Winning

I either did my first or my last gardening this weekend. Last, in that I emptied out and brought it my front porch flower pots, and first, in that I disposed of the dirt by covering my  Halloween pumpkins and hopeing for sprouts.

This year I disposed of my pumpkins in a much more sprout friendly location with much better light instead of just dumping them over the side and forgetting about them. Last year they voluntarily sprouted under much more difficult conditions but did not produce any pumpkins, this year I am hopeing that under much better circumstances I might have volunteer pumpkins instead of just volunteer vines, lovely and welcome as they were.

My question would be, is it better to leave the pumpkins whole and let them break down naturally or should I break them up and hurry the process along? The fact that its veryverycold right now might render the question moot. According to the map all the bitter cold, stadium destroying weather is falling on us. I hate gravity. On the upside to all this cold, my raspberry bushes are in heaven. They love being cold.

My Christmas decorations have suffered their first casualty. Pengy the outdoor penguin had to come in from the cold. He did one beak plant too many and I decided to pull him from the line. Also his wing kept falling off and his hat needs to be tacked down. Pengy was sad and needed some  down time in the penguin ICU.

I've had problems with my other penguins too. I was bringing Dogger back from our Thank-You-Jesus-Last-Walk-of-The-Night and I noticed that there was too much snow collecting on the face of the globe, so I did my usual pat down to clear it and return  the "snow" to the atmosphere. The  globe deflated under my hands. Damn it.

I  hurried put Dogger back in the house and found a flashlight. I then went back outside in the cold to root around in the dirt around my snow globe. I've never had to do that, I plug it in and it blows itself up. There is no on/off switch. Its either plugged in or its not. I checked the cord and it was fine, I checked the extension cords and it was fine, I checked the timer and it was fine. My snow globe was not fine, it is called an "air-blown" and the air was not blowing.

I sat there in the dirt and tried to focus What makes these things stop? What do I know about sudden, non-cord related, non-electricity related stoppage? Fuses. Somewhere there is a fuse and it is bad. The problem now is to find the fuse. In the dark. In the cold. In the wet.

Fortunately, the air-blown practices good customer service. The fuse was indeed blown (patted self on back for figuring that out, in the dark/cold/wet)  but sitting quietly next to the blown fuse was a replacement, unblown.  Bright, warm, bright, dry Victory.