Stories and other stuff

I composted. I put stuff in it.  I put stuff on it.  I turned it.  I let it rot.  I made sure it never smelled.  For two years. Today was the payoff.  I started shoveling it into the dump cart.  It was loose.  It has lots of good stuff in it and my plants are gonna love it.  I was excited.  And then, I saw how much of the garden it covered.  It wasn't much. Undaunted, composting began again in earnest today.  With six bags of grass clippings, composting was a good idea.  There's plenty in the back to pile on the pile to get it going.  Thirty gallons of goo from the bottom of the pool ought to help break it down. I am excited about finally getting the garden in, or I was anyway.  I tilled it before it rained and now there's this "crust" on my lovely little garden plot.  I get to till it again.  Go me. That happens tomorrow, followed soon thereafter by planting.  When I go to bed tomorrow, ...

The annual fight with the yard is about to begin. I say that somewhat begrudgingly, because it should have, and I guess, did, begin with a few skirmishes, that judging by the looks of things, I lost. So tomorrow we regroup and start over. It finally dried up enough that I was able to mow the lawn at church today.  I enjoy doing that...it's good exercise and I get to people watch.  It takes all kinds to make a world, and when you're right by the library, you get to see all kinds of people. There are street people, drug addicts (saw a guy that hadn't had any for a while...he couldn't sit still while waiting for the bus), young families, grandmas with kids, ladies getting their walk on during their lunch hour, old guys on bikes, old guys in wheelchairs and scooters, and the list goes on and on. Tomorrow, though, there will be no people watching. I started getting ready for summer about ten days ago.  It took me ten days to drain the pool.  I had to this year...

Smarter people than me can't figure out my life.  I mean that. However, it's always good for a laugh.  There's a lot going on that I don't blog about, mostly out of respect for the privacy of the people involved.  There was a time that I didn't care all that much about that.  You live and learn, though.  Besides I'm finding that it's a small world, and mine gets smaller and smaller every day. I don't put a lot of stock into the things I see, but often this or that will be like a little clue that something odd is going on.  The car with Indiana plates I saw yesterday at the light on 36th would be one of those things.  There are people from all over in Ogden.  Texas, Missouri, Montana, Idaho, and the list goes on and on.  There are lots and lots of people from Oregon here.  And yesterday there was someone from Indiana in my neighborhood the same time I was going to work. It doesn't mean anything.  It wasn't a "sign".  I'm j...

I'm thankful for my church family.  I mean that.  It's a group of varied people with different "stuff" going on in their lives, but when we come together, we kind of help each other with our "stuff".  Sometimes it's sharing a concern with the congregation so we can pray for each other, both in the worship service and at home during the week. I strongly believe in the power of prayer and I know God answers.   I had a dream this morning.  Part of it was weird.  OK, ALL of it was weird, Stole them. I was helping set up some equipment for some kind of presentation at my church.  I'm not sure what, but part of it involved showing some short videos and I was helping set up the TV monitors for it.  Some lady came in and I had to explain to her that it wasn't the presentation, but part of a larger presentation.  When I went to leave the pastor walked out to the parking lot with me and that's when I noticed that my truck was on jackstands...

I am so thankful it rained the last few days.  It softened up the garden so that I could get a plow through it.  You know the ground is dry when a moldboard plow won't go through your mess.  It did today, though, with the aid of my banged up, but thankfully still running garden tractor.  It doesn't look like a cootie bug anymore (surely, y'all remember playing Cootie).  It looks like someone punched it in the face and broke out its' teeth. But run it does, albeit not as well as I'd like.  I'm gonna wear it out.  It was already worn out when I got it.  I've had it for about eight years and I give the thing a workout.  I ran it for a couple of hours today just turning over the soil in the garden. That was the easy part.  I have to start raking it out tomorrow.  Then I'll till it again.  Then I'll plow it again, after it's tilled, to put in the furrows.  Then I will plant corn again and hope for the best.  This ti...

I took Monday night off work because my knee hurt so badly I couldn't stand.  But I did do something Monday that I wanted to put off.  I mowed the lawn at the church before I went to work.  It needed it, to the point that one of the fellow worshippers made a comment to the pastor that was passed to me.  I wasn't going to do it, but feeling prompted by the Spirit, I did it anyway.  In the pain, I remember sensing that there was a reason for it I didn't understand, but just keep working through the pain. I did.  I like doing that job and I try to remember whose lawn it is that I mow.  It's not mine.  I do it to serve God.  People pass by our church building every day, and I want to keep it looking nice for a multitude of reasons:  it's God's house, it's part of the neighborhood, and I want people to know we care about being part of the neighborhood. Anyway, as I was finishing, Pastor Karl was leaving and he walked up to visit with me f...

I knew it hurt last night.  It hurt so badly that I actually took two pain pills, which did nothing for the pain, by the way.  The NSAID that I take when I have gout isn't helping either.  I'm supposed to take that for the bulging disc in my back.  I thought this might be a gout attack, but it's not. Heat didn't help.  Ice is in the forecast.  I have this cool thing that I can put around my knee which circulates ice cold water around it.  It's a leftover from my knee surgery and I'm fixin' to get a bag of ice and plug myself in as soon as I can drive. it didn't hurt that bad this morning, though, so I took care of the things I needed to do today.  I fixed the tractor!  Look out weeds...I have a harrow, a disc, and a moldboard plow and some ground is fixin' to get torn up this week.  I had to go to two different parts stores to get what I needed, but the trip was successful.  It fires right up and runs in response to the throttle...

I fixed it. Sort of. I think. I'm talking about my tractor, and had I not taken the fuel pump apart, I would be plowing under the mess that is the back 40 right now, instead of writing this.  But I did, and I now need a fuel pump rebuild kit because parts went missing. Oh well.  When you're trying to rebuild something in the middle of the field (literally), things happen. My tractor had a fuel problem, which I was able to finally determine, was the screen that used to be on the barbed fitting that goes into the fuel tank.  I determined that the fuel wasn't getting to the carb when I took it half-apart and noticed there was no fuel in the carb bowl.  I'd cleaned out the fuel line (so I thought) with compressed air, so thought it was probably a clogged fuel pump.  I took it apart and checked it and tried (and failed) to put it back together.  You really can't use the gaskets on these types of parts again, and I knew that.  But hey, I'll try any...