Four honest hours of work a day...

I got a good, honest four hours of work in today. Yahoo!!!

Pro-tip, when you walk out the door, be sure to turn on your stop-watch. Otherwise you might find yourself doing more than four hours work and only getting credit for four hours.

I finished fencing in Mrs ERJ's kitchen garden.

I sprayed poison ivy while she mowed.

I used the bill-hook to "scythe" down tall weeds slated for July 4 planting to root vegetables.

I used Mrs ERJ's push mower to mow the areas I scythed down.

I transplanted almost 100 persimmon seedlings that had the audacity to germinate without my direct involvement. They were growing around our statue of Mary. I-115, Morris Burton, Lena, K-6 and Prok are the likely female parents. Papa was likely to be Szukis or F-100 which are bisexual persimmons and their progeny are very likely to be females (fruit rather than pollen producers).

I transplanted Buttercrunch lettuce and "Callaloo" into Handsome Hombre's garden. The Florida Broadleaf mustard seeds I purchased on eBay had 0% germination.

The recent cool spell seems to have stopped growth in the garden. Nothing looks like it is growing.

Sweet cherries are ripe (or almost ripe).

Raspberries are ripe. Maybe my memory is failing, but they seemed sweeter in the fall.

Peppermint is going crazy.

Snails. Snails everywhere. On nettles. On mint. Everywhere. Snails are an alternate host for liver flukes. It makes me leery of drying mint, oregano, catnip and other herbs for later use.

I got the mower running again. The air cleaner needed cleaning.

I haven't started tomorrow's installment of fiction. Consequently, it might drop a bit later than usual.

I believe that this place could look pretty decent if I could put in four honest hours of work most days of the week.

Words of Wisdom from "Griz Greenfield"

Griz was the third-shift, skilled-trades, alternate Committee man in one of the plants I worked in.

He explained to me why getting 5 hours of work out of a skilled-tradesman on a weekend was almost impossible.

"Ya see, Joe, it's like this. The electricians come in at 6:00 and stand around by the office while Doug finishes up the job assignments. He sends them to the printer and gets them organized, then he walks out to hand out the work at 6:45."

"He calls out the electricians, one-at-a-time. They raise their hand and then walk up to Doug. Doug reads the assignment off the page he printed and then hands them the page. If they had any questions, they had nothing to write on and Doug ain't gonna print out two copies because his job review marks him down if he makes too many copies."

"Nobody can leave because most jobs require at least two people because SAFETY. So you gotta know everybody who is on your team."

"Doug gets all of the work handed out by 7:20 and released the tradesmen who all amble over to the tool-crib and then the parts-crib to get the special tools and parts they need for their assignment. Of course, Ken in the tool-crib had no idea which tools Doug specified so he has to hunt them down, one-by-one. Ditto for Martini in the parts-crib."

"If you are lucky, everybody is ready-to-go at 9:00 when first break starts. Since Saturday is time-and-a-half everybody takes 30 minutes for the 20 minute break. On Sunday, double-time, they take 40 minutes."

"At 9:40 the tradesmen start wrenching on whatever work they were given."

"Lunch follows the same rules as break. A half-hour lunch is 45 minutes on Saturday and 60 minutes on Sunday."

"Half-way between the end of lunch and the start of the last break, tradesmen start shutting down the work. They have to hand in their special tools because Doug might give the continuation of the work to a different shift or other tradesmen. They have to return the special parts they didn't get installed for the same reason."

"A slacker can go through the motions for two hours and get paid for 12 on Saturday (8 hours times time-and-a-half) or 16 on Sunday (double-time) and most of it is because you, management, can't find your ass with both hands."

"If you get five hours of work out of a tradesman on a Saturday or a Sunday you are hitting grand-slam home runs."

"Griz" told me that in the late 90's. It got better after that. Management started handing jobs out on Thursday and "kitting" special parts and tools in bins and prepositioned at the work and to be returned on MONDAY.

The point of the shaggy-dog story is that getting four hours of work done is a significant amount of work, especially for an old-geezer.

Bonus video (music)