If you want to just grow something edible but not mess around with much of a garden, I highly recommend radishes as the perfect starter. Seeds are cheap and very available; they take very little space – try a clay pot; they give nearly instant gratification – germinate in about 3 days and are ready to pick in a month. The newer varieties can grow as large as golf balls and still not turn hot or pithy. They do well in cold weather, not freezing cold, but spring and fall are perfect almost anywhere. I just keep planting them around as fillers.
I think this is going to be the first season with completely renovated garden soil. Using the muck is accelerating the process dramatically such that there will be at least a foot and more like 18†of organic material over 100% of the garden area. From this point on, I’ll be able to use compost simply as a soil enricher and not to build up volume and create more plantable footage. I never see the time coming when I’m wondering what to do with all the compost but it won’t be nearly as urgent as it has been.
The rat story won’t go away. The Merc is now home with new vacuum hoses installed and the check engine light properly out. Total tab $57 so not as bad as I had anticipated. I learned something interesting about the car along the way. When the check engine icon is lit, which means some fault has been detected, it automatically turns the radio off. So I guess if you’re just riding along listening to the radio and not likely to be looking at the dashboard, turning the radio off brings your eyes in that direction. Very clever. My fear was that the rat had eaten through a wire that powered the radio and would be very difficult/expensive to find. I did pick up some poison and have distributed it up around the carport and sheds. The problem with poison is that you can’t really say whether it’s working or not since they don’t come out into the open and line up bodies. I guess they just crawl away and quietly convert to dust. I haven’t seen any squirrels falling out of trees either so maybe they’re just smart enough to avoid rat poison. I’d be ok with a few thousand less squirrels/tree rats too. My neighbor said that if I scoot some moth balls under the cars, that too will keep the rodents away.
I’m starting to think about an “all Florida†Republican ticket. That would be a Bush/Rubio ticket. I’m starting to hear some of the talking heads on the tube speculating on a brokered convention or some late comer dropping in to stir the pot. Wonder if they’re reading my blog? Let’s see how long it takes them to opine on the Florida ticket. I could certainly get behind Christie too. Although still a yankee, he’s got some really great one liners – example, telling Warren Buffet to just shut up and write a check if he wants to pay more taxes – so I could probably get past the geographical problem. If something happens to Romney, he just might jump in. What could happen to Romney? London could need someone to rescue their Olympics.
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