leaves, grass and peat moss and tilling will be no problem next year except where we expand the garden.
Tilling in peat moss for the blueberries |
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Bought a roller for the lawn. It's about 300 lb. filled with water and I tow it behind
the lawn tractor. Lawn was really rough from frost heaves, and now the angleworms are
making a million little dirt piles. I'll just keep rolling along
as I mow, and at least it won't get worse.
Still have to repair the damages from making drainage trenches from the flood, which
was threatening to come into the garage, and then there are the indentations from
the electrical installation trenches last year.
Hey, if you want a really great brush destroyer, go to http://members.fortunecity.com/foxfur1/shred.html.
The flood left piles of cornstalk pieces and soybean vines at the high-water mark. We're still cleaning up that stuff: Run the mower over it and till it in. Should help this clay soil. What a mess!
Last fall we got to ride with Wendell Cates in his combine, harvesting soybeans. Not too long ago he was out with his brand-new John Deere, the kind with eight tires about 5 ½ feet high pulling the 60-foot-wide seeder. We got a ride for a couple of times back & forth. Here again, the GPS showed him exactly what was seeded and guided the tractor across the field. He was hurrying to beat the rain. That night it started raining around 11:00 and everything was put on "hold" for a couple of weeks waiting for the soil to dry out. As of May 1, about 42% of the corn in the Midwest was planted, and the soybeans were going to have to wait their turn if the rain would hold off.
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That ... Cat!!!The little kitten is now a cat. He's still kittenish, very cute in his actions. He runs Tinky, the black cat, until she goes and hides. Sometimes they collapse together. | ||
When the sun shines, he is fascinated by the reflections, even from the milk in the cereal bowl, on the ceiling. When I wiggle my watch crystal, he just goes nuts chasing the reflection. He will chase the beam from a laser pointer until he lies on the floor panting. I've never heard a cat pant before. I reckon it's good exercise for him. Might enter him in the mini-marathon in Indianapolis next year. Had a celebration for a friend who became a citizen. They brought flowers and a "Thank You" balloon. Sure enough, Fiver found it in the bay window. We're still playing our jazz at the retirement home once a month. There wasn't room for the photo of Fiver "helping" me play the keyboard. Anyway, they still love us over there and it gives us incentive to keep practicing. |
Geek Stuff
The old computer gave up the ghost. Wouldn't boot, not even count up memory on the screen. So I pulled the drive and stuck it into the new "spare" machine with the dual-core AMD and terabyte drive. Went up to Warsaw to my friend Ryan at The Computer Shop and maxed out the memory. Downloaded Windows 7, which works great -- good, solid product this time. (Internet Explorer 8 is a mess; I'm using Firefox at this point. Microsoft is, um, "working on it"....)
Anyhow, 4 GB of RAM is max on this motherboard so I'm running the 32-bit version of Windows 7. I have Open Office 3.0 and a bunch of other stuff installed. DOS graphics won't work so I'm using DOSBox, which is somewhat inadequate but it's the only game in town right now. And it has the advantage over XP that I can do Alt-PrtSc (Alt-Print Screen) and paste into Paint to get screen shots.
Only fear is that Microsoft won't update Windows 7 before the Beta license runs out on Aug. 1.
But they would have riots in the streets if they didn't, so they will come up with
something I'm sure. Oh -- in case you're wondering, I have never used Vista and don't
intend to. Insufficient device drivers, bad reports, continuous complaints, as if I don't
have enough to do without those headaches.
To run my dual monitors, I had to get another video card. Old machine has AGP, which sounded like a good idea at the time, forward-looking and all that. New machine has only PCI slots (including the new extended PCI whatever the buzzword du jour is for it), no AGP. I can't even guess close much less predict which direction hardware is going to go every 3 years when I upgrade. Well, I've had really good experience with Diamond Stealth -- oops, get it home and no drivers (not even online) for Win 7, or even Vista. Take it back to Staples, complain, swap for an NVidia card which has drivers online not only for Vista but for Win 7 already.
It's terrible being the "resident expert" on computers. The longer I live, the more I realize I don't know very much and can't predict anything. Hope my friends don't think I'm really stupid.
Most of y'all won't be much interested in what follows. Just kinda crabbin' about the current economic stuff. I won't feel bad if you quit reading now.
Complaint Dept.
Philosophically speaking, "Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?"
In the immortal words of Patty Loveless,
And my tractor don't get no traction
We have had to return so many items to stores lately, the tiller being only the latest in the series, that we're really irritated. Don't know whether anyone else is having the same experience. I hate so badly to take stuff back! Expensive, allegedly good-quality stuff at that! The return desk at Lowes almost knows us by name, same at Staples. Broken parts. Stuff that just won't work. Missing pieces like screws and such. Everything from dimmer switches to tillers to video cards.
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Anyone notice that Wal-Mart has 16-lb cat food for the same price that 18 lbs was in January? Or tuna fish in 5-oz cans instead of 6-oz (same price) and more water in it to boot? (Enough for two sandwiches only if you mix it with enough mayonnaise.) And we could go on and on. Inflation is here, folks. It just hasn't bitten us really hard. This multi-trillion dollar Obama bailout started when Bush was still in office. Don't blame one party unless you blame both. Congress has to authorize every dime that's spent. And printing a couple of trillion dollars is going to take us right back to the Nixon-Carter inflation era. Remember the Nixon wage-price freeze? (August, 1971. I heard it on the radio in the Ryder truck on the way to my first real job.) Didn't work, did it? Kicked out the Republicans, inflation and unemployment got even worse under Carter, kicked him out, back to the Republicans. And let's not even get started in the "tax cut" that's simply a change in withholding but you'll pay the same tax next April, just a smaller refund or have to write a bigger check. ($13.00 a week? Think I'll buy a winter home in the Bahamas with it....)
Business cycle. The "invisible hand" of economics. You can't defy the laws of supply and demand forever. Like jumping off a 20-story building. Going by the 3rd floor, you're still doing fine.... We're about to hit the ground, economically speaking.
Stuff happens. Business cycles keep going. Greedy manufacturers reduce quality (and quantity!) and think we won't notice. Then they wonder when sales drop and we hang onto the old tiller/car/TV set/pair of shoes for another year or two. Just got new heels put on a pair of Florsheims; why spend another $100.00 when I can spend less than $20.00? And I'm not the only one; shoe repair shops are so busy they can't keep up.
My retirement funds are down about 40%. That's about the employer's matching contribution, on average, over the years, so I'm technically not out anything yet. But I don't expect the Dow to bounce back up to 14,000 any time soon.
So now the gov't is going to run GM. Half a mile from our house, across the fields, I see strings of boxcars moving every day, in and out of the GM stamping (metal fabrication) plant. Folks are still working. But the same outfit that runs the schools (scoring in the bottom third or some such among industrialized nations), runs the Post Office that keeps raising rates and still needs subsidies, ruined passenger trains (running full all the time and still losing money), is now going to take over GM and produce -- KIAs? They just opened up a new money pit, that's all. Someplace else to throw money every year until Jesus returns. Like a family of five will fit in a four-seater (illegal in most states). Central planning never did work and won't in the future.
Wish I had a hundred million or so, I'd buy Troy-Bilt and put quality back into the products. Or a hundred billion, I'd buy GM and fix their product line. Yah, right. How about ten trillion and I'd fix the government? What's Power Ball up to nowadays?