A Sunday Stroll

Horticultural Scenery And An Amusing Antic

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This morning I awoke from my slumber rather early. Not that I was too irritated about that fact, for it was and still is an absolutely gorgeous morning! Today's main attraction is a BBQ at our friend's house, and we get to meet their new grandson. With that much fun in store, I tore into baking and cooking food like a rampaging domestic harpy, and before long had a chocolate fudge cake cooling on the counter, some pasta salad flavor melding in the fridge, a plate full of our home grown ground beef shaped into patties, and some homemade hamburger bun dough raising. Yay coffee!

Once I had my kitchen tasks in hand, I gave my dad a call. Last year, Dad ran a logging camp in Alaska. This year he is in a mining phase and is doing a bunch of reclamation work at a Molybdenum mine in Arizona. His employment barometer waxes and wanes like that.

While Dad sat in a cultivated cactus patch enjoying his morning coffee, I proceeded to stroll around my farm while we had an amiable father daughter chat. My morning amble was punctuated by the sweet melody of migrating songbirds that were congregating around my blustering father, their cadence trickled into my ear via my phone's speaker. As we discussed everything from mine worker drama to the corker of a lady that ran the little hotel that Dad is currently staying in, I took in a few observations of my own:

My boss gave me a lovely Early Girl tomato plant for my birthday this past week, and now that my hoophouse is up, I really need to get that beauty in the ground. Although, I also need to go pick up some bonemeal, for the fifty pound bag that I have been using for the past few years is all gone. I put a handful of bone meal in any hole I am transplanting a seedling in. Guess I better stop by the farm store in the next couple of days.

That bone meal procuring stop is rather pressing indeed, for I also have a bunch of broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and lettuce seedlings that need to take a trip to transplant land. Doesn't it always seem like your starts are in tiny phase, tiny phase, tiny phase, and then BOOM, They hit the get me into the ground before I become root bound stage all at once?

After I made a mental note regarding future soil amendment purchases, I moved on down the sidewalk to the edge of my front yard. It's dandelion season, and my farm is currently bursting with patches of bright yellow flowers. A lot of people hate dandelions, but I love them. They are such a versatile, useful plant, and in that moment I decided to pick some young dandelion greens from a chunk of plant that hasn't yet bloomed to add to a nice and tasty salad for my Monday lunch time enjoyment. I can only imagine the culinary magic that my most excellent Steemit bud @haphazard-hstead could craft with such a plethora of so-called yard weeds!

And now, it is time for the Amusing Antic. Years ago, when one of our dear neighbors were getting ready to leave our chunk of the woods for the concrete jungle that is now Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, we bought a pickup from them. It's a 1974 Ford F250, and I christened the 70's green beast Majestyk as soon as we drove it the five hundred feet down the road home, for the truck looked just like the vehicle from the Charles Bronson movie Mr. Majestyk . The truck itself has only one flaw as far as far I am concerned, it is a two wheel drive, so it is only used in the summer for farm chores like hauling trash to the dump, picking up hay, and an occasional farm promenade with all of the neighbor children hanging out of it like a bunch of spaniels. That said, due to it's lack of a transfer case, Majestyk sits in the barnyard all winter, only to be resurrected every spring.

The truck's hibernation ritual usually commences with a day on the battery charger, and this year was no exception. While we were at our salvage wood pile, my husband decided that he wanted to fire Majestyk up. I just wanted to get the 1X4's needed to secure the plastic to my hoophouse, but being a rather amiable sort, jumped off of our tractor and strolled over to the pickup.

For the last six years, Majestyk would always fire up after a bit of a battery charge. Yesterday was a first. My hubs jumped in and before he could even get the key in the ignition, did a reenactment of this scene from the movie Tommy Boy:

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Source

I skipped around with a can of starter fluid in my hand, gleefully chanting, "Bees, bees in the car!" For some strange reason my husband did not find my performance amusing.

After the freshly hatched insects were dispatched, we discovered that Majestyk did not want to start. Hmm... The hubs walked around and removed the air filter cover and gave the innards a couple of sprays of starting fluid. We then walked back around and again, nothing happened. This was a very peculiar thing indeed.

"Why don't you go give it another spray, hun." he asked me.

Always happy to be of service, I trotted around, carefully avoiding the bee corpses that lay scattered across the ground and sprayed a bit of starter fluid into Majestyk's mighty maw.

"Go ahead." I instructed my hubs, and boy did he. When he turned the ignition I found myself hopping back as a spray of fuel erupted from the main fuel line like a stream of urine from a buck goat. While the carbon based fountain was erupting a bit of pyrotechnical magic happened over in the battery section of the truck, and I started making the universal sign of, "cut it" whilst giggling like a gaggle of seventh graders.

Apparently this winter was more than the main fuel line could bear, and it will need replacing. I'm just happy that I wasn't leaning over the engine block, for it's always nice to keep one's eyebrows. My husband I feel a little sorry for, for the poor man already has tasks aplenty, but I know that Majestyk will be up and running in no time, for that is just how we roll.

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And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's rambling and rolling iPhone.

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