Some Assembly Required

We have a small blocked in flower garden area attached to the front of our house that has been home to a few flowers and some scraggly bushes. Terry has wanted to get out there and do some work on it once things cool down and decided she wanted some kind of a garden cart to sit on to make it more comfortable to do so. She looked at several online and wound up purchasing this one from Amazon.

It arrived the other day, and yesterday we decided to put it together. The first step was laying out all the parts on the worktable in our garage.

Then, with my help, Terry began assembling the cart. It only took about an hour, which is probably 30 minutes longer than it would have taken if I wasn’t helping her. Yeah, I’m pretty useless, but I am great eye candy.

When we had it all together, we found out that the front wheels were too tight, so it didn’t steer very well. We had to loosen up a couple of the nuts, then things worked much better.

It doesn’t have much of a handle, but I suggested to Terry that maybe we could figure out some way to hook it to the back of our Explorer, and I could take her for a ride around the neighborhood. She wasn’t too keen on that idea. Nor was she impressed with my suggestion of turning it into one of those fighting robots. Sometimes l don’t think she finds me nearly as creative as I do.

But that’s all right. At least my daughter Tiffany is impressed by me. She called me in a tizzy yesterday afternoon because when she took her kids to the library in Show Low, Arizona to drop off some books and pick up new ones, they came running out to tell her that “Grandpa’s book is in the library.” Tiffany had to go inside to see for herself, and she sent me a picture.

When I put it on Facebook, someone else commented that the library in Pinetop-Lakeside, 10 miles up the road, also has all my books. I guess that makes sense since the Big Lake series is set there in the White Mountains, our home for many years.

I mentioned that last weekend we planted a bunch of perennial peanut plants where we installed our retaining wall and put in new fill dirt and topsoil. We’ve been dutifully watering them every day, just like the nursery suggested, so when I went out to water them yesterday afternoon and saw a bunch of them tattered and in pieces, I didn’t know what the heck was going on.

At first we thought some animal was eating them, then we realized that the gentleman who mows the grass had run his weed eater along the edge of the driveway and into a bunch of them. I guess he didn’t realize what they were. I’m hoping we can save them. At almost six bucks a plant, I really don’t want to have to buy a bunch more if I can avoid it.

I decided that rather than stand out there and water the plants for hours at a time in the heat, I would get a small sprinkler to attach to the hose and just let it do the job for me, moving it as needed. Then, since the area where we have them planted is 8 x 40′, I got the idea that I should buy two sprinkler heads. I knew we had a Y hose connector and that we could run two hoses off of it, so I went ahead and bought two sprinklers. We still have quite a few hoses left over from our RVing days, so I would not need any extra hose.

Back at home, we looked and looked and could not find the darned Y connector, even though we had both seen it recently. Well heck, what’s up with that? We were sure it was in one of the little plastic storage cabinets that sit on the workbench in our garage, but we opened all the drawers and couldn’t find it. Okay, maybe it was in the junk drawer in the kitchen. We all have a junk drawer in the kitchen, right? Nope, it wasn’t there either.

About the time I decided that we would just have to get another one the next time we went out, Terry looked in one of the storage cabinet drawers on the workbench one more time, and there it was. We were sure we had looked there before, so don’t ask me how we missed it, but we did.

So, running a hose from the faucet in front of the house over to the place where we planted the new plants, and putting the Y there and using two hoses, we were able to put both sprayers out and covered the area easily. We’ll keep that up for another week or two, assuming the plants survive their weed eater attack.

It’s Thursday, so it’s time for a new Free Drawing, and we’ve got another great prize this week. This week’s prize is an audiobook of PIRATE TRIALS: The Three Pirates, book four in my friend Ken Rossignol’s Famous Murderous Pirate series. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

Thought For The Day – Do not call the police on suspicious people in your neighborhood! Those are your neighbors without makeup and hair extensions!