Big Chill in the Garden of Good and Evil

Note: Pictures to follow... wanted to get this written while I was thinking about it, since I'm behind on my posting.

Mixed movie references aside, it's been an interesting couple of weeks trying to get the garden going.  We're using a technique called "Square Foot Gardening" which is basically tightly packed containers.  We've spent several weeks building our containers and had such a mild March that we decided to go ahead and transplant our seedlings, as well as plant some store-bought plants.

To do this, we had to get our final (for this season anyway) garden box built.  In a whirlwind weekend, we built the garden box, planted the plants, transplanted the seedlings, and then sat back and admired our handy work.  Shortly after, we learned that mother nature hates us.

Little did we know, the danger of killing frost was not quite so gone as we were hoping.  We finished up our work on Sunday, and then learned that we were supposed to get a hard freeze on Sunday night... and Monday night... and Tuesday night... AND Wednesday night.  Sigh.

So, off to the interwebz we did run, to figure out what we could do about it.  In the end, we decided to try to cover the boxes with canvas, and then plastic outside of the canvas.  The one box that had plants to big to do this, we decided to cover with a heavy tarp, and cover the seedlings within with styrofoam cups.

We did this Sunday, and have been doing the cover-uncover shuffle ever since.  Our seedlings just may survive (remember, they had the added protection of insulating styrofoam) but the larger plants look like they're done for.  We're hoping they'll make a miraculous recovery, but the odds don't look good.

Oh well... at least by planting ridiculously early, we left ourselves plenty of time to re-plant.  :)  Everything I've read says getting good at gardening is as much about time as anything else, so we're just going to chalk this one up to a learning experience.  Hopefully, we'll still get plenty of fresh produce from containers, but I guess time will tell.

Lawn Mower Woes

Last weekend, my riding mower (which has seen only a single season worth of work) snapped the main mower drive belt.  I'm not terribly handy with mechanical things, but I figured it couldn't be too hard to swap out a belt.  The first thing I learned, is there are roughly elenty-million-billion different types of belts out there.  After exhaustive research, multiple consultations with the manual for my mower, and a fair amount of cursing, I finally zeroed in on the right belt, ordered it, and waited blissfully for it to be sent to me.  It arrived last Tuesday, in excellent time.

It was the wrong size.

120" <> 141".  141">120".  Rage = True.

I'll admit, I was mildly annoyed with myself.  There may have been a few choice words that I may have regretted and had to console myself against later in the day... when I did more exhaustive research.  This time, I did it the old-fashioned way... with a tape measure. Why didn't I do that before?  Well, I thought Google was my friend.  We have since broken up.

Eat your heart out, Google.

So, I found, ordered, and today received my shiny new mower belt.  Installing it wasn't terrible.  Sure there were skinned knuckles, a few bruises, a couple of hugs... you know, the normal stuff.  But when all was said and done, we got the belt back on the mower deck, and the mower deck back on the tractor. Unfortunately, our story does not end there.

My mower (at least the same model)... this one might actually work.

Well, all proud and happy, I hopped on the mower and tried to start it up.  Try is the operative word here.  The engine would not turn over, and the mower would not start.  Nothing runs like a deere.  That's been hit by a car.  And crawled into my barn to die.  (True story - for another time).

I don't trust my mechanics skills enough to try and troubleshoot the problem, so time to get on the phone and call someone.  Trying to save some money on this repair may have ended up costing me a lot more money (and did end up costing me a lot more time).  In the meantime, the grass continues to grow.

Who knows what treasures await beneath this verdant sea?

I wish I could say I learned my lesson, but odds are the next time something breaks, I'll try and fix it until it's even more broken.  I could say it's all part of the learning experience of trying to "go back to the land" and do more for ourselves, but in this case, I think it's more hard-coded into the male DNA.  I think I'll go drown my mower woes in some Diet Dr Pepper.