It’s still March, you never know what the weather’s going to do except each day will at least start cold and the wind is probably going to be an adventure. So the old man is mostly staying indoors and reading. I recently got turned on to Ursula K. Le Guin, a writer I mostly ignored when young because no ray guns or exploding space ships. I’m currently halfway through The Dispossessed, which I somehow never read before. Oh, c’mon, Joel: It wouldn’t have held your interest for six minutes back when it was written.
Anyway…
Big News! The cylinder holding up the Official TUAK Chair gave up the ghost after a little less than three years, and has been replaced. Which led to the rather pressing problem of what to do with the old one.
Happily, by wild coincidence Neighbor L chose virtually that moment to say she needed help with a run to the county dump. Her barrels are apparently filling more rapidly than is traditional with “medical waste,” which I did not choose to inquire into. So…
…this very morning the old chair will hit the dump, to be buried and wondered over by archeologists a thousand years from now. Maybe they’ll clone my ass.
Meanwhile…
The pear tree is starting to bud! This always bugged me that it did it in March, since we’re certainly not past frosty mornings. But it is what it is; it almost certainly won’t fruit this year anyway. Still, if it does…
…the fruit won’t be as hard to get to as it was last summer. After the harvest I determined to remove those interior vertical branches that were so hard to pick from. Following them down it all came to one major cut, which I made in December after the tree went dormant. I cut that and all the little inward-growing branchlets, and hopefully the tree will now start to grow outward rather than up.
That’s about all the excitement there is around here at the moment. I’m pet-sitting for S&L tomorrow, and Thursday I’m going to the big town about 50 miles away to (hopefully) pick up my new leg. Which will be an exciting and very expensive day, and I’m sure I’ll want to write all about it.
Up here north of disorder, March has been as warm as the high fifties all the way down to cold enough for several inches of snow on the ground. I hate March. I’ll be glad when the last of the seven or eight feet of snow melts and I can get some outside work done
Don’t give up on the pear tree. Who knows, it may just bear fruit again.
Looking forward to hearing good things about the new prosthetic.
Ah, yes, March… I don’t miss the Flint Hills being on fire (pasture burning) leading up to tornado season in April and May in my home state of Kansas. But I can’t say I’m looking forward to the springs, summers, or falls here in the Phoenix Metro Area, either. The weather weenies are saying 98 for next Tuesday.
Ping-pong weather in the upper left of the Pacific Northwest. Mid-fifties for a couple of weeks, back to frozen grass this morning. Looking forward to a leg update.
The spring weather is bad enough without the evil phuquers messing with it.
Hoping they get the fit right this time.
Here’s an online free library I have found addictive:
https://annas-archive.org/
Has Phoebe begun contruction?
Le Guin was a treasure.
March kinda sucks. Hot or cold, pick one, dammit! I keep eyeing the woodpile wondering if I should haul in one more load or relax and enjoy the unseasonably highs temps foreca… nevermind, it’s snowing.
March was occasionally good enough to start recovering from the early February disasters. (Major snowstorms, bringing down lots of tree branches, structures, chimneys and so on.) Wasn’t able to get very far on the trees; we have a bit of a forest, and maybe a cord’s worth of firewood-on-the-branch on the ground. I’m not going to haul a chainsaw around in 2-3′ snow; fell enough times in that crap without heavy tools to help.
The snow/ice on the barn roof grabbed the chimney braces and took the chimney with it. It was sized too big for the current stove, so it seemed like a good idea at the time to redo the stack the right size. I’m doing the indoor part (up 12′ from the stove) and the bottom of the outside, and letting pros deal with the rest. 5/12 pitch metal roofs make for a hard nope for me.
Snow finally melted, and the seasonal creeks will stop flowing any day now. Right?