Lazy evening, another tool

Yesterday at work the company hired a training contractor to teach is how to fuse plastic pipe. It was set up in four two-hour training classes of two hours each. The three instructors wore themselves out through the repetition required to train all forty of us. My group went through the training from 1 -3 pm. It was a bright, windy day so a couple of the guys in my class got a bit of a sunburn in the course of the training; me included. I did not realize I had gotten that much sun until I started to clean up later that evening.

Mama and I did a lot of little things in the late afternoon and evening just to clean up and catch up to the interrupted weekend we had. Neither of us had a surplus of energy to expend but the tasks we took on did not require a great deal of output on our parts. I did get the cattle a fresh bale of hay and they ran to it and attacked it like they had not eaten in a week. It is always humorous to see them pull or a huge mouthful of hay and slowly work it through to completion. They are actually very neat eaters in many respects. They always chew with their lips together and they never get another bite until they have swallowed the bite in their mouth. They never talk while their mouth is full and they always act like they are totally enjoying their meal. Goats are very much the same. No wonder the old timers referred to those with bad table manners as eating like a pig.

We took time to re-inspect and clean up in the garden. For the moment, it looks like the fruit trees will survive although it will cost them the year just to regain the growth they lost in one afternoon. There are enough of the crowns left to regrow about two thirds of the strawberry plants and there were even a few little berries left on two plants. I just had to clear the leaves back to see them. For the vegetables, all of them will have to be replaced and we should be able to do that this weekend by buying replacement plants at Trade Days. Along those lines, Mama dug into the cabinet where she has the seeds stored and found some green bean and snow pea seeds we can plant also. All this planting is premised on the hope that I can build a fence capable of keeping the cattle out of the garden. I believe I can do that.

Before we settled in for the night I applied weed preventer to the back yard in the hope of keeping down on the two types of grass burrs we get in the heat of the summer. One kind, the sand burr produces burrs that are very spiked, very hard and very painful to pull from shoes, shoe laces, socks and the bottom of pant legs. Mama really hates those. The other burr is not as spiked but is almost soft. It attaches to the soles of shoes and gets ground into any rugs, carpet, bath mats or car floor mats. It is not usually painful to extract but there are so many burrs produced per plant that it is a bit overwhelming to have to pull them out one-by-one from the infested areas. They end up getting on everything. Mama hates them also but at least they are not injurious. I hope the preventer works as well as we have been told it does.

Becky called and asked me to take the plate off the PT Cruiser and send it to them. I think Mama told me they bought an older Blazer already so transferring the plated makes sense. However, when I tried to remove the plate I discovered that it is mounted with a special screw that requires a hollow star bit. It is called, properly enough, a tamper proof screw. I do not have the bit required so I will have to spend the time tracking one down. It is not a big deal but it was unexpected.

One more tool to buy and then track down every time I need it.