The plywood was to provide extra weight for crimping the grasses, which helps to keep them acting as a cover for the next round of grasses and herbaceous plants coming up instead of standing back up. Some operations use a weighted crimper/roller on a tractor, some folks use railroad ties, Ray Archuleta used to use his daughter’s old honda civic… I had leftover plywood from a project.

We mow in sections, on the highest setting, and so infrequently that our neighbors were surprised that we even have a lawnmower (battery powered, charged by solar). For a year or two we didn’t mow at all, just walked around with a sheet of plywood with a tow rope and some wood screwed into the bottom to act as crimpers. There are thousands of lightning bugs at our place again now, as well as dozens of species of solitary native bees and wasps. It’s super rewarding watching the dragonflies perching on the tall native bluestem in between their hunts.

He’s like a reverse dust mop, we just end up with more hair everywhere lol

I’m so glad to hear how well things are doing! Here’s hoping those female flowers will be open for you soon so they can be pollinated - doing it by hand is still fun when it’s just a few plants, and I really want that for you.

The throwaway joke had me laughing, as that’s one of the movies I’m just not allowed to watch around my wife for the near future. The Alien franchise is another one that’s verboten in our house for the time being…

Those last two sentences have me clenching my teeth in frustration, but I’m glad you’re having success elsewhere in your gardens. I’ll be living my huckleberry fantasy vicariously through you - ours are struggling this year because the purple raspberries went hard and shaded them a little too much

Hah I am a little orange from the sun and a little dirty from the work, this all tracks

Quite probably the finest renditions of Tomas Kalnoky’s music ever recorded

Hey, congrats on the new place! That’s a gorgeous view to have nearby

This might provide further context for why some of this is occurring the way it is

ETA: intentionally instigatory replies aside, people with NPD face challenges dealing with others

I’m with you 100% on the music helping with time management, there’s nothing like putting on an album with the right bpm for what needs to get accomplished. And the small dance movements, head bops, and shimmies while working helps to prevent getting burned out on the chores. Plus that feeling of serendipity when the task completes around the same time as the album… pure magic.

Went to the farmers market from 7-1 today, came home to find my wife running a fever so I’m now doing laundry and dishes. I’ll have to go do all the watering a little later today, but that’s okay. I still have about 7 cubic yards of wood chips to move, and our pond is now low enough to allow me to buck and remove the trees that fell into it during a wind storm earlier this year. Some of that will get done today, and I’ll be doing more of it tomorrow before and after the weekly grocery run. I also recorded and edited a video for our channel but I’m sorta 50/50 on it a few hours later and don’t know whether it’ll be posted or just deleted despite the time it took to do all that.

I, too, clean to music! It’s usually some kind of bop like Parov Stellar or Caravan Palace to prevent me from stopping to admire my work partway through.

This is great, and I hope they see a vast improvement in outcomes for their patrons! Our local food pantry moved to this model last year and it’s had a large impact for folks not having to see what was boxed up and then shop for what they didn’t get, which has helped those families keep to their budgets

Not my usual cup of tea but I listened to the whole thing and enjoyed it, thanks for sharing!

I’m glad to hear that, thank you for pointing this out to me.

It’s a little extra operational overhead, but they should proceed with the program everywhere but the areas that are subject to those specific appeals courts. Whenever a borrower from one of those states applies, just send back a form letter naming the judges who’ve blocked their access to relief from the predatory practices of lenders, and spell it out for them. Name the governors and other state officials who signed on to the challenge, then use the form letter to foment action against them.

I appreciate the go-ahead, I’ll be sure to be careful!

It looks like blossom end rot to me, which is usually associated with uneven/extreme differences in water availability and with low available calcium. We get it with our peppers more often than our tomatoes, but something that’s helped is:

• Dissolving egg shells in apple cider vinegar
• Straining out the now-rubbery shell bits
• Adding the vinegar to a sprayer with water in a 10:1 (water to acv) solution and foliar spraying
• Adding the shell bits to the soil just under the mulch

Treating the shells with the ACV releases some of the carbon that’s bonded, making the resultant form of calcium much more plant available. Foliar spraying can help be a sort of direct injection of the calcium solution through the stoma, while the remaining shells will be a slower trickle of the necessary calcium at the root zone.

I was just going to bide my time and hope there were some left at the end but then I and another person remarked how cute they are and that there probably won’t be any left over.

Plants on bikes isn’t something I’ve messed around with but it seems doable if you’re using smaller plants or high sided containers

@MiserableConstruct the Republican National Convention is in Milwaukee this week, and the post is noting that Grindr is experiencing outages due to heavy traffic in Milwaukee. It is poking fun at the RNC convention, and their proclivities despite protestations, rather than the state of Wisconsin.