Update from the Reluctant Gardener

While we are rushing around doing birthday celebrations and such, God is blessing the Common Household vegetable garden, which consists of six plants in pots on the deck.  What a pleasant surprise to see flowers on the tomato plants! 

 

Promise of future cherry tomatoes

For several years we have planted peppers plants but not once have I seen a pepper grow.  This year I’m trying jalapenos.  So far, no evidence of pepper progeny.

Alas, the marigolds met an untimely death, due to neglect.

The miracle is this lettuce plant.  At the farmer’s market, I bought what I thought was a head of red-leaf lettuce.  But it turned out to be in a little pot, actually still growing in actual dirt.  This was the best thing ever – whenever I wanted to make a salad (which I do almost every day) I just pulled off a few leaves from my lettuce plant.   I used up one plant in one week, which meant it was time to go back to the farmer’s market to buy another one. 

New tasty lettuce leaves are growing!
Now the trick is to make sure the attack rabbits don't
come up onto the deck and steal them.

Here’s the miracle.  My friend (who is knowledgeable about many things, especially plants) said, “Just put last week’s lettuce plant outside.  If you left the root in the soil, it will probably grow more lettuce leaves.”  Now “just put it outside” is a gardening instruction that I can follow.  I practically threw that pot with the spent lettuce out on the deck.   And it is indeed growing new leaves! 

In the front yard, tragedy struck.  Someone, probably a lyme-disease-tick-carrying ungulate, ate all the buds off one of my balloon flower plants.  In retaliation, paying no heed to the fact our neighbor was having a huge party, I went out yesterday and stunk up the whole neighborhood by liberally spraying Liquid Fence, which smells like rotten eggs + wolf urine. 

Applying Liquid Fence has become trickier than it used to be.  The spray nozzle got a strategically placed hole in it, which means that some of the Liquid Fence comes out sideways, rather than straightforward.  I have to be very careful to stand to the left of the bottle when I spray, or no one will ever want to sit next to me in the movie theater ever again.   Come to think of it, maybe that’s why I couldn’t get anyone in the family to go see “Far From the Madding Crowd” with me.

Hot Time on a Cold Day

On a late November Saturday morning, when it’s below freezing outside, where is the Common Household Mom to be found?  In the warm kitchen, making a birthday pie?  At the mall, shopping for gifts for her loved ones?  Curled up by the proverbial fire, sipping hot chocolate and reading a good book?

No, Dear Reader.  On such a day you can find the Common Household Mom outside, mowing the lawn. 

The Weather Man had promised dry and 45° for today.  That’s a good 20° warmer than the past five days have been.  So I girded myself in the clothing of yard work, including not a winter hat but one of those things that just wraps around your ears.  The actual temperature was only 26°, but at least it was dry.  I heard the sound of a lawn mower out in the neighborhood.  Sure enough, there was my Neighbor with the Heart of Gold mowing his lawn, with the usual cigar hanging out of his mouth. 

I set my face toward the garage, found the gas can, and filled the mower’s gas tank.  I have not yet figured out how to do this without making my hands smell like gasoline for the rest of the day.

The mower instructions say to prime the engine with three squirts of gas using the handy primer button.  However, my husband has told me that our post-menopausal mower needs more than that to get started.  I couldn’t remember how many squirts, so I pressed the primer button nine times, hoping I would not flood the engine.  I yanked the starter cord more times than the House of Representatives has voted to repeal Obamacare.  Nothing.  I decided to go up to a lucky thirteen squirts. More yanking, during which I tried not to imagine what that action was doing to my elbow joint.  Nothing.  The engine did not even turn over. 

I wondered if the engine would cooperate if I smoked a cigar, as Mr Heart of Gold Neighbor does.  He seems to have no trouble starting his mower.  Not having a cigar, I put the mower back in the garage and went inside to think about whether covering the mower with a blanket would be a fire hazard.  Half an hour later, I tried again.  After three yanks, the mower sprang to life and said, “Well, hot damn, I guess I do have to mow the lawn today after all.” 

After mowing a few rows, I noticed that my hair felt weird, as if it was poinging up out of my skull.  That’s what I get for not wearing a real hat, I said to myself.  But no, it was not my hair rebelling, but drops of sleet on my bare head.  I soldiered on, thinking fondly of the days when our son was not at college on lawn-mowing days. 

As the Wintry Mix on the mower started to look like a Jackson Pollock painting (except in black and gray), I decided it wasn’t that bad.  I tried not to overestimate the number of leaves that the mower bag can hold.  I am always fearful that this is a fire hazard, but then I reasoned that only a Boy Scout can start a fire on wet leaves when the weather is 26° and sleeting, and even then the Boy Scout needs dryer lint and a lot of matches. 

 

Is it a fire hazard when the leaves get backed up in the mower
like this, or just a yucky mess?

When the sleet on the mower began to resemble a Rothko painting, I decided I was done for today.  Besides, the yard bin was almost full.

I did manage to get one section done, but that’s only one third of the lawn. Son, it’s your turn.  I’ll be sitting by the fire, which remains proverbial because we don't have a fireplace.  That would be a fire hazard.

Nearly full yard waste bin

Leafy Math

This post is in honor of my friend who is studying math – algebra, to be specific.

This afternoon Younger Daughter, Son, and I raked leaves, because it is the most pressing thing on my list, because it was a beautiful day, and because the Common Household labor force nearly doubled with the arrival of my son.

 

How much does that yard bin hold, anyway?

After about 30 minutes of raking, I dismissed the kids, partly to reward Son and Younger Daughter for doing it without complaint (! it does happen !), and partly to promote sibling camaraderie.  I steered them to two other projects: putting up some Halloween decorations, and composing word problems having to do with leaves and raking. 

When I rake leaves I am usually doing informal science or math in my head.   Just the other day I did an experiment to see which was a faster way to get the leaves to the top of the hill. 

Method 1: rake the leaves into a pile, lift the pile into the yard waste bin, drag the yard waste bin to the top of the hill, and then dump it out at the edge of the street. 

Method 2:  rake the leaves onto the tarp and drag the tarp to the top of the hill, then dump it out at the edge of the street.  

Method 1 takes umpteen years and Method 2 takes an eon.  The end result of my experiment was blisters on both my hands.

Or I do some math musing in my head – How many leaves are still in the trees?  What is the probability that the leaves will stay in the piles at the top of the hill?

There are a few more weeks' worth of raking up there.

How long before they fall to the ground?

In recognition of the courage and determination of my friend who is studying algebra, I asked my kids to come up with their own leaf algebra problem.

The Common Household Mom pondering some leaf math.

Just in case you would like extra math practice, or you wish to punish your children with word problems, I included the problems below.  I will admit I needed help to set up the equations for these problems.  Algebra forces you to think in a certain way (which is why it should be required in most curricula), and I am out of practice. 

Perhaps more interesting than the solution to the word problems is to gauge how realistic they are.  One of the tricky parts to these problems is that the leaves continue to fall while the raking is occurring.  That’s realistic, all right.

The algebra word problem lab

Younger Daughter’s word problem

Leaves are falling at a rate of 160 leaves per hour.  You can rake leaves at a rate of 3,000 per hour.  The leaves have been falling all week since you last got a chance to rake them, and you decided that you can’t stand it any more.  However, you only have 1.5 hours before you have to go to your church meeting.  How long would it take you to clear the yard, and can you do it before you go to church?  A calculator will be helpful.

Son’s word problem
Son, Older Daughter, and Younger Daughter are raking leaves.  Son can rake 1,000 leaves per hour, Older Daughter can rake 500 leaves per hour, and Younger Daughter can rake 1,100 leaves per hour.  If the total number of leaves in the yard is 5,000 and leaves are falling at a rate of 100 leaves per hour, how long will it take to clear the yard if

a) everyone starts at the same time, and

b) Younger Daughter starts 1 hour after Son and Older Daughter?

Answers in the comments.

If you have gotten all the way through this post, I am amazed and reward you with these questions:  Do you like algebra?  What is the most pressing thing on your list?

A fine afternoon's work.

Looking Up

Taking the advice of Rabbi and Pastor, today I walked in the park and looked up.

Rabbi had suggested that one good way to live includes paying attention to the details around you, and appreciating those everyday things.  Pastor had suggested that one good way to live is to acknowledge the good gifts God has given us right now, rather than waiting for that supposedly better thing in the future.

I took my camera to the park and pointed it up.  Today the weather was superior, with abundant sunshine in this cloudiest of all places, truly a gift.  Looking up, I saw shapes and colors and fractals everywhere. 

Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;

    let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.  -Psalm 96:12

Extraordinary everyday gifts.