Monday, June 27, 2022

Transitions

Transition One

Belladonna moved off of our phone plan this weekend. She made the move after I informed her that my goal is to have her and Kubota off by November and then Mrs ERJ will flip over to a pre-pay. That will take our current $186/month plan down to $40.

She accommodated by making the move early.

I got to meet her boyfriend's brother while she was checking out the new phones. He attends Michigan Tech and is 3/4 the way through his Electrical Engineering program. He is working in manufacturing this summer.

Transition Two

I am done with the antibiotic I was taking prophylactically to prevent infections in the incision.

Transition Three

You can see all of the branches with dead leaves. Fireblight strikes. Horseradish plant in foreground

I T-budded pears on the four Tashkent quince. According to the internet, Potomac and Blake's Pride pears are both fireblight resistant and compatible with quince rootstocks. We will see how they do. The bark was "slipping" on three of the four quince I am am optimistic about the buds taking.

Fireblight is often self-limiting. It rages through the first year wood and extinguishes when it hit second or third year wood. Sometimes it leaves a large canker where the younger branch hits the older branch.

Trees that take this kind of damage are rarely productive. I am cutting my losses by flipping the Tashkent quince to pears. If that fails, I will remove them and replace them with trees that will "pay their rent".

6 comments:

  1. Time for some probiotics to restore the gut flora and fauna .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Joe writes: The ever-wise and lovely Mrs ERJ purchased two quarts of Kefir. Looking at the label it has 11 different cultures of bacteria.

      And even though I try to keep the blog PG rated, there is even a chance I might kiss Mrs ERJ on the lips (maybe even more than once!) to "steal" some of her bacteria.

      I will also eat some shredded cabbage to feed those little rascals.

      Delete
    2. A big one is saccharomyces boulardii. It's been studied for prevention of c-diff when antibiotics are used, requires no refrigeration, survives stomach acid, and has been most useful to take along on overseas trips.

      Delete
  2. ERJ, we are reaching the point where we will start to have the same discussion with our oldest, Nighean Gheal, as she gets ready to move out and start her first full time college position. Part of me is sad, but part of me is grateful for the reduced cell phone bill.

    Huzzah on the end of the antibiotics!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have done something similar with life insurance policies for our grandkids. It will be a savings of about $70 month. Which on a fixed income is significant.

    ReplyDelete
  4. If you are disciplined in data usage (use wifi not mobile data) Ting Mobile can be very inexpensive. We have six phones and a bill around $140.

    ReplyDelete

Readers who are willing to comment make this a better blog. Civil dialog is a valuable thing.