Everything I Touch is Broken

It's a bit frustrating ...okay, a LOT frustrating.

Everything I need to use seems to be broken. I don't know if it is frustrating because I have deep-seated control issues or because that insane earworm song from my childhood about a hole in my bucket and why don't I fix it?

I think this inexplicable phase of my summer started a week ago Sunday. My son had been playing basketball with varied results. The team has had a somewhat variable performance this year, unlike last year where we dusted the courts with all-comers. One, the team lost three senior starters. Because we have had a good, if not great team, the last three-years running, much better teams have been willing to play us.

The boys who are seniors have been very dedicated to a dream of getting to state. They and their parents have dedicated a lot of time to pursuit of that dream. With the disappointing end to last season and the lack of dedication of the incoming juniors, the team is struggling to find its way. Many games this summer the team totaled 5 or 6 seniors. We lost games against good teams with a bench of 10-12 players simply because the boys were exhausted.

So Sunday after one of these exhausting basketball marathons with only 5 boys playing 11 games in 4 days, we both came home exhausted (me mentally, sometimes its been hard to watch, and my son physically).

I decided to make supper, carbs for him, a salad picked from the garden for me. I live in the village so it is never really dark, but colors lose their hues. I have a lot of different greens available to me: chard, cabbage and broccoli leaves, spinach, mustard, beets, head and leaf lettuce. I remember seeing a seedling of an euphorbia 'Snow on the Mountain'. When it is juvenile, the leaves lack the showy white margins. I remember thinking I should weed it out, because it is poisonous, but I was just too tired.

A side note here, cows can and will eat euphorbias. Hey, they have four stomachs! Reputedly, Abe Lincoln's mother died from drinking the milk from cows that ingested euphorbia. Every time she started to feel better they gave her some milk, thinking it was the most nutritious thing she could get, and they continued to poison her in small doses.

I washed my lettuce leaf by leaf. I chopped it up and put it in a bowl. About six to eight hours later, I was vomiting up my supper. My stomach obviously knows what is good for me and those couple small leaves of euphobia were not about to pass. I spent the night and part of the next day on the cool tile floor of my bathroom.

So from bad basketball, to bad salad, I move right along to rusty rims on my Ford truck. I have decent tires on my truck, but rusty rims. They don't always hold air. I travel with a tire gage and know all the places with air pumps. Generally, not a big deal, nuisance only. Being sick two days, put my tire inflating schedule out of whack. Result: a flat tire.

So, I task my son to haul my dad's air compressor out freom the farm, so I can pump up my tires. Unknown to me, he transports it on its side rather than upright. We start it up, it doesn't build pressure. I grill him, as I am checking various things on the compressor. Transport position come out. I decide to leave it upright in the back of the truck and come back to this problem in a day. Same problem. So what got broke? Maybe a gasket or the intake value, but it is beyond my knowledge. I am sure my dad and brother will rain down bad karma on me for the broken air compressor, but that bird has not roosted yet.

Insert 4 days with heat indexes up to 115 degrees F and record-breaking temperatures where just thinking of going outdoors breaks a sweat.

Yesterday, the dew point fell into the mid-60s and the temperatures were only in the upper 80s and low 90s. It felt like a spring day with a gentle breeze.

So truck has one badly flat tire, and I decide that fix a flat stuff in a can might allow me enough pressure to limp over to the gas station a couple blocks from me. It gives me nothing. Unless that tire stem is at the 6 o'clock potion, you can forget that stuff. It just doesn't work right (two experiences now). Trying to get the wheel in that position, the tire comes off the rim.

Ugh!

So now I am changing a tire. My son and my Ex will tell you, I am a very capable tire-changing person. My dad would not allow me to get my license until I could check and change the oil and change a flat tire. (Funny, how times change. I never change my own oil; environmentally, disposal is such a hassle, and rightfully so. And for safety, I generally do not drive my tires to failure, I spend too much time on the road, often with poor driving conditions.)

So, the Ford is a rust bucket, a rust bucket with new decent leaf spring so I can safely carry the loads I do. I tried four different places on the frame in attempt to jack it up high enough that the leaf springs are not compensating. No luck. I can not get the truck wheel off the ground. (And yes, with leverage (my weight bouncing on my wrench, I have managed to loosen all the nuts on the wheels so once I do get it off the ground that wheel will be coming off.

So I ran out to the farm for some 4x4s, and a couple a cement block and will attempt to jack it up by jacking up the axle, not my preferred jacking point, given that I have to be partially under the truck to do it.

And, did I mention the Mantis tiller is not starting again?

But the daylilies are in bloom and some are simply gorgeous.

Working It

A busy bee working it on moss rose 'Henri Martin'.

After nearly a week of rain here in central Wisconsin, totaling more than 12 inches, the clouds have parted and that big yellowy orb has made an appearance. Am I out in the garden frantically pulling weeds from the soft brown soil? Nope, I am the en route gardener with that dangerous tool, a microphone, for a tour group bound for Chicago's Botanic Garden (CGB). I am working it doing a question and answer on gardening, and talking about favorite garden tools, sights at the Botanic Garden, and chatting up gardeners and garden-lovers alike.

Hey, I had a great time. The group was great, the garden was great, the tour organizer was wonderful, and I took over 530 pictures of garden-related photos. Yes, that's not an errant zero, 530-some pictures.

Best of all, I quipped to the group, these gardens are weeded ahead of me!

It takes a while to wrap my head around that many images. Some are of the labels are of plants on which I want more information. Other than my shovel, my camera, as I told the group, is how I document everything garden-related. Like I told the folks on the bus, some gardeners keep notebooks filed with meticulous notes-- I'm not one of those! Photos downloaded each day into default date folders show me what was blooming and when, and pictures of labels before the photographed plant give me the details as to what that cultivar is.

Other pictures are the tour people, and then there are those of that wedding with the incredible lilac-gray sheath dresses and hooker heels, with the bride done up in feathers looking like a swan ready to float away on a cloud of happiness with her groom. (That was one sensational-looking wedding party!)

The CBG has a great rose garden, which is at the peak of its grandiflorific, flouribundtaculous glory. I know I can't grow half these varieties just 160 miles north, here in central Wisconsin, but it is fun to dream.

The pinetum and the greenhouse gardens were fantastic, too. The fruit and vegetable gardens had a lot of ideas to share with the home gardener. Since my last visit, a number of years ago, the CGB has upped the ante with labeling and growing information signage which is a great thing to see. Not only can I see the great results of their labor,but I can note which varieties are doing really great for them and try them in my gardens, too. And, better still, I don't have to hunt down a garden worker to find out that not only am I unfamiliar with a cultivar, but they don't know what it is either (which I have had happen on more than one occasion here in Wisconsin).

Needless to say, I could not, nor did I attempt to see it all, I had only just over four and a half hours to spend there. the weather was wonderful, not too hot, not sunny. It did not rain! My feet ached, but my soul was plant happy.

So as the primers I teach from when I substitute teach during the school year say, "More to come..." I'll try to share in the coming posts some of these great pictures, including those of that fabulous wedding party (one of at least eight I noticed having pictures done that day at the garden).

When I got home, the post mistress had delievered the awaited parts for the Mantis tiller. Tomorrow, weeds, I am coming for you!

Talking About the Weather

Wegelia 'Carnaval'

Yesterday, we had 4 inches of rain. Tuesday we had 4 inches of rain. It is raining yet again today. The normal amount for June for our area is about 2.89. In Green Bay, they have had only double that. I haven't checked, but I think we had measurable rain nearly every day in May.

Yesterday morning, I got my corded electric lawn mower and trimmer out and finished the back yard-- barely. The grass was still damp and it was raining when I finished. I did not trim my hedges, nor mow my front yard. I heard many gas-powered mowers coughing away at many other very damp, over-grown yards.

Last night, driving to my brother's, the ditches were roiling with running water.

Many property owner are cursing the rain and damp. Winter was rough on our homes. We have yet to have had enough dry, warm weather to paint and spruce up our homes.

Fields are too wet for farmers to get out to cultivate.

It has been a wet, wet, cold spring, and now a cool, ten degrees below normal cool, summer.

Potatoes planted late do look good. They seemed to have raced to get caught up with their late May 1 planting date. Many fields are coming into bloom. Last year, I had some very large potatoes. When I cut them open, I found them to be hollow, having sucked up to much water, much too fast. These potatoes do not keep well.

Traveling north to Clintonville Tuesday, I saw several recently planted corn fields. These were corn fields planted with rows maybe a foot a part and heavily planted; with the farmer acknowledging his crop would not make ear corn, but rather silage; that fermented, unripe chopped corn and stalk roughage for winter cattle food.

After getting the rewind spring and fixing my string cord, and changing out my spark plug, I was able to get my Mantis tiller to run a scant couple hours before the rains begin. I was not able to finish cultivating the family garden. I fear the weeds. If there is weed seed in the soil of the family garden, with this rain, it will germinate.

There are parts of the family garden I did not manage to plant because of the rains. These will be able to be tilled without regard for crops and perhaps planted with a second fall crop. Where transplants were planted, most rows were mulched with compost, wood chips, or shredded paper. Many of our transplants, particularly heat lovers, were planted through landscape fabric. Cabbage had landscape fabric laid down on each side of the row. I tilled 80% of the berry plot and potatoes rows, before the tiller became uncooperative.

This weekend we are looking to dry out a bit. Hopefully, Sunday, the sun will shine and the tiller will cooperate, and the weeds will DIE!

Total Disclaimer!

Apricots ('Moorpark') are growing, not waiting on me!















Other than the cursory Google Adsense and Amazon banner(from which neither have I raked in any cash), no one pays me to write this blog.

I just wanted to get that out there! It seems the FCC is all concerned that we bloggers are not up front about these things! It would be nice if someone bankrolled my garden writing, but I am ecstatic when I get nearly 100 hits in one day (as happened yesterday-- thank you, thank you!).

So... continuing saga of gardening in central Wisconsin...

As you may have read yesterday, my Mantis tiller is not working. In all honesty, it is about 7 years old, and I really beat it. I seldom use it in my own yard, but I use it to mix potting soil. I use it to edge (nice attachment, I should hunt down and use in my yard!) I use is in yards where people pay me to do a bit of gardening for them (usually in yards where it seems tree roots and rocks far outweigh any semblance of topsoil).

The starting cord broke. I am fairly handy and the Mantis is an incredibly simplistic machine to work on. I figured this is a fairly easy fix. Along the way to replacing this, though, the rewind spring sprung, and I have tried no less than three time to rewind the dang thing. It is a beast!

I ordered it from the factory, so I called the factory. I had seen that the whole starter rewind spring, starter cord, etc. comes as as assembly. I figured I would bite the bullet and get it.

The weeds in the family garden are not getting any shorter or growing slower because the Mantis is on vacation.

I talked to a simply nice customer service person, who actually knew which model I ordered (without me having to go check!) and suggested buying the pre-wound spring versus the assembly for less than ten bucks versus around $70 for the assembly.

Hopefully, this will be the end of the Mantis' vacation. The weeds are not waiting. It has another hard row (or ten) to hoe. If it was easy work, I'd have it done by now!

Weeds! I'm a-coming for you!