Pre-Tripping

And so I'm bringing out stuff to take on vacation, counting out t-shirts, trying to learn weather divination to better decide if I should bring a sweater with me our sweater with me. If I bring only warm weather clothes it all but guarantees four days of forty-five degrees and gail force winds, as we have had in the last two years but if I come outfitted to climb K2, it will be ninety and stagnant the whole time. The only answer is to bring too much of everything. I can't be sure that I won't get invited to a last minute wedding, I should bring something dressy just in case.

(who am I kidding? people up there have full on Church weddings outfitted in  L.L Bean  flannel couture and professional grade, heavy duty sandles)

There is also the chance, every day that I might fall into a creek or the lake, or down an embankment - its a lifestyle choice Ive made and I'm comfortable with it,  and if you have to plan to change clothes at least twice a day every day, your available wardrobe needs to reflect that. But if its forty-five and gusty, I'll be doing less (I hope) creek invading and embankment falling. I don't have the wardrobe fir winter invading and falling.

And then there is shoes. I need my sneakers and I should probably think about the creek invading aspect of my lifestyle and just how much I do notlove walking around with wet sneakers, so that means a second pair of sneakers and then there is also the professional grade, heavy duty sandles and the regular duty sandles  - that I probably won't wear but if I don't bring them, I will so need them, as sneakers aren't really cute and not always appropriate and the heavy-duty professional grade sandles can be clunky so that means, lighter weight, cute sneakers as well,but at the same time, its vacation and hang other peoples fashion.

And speaking of vacations. The garden is not coming with me. Bummer, I know, I know, its mean to leave it there unprotected from the squirrels and no doubt producing like a son of a bitch - but the watermelon vines wouldn't fit in the back of the car and the tomato plants are too tall for the drive to see over and you know they would object to seat belts.

Out of sight not out of mind though. I am going to continue to take care of them. The main garden will be fine, the drip hose will drip on without me. The satellite garden on the other hand, this is a problem. I would just say "maybe it will rain, hopefully we'll get a tropical depression" and let it go, and that would be okay, except one of the new melons is there and I am not going to abandon a baby to "maybe it will rain, hopefully we'll get a tropical depression". I have to figure out a way to keep it alive.

My first thought was to splurge on a duel timer - because I thought they had such things. They might have last May but here in the depths of August - when we actually need to water our plants, they aren't on the shelves. Its the "duel" part that is a problem, one hose is no problem, and I all ready have one, I would like to water two areas at  two different times - it can't be that hard a problem and yet it is.

My  first idea was to just get a splitter and put one timer on one and one timer on the other - a great idea in theory but splitters aren't all that wide and timers are. I would have to buy more hoses and the more things you have Frankenstein-ed together, the more opportunity for leaks and I hate leaks. I like elegant and elegant means A) tidy B) less-is-more and C) not leaking . Leaking is untidy and umteen hoses is more.

I started to think about the front. The idea is as follows : use the front water, add a timer, and run hose or hose - i  from the front to the back behind the shed to culminate with a sprinkler that will water both the melons and the beans. I have a spigot looking for work, and where there is a spigot there is somewhere to plug in a timer. I have a timer all ready in storage and there is a  existing hose. I think what the plan is going to be is that I use the old timer, I have to find out if it still works after sitting in the basement for a year, but if it doesn't, a replacement wouldn't hurt my bottom line all that much and I know all ready the project would need at least one more hose - First I need to measure though and find out just how much hose I'm going to need ( the lack of an elegant design comes into play here), I'm pretty sure my existing hose isn't a super long variety and I'll need to do this before the Wally World Christmas fairies pull their  garden hoses off the shelf and replace them with garland and Christmas lights.