An Outside Day

I took advantage of the nice day we had today. 2 days ago the forecast for today was rain but Mother Nature changed her mind and gave us another sunny spring day. Yesterday I spent the day cleaning up the front yard. Our big Sago Palm in the center of the yard now looks like a palm tree. I cut out all the dead fronds and then dug out all the babies and adolescent palms that were growing under them. I ended up with a half-dozen medium-sized plants and about 20 single or double frond plants still growing from a seed. I planted 3 of the larger ones on the West side of our yard. For now the rest are all sitting together in a pot while I decide what to do with them. I’ve got sufficient small pots and soil to start all of the small ones. I guess I’ll have a little Sago garden going.

Today was my day to set up the vegetable garden. Last year I just put the containers on top of decking that just laid on the ground. Taking a cue from my deck building I used last year’s garden decking and other materials that I already had and Made a 10’ x 7’ platform for the container garden. Next to that I used 4 pallets that I had and covered them with some plywood.. This will be a platform for the crawling plants—cucumbers, watermelons and cantaloupes. I plan on making a trestle for them to grow on and keep them off the ground. Last year I made adjustments to the garden on the fly—especially the irrigation set-up. This year I’m planning ahead. The gardens going to have to take care of itself in August (prime growing time) because we plan to be concentrating on helping K&T with baby Timmy(no, we don't know the sex yet. I'm just having fun.). By the end of last year I had a good system in place to automatically water the plants. It’s an efficient set-up, too, using drip irrigation on some plants and a bottom reservoir on others. All the watering goes to the roots and no sprinkling is needed. Next step for the garden is to make the mix to fill the tomato pots.

Penny wanted to try the new Quisno’s torpedo sandwich for lunch so that’s what we did. We coupled that trip with a grocery shop. Then it was back to the outdoor stuff.

All day I watched the sky. We have a 100% chance of rain tomorrow and sunsets are usually good when there is a change in weather on the way. With daylight savings time and the lengthening days sunset is now at 7PM. At 5:30 I headed to the beach. In the winter with sunsets being around 4:30 – 5:30 the drive to the beach is a little hectic. Everyone’s on the road going home from work. Now with the later sunset, traffic is light and the drive is easy. In 15 minutes I’m at the beach.

The drive is easy but the sun with its gradual climb to more northern latitudes is now setting right at the coastline. In another week or so it will again be setting over land and the over water sunsets will not be back until winter.

The beach walk was fun. I was surprised to find only a few people there. It is spring break here. The beach had very few shells on it and had been washed quite flat by the bad weather and big surf at the end of last week. Although shells were scarce the wave pattern in the sand was quite interesting. I don’t understand the mechanism that cause these shapes.

After about a half-hour walk I came to a portion of beach that had lots of shells. An ultralite seaplane flew over and it made me think of C&C. The sunset was now beginning and while it wasn’t spectacular it was nice.

I enjoyed this walk, probably because it’s been a while since I’ve been to the beach. It was a pleasant evening to be there.

Kitty Update—I went to go out and feed the cats tonight and Slash was out there. All 4 of the regulars started to arrive when they heard me and Slash scooted off to the edge of the patio while I pet the cats. Slash started to come back but Velcro went out and confronted him. They swatted at one another but it was more jockeying that harmful. Slash seems to want to join the group. He’s not aggressive with the others. I don’t know if the others will accept him or not.

Tomorrow will likely be an indoor day.