Back To Work

After a two-day break, I resumed work on the firepit. I moved all of the excess dirt so I could see how much I needed to raise the blocks, and then I carefully relaid each block, making sure they were all level. I went through more of my gravel pile than I had hoped I would, but there was no way I was getting through this project without buying gravel.

As I’ve been able to think about what I did today, I’ve realized that the blocks are still too low. I’ll have to raise them even more tomorrow. That’s annoying.

A Dog Is A Big Responsibility

My next-door neighbor’s dog barked at me all fucking day. It’s an ugly, shitty-ass little French Bulldog that they obviously bought on a whim back when Frenchies were trendy, and now they can’t be bothered with it, so they leave it outside all day.

A while back, I realized that it wasn’t just barking, it was barking at me. If I make any noise in my backyard, it starts barking. The neighbors have a bunch of boxes stacked along the wall between our houses, and it climbs up on top of them to bark at me over the wall. I got fed up early on in the day and squirted the little shit with a spray bottle. If I did that to my dog, he would stop doing whatever he was doing and run away. It did absolutely nothing to discourage this little fucker, though. It just bit at the water between barks. Why don’t people teach their dogs manners?

Sailor’s Delight

As I was cleaning up this evening and putting my shovel away in the shed, I turned around and saw this stunning sight. Will it ever get old?

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Free Water For My Free Garlic

The other day, someone left a comment on one of my YouTube videos telling me that water isn’t free. I told them that it literally falls from the sky. As such, I thought this week would be a good time for planting because of the rainy weather we’ve had. It seems like it’s been raining forever, but it hasn’t even rained enough to soak the ground more than a couple of inches down. Normally, we have enough rain to thoroughly soak the ground by now.

We usually get rain in November and December, so the weeds start growing in the fall, and they’re knee-high by the end of January. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly things sprout after the first rain of the season. It’s almost immediate. After months of nothing growing in my backyard, suddenly, there are hundreds of tiny green plants everywhere—hundreds of plants that I have to pull out of the ground.

Every year for as long as we’ve lived here, I’ve spent Super Bowl Sunday pulling weeds. The weather is always nice on Super Bowl Sunday, the ground is still soft enough that it gives little resistance to my tugging, and I don’t give a shit about football.

This Is More Than Just La Niña

This year, though, there won’t be any weeds to pull because it just rained for the first time in about 9 months last week, so the weeds won’t be big enough to pull by Sunday. I could go out there with a shovel or a hoe and knock them down before they have a chance to get any bigger, but that’s not very satisfying.

Life Is Frighteningly Arbitrary

It’s ironic that I have a yard full of plants that I plan to destroy, but I spent a few minutes this afternoon sticking new plants in the ground. It reminds me of the time Bonnie bought glue traps to catch a rat that was terrorizing the garage. I scolded her for buying glue traps because they don’t kill the rat. You have to do that after it gets stuck to the trap. Or, rather, I have to do it.

Later that night, I found myself dispatching a terrified Norwegian Blue while Bonnie stood on the other side of the garage screaming at me to “kill it,” with our son’s pet rat perched upon her shoulder. It’s a tough old world, especially for the little things. My life probably isn’t dependent on the value I bring to the world, but for things like plants and animals, it definitely is.

You Better Hope Someone Likes You

If a plant has no purpose, it’s a weed, and no effort will be spared to exterminate it regardless of how naturally and efficiently it grows. On the other hand, if a plant is edible or even just beautiful, it can stay, no matter how much of a pain in the ass it is to grow. The same is true of pets. I’m not really sure there is any difference between a pet rat and a wild rat besides parasites and disease, but I know I wouldn’t invite a wild one into my house.

The scary thing is, I know there have been times in the world when a person’s life was dependent on their value. There might be places in the world where that’s still true today; I don’t know. It seems like we could be heading to such a dark place in this country in the not-so-distant future, and that’s more than troubling. It’s harrowing to think that a person could be discarded just because someone else can’t profit from them. Fortunately, people will always need food, and therefore, farmers… like me.

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