Taking a vacation from news, work-ticket

I decided that I need a one-week vacation from news. A "fast", if you prefer.

That means that I will also be watching fewer videos because the news keeps sneaking into them.

A fellow from Switzerland purchased a combine/harvester in northern Holland and then drove it back home through Netherland, Belgium, France and Switzerland. It took him weeks since his top-speed was 11 miles per hour.

Note the castle in the background on the left side of the frame. Not scenery you will see in Michigan.

Driving through cities was harrowing, especially since the visibility from his seat wasn't all that whippy.

One thing I will say about Europe is that their near-paranoia about food-security means that they are exceptionally tolerant about machines that harvests food causing traffic jams. As recently as 1950 getting enough calories every day was a serious challenge in much of war-torn Europe.

37 minute run-time. Auto-dubbed in English. BTW, he got about 4.7 mpg.

Work-ticket

I spent an hour-and-a-half cutting green bamboo. Mrs ERJ assisted. She carried the stems and didn't allow the cut-ends to get any closer than 9 inches (2.3e+9 Angstrom in metric) to the ground lest they strike root and start growing again.

I planted two watermelons at Southern Belle's and four more in my garden. Southern Belle's green beans look better than mine. Next year I will not plant mine as early. They just stall-out and become food for pests.

Her potatoes and the first planting of sweet corn are up. 

I collected my post driver and used it to drive in T-posts in the Hill Orchard. I then used those posts to secure cages to protect trees from deer. 

Upon arriving home in Eaton Rapids I measured the distance between loops on a 160 body-grip trap springs and learned that it is 8" from outside of loop-to-outside of loop. I had some three-year-old hazelnut stems and one of them had a promising Y. I cut the Y long and used baling twine to pull it in to exactly 8". I also have the option of inserting a stick between the wraps of baling twine and twisting it to pull it even more if that is warranted.

A very small side-project was to make "medicated" wipes. Boric acid is a mild fungicide and stops bacterial growth. I made a 100 ml of saturated boric acid solution (it is a very mild "acid" with a pH of about 5) and added it to a 400 gram package of pre-moistened wipes. I make no claims about this being a great way to deal with superficial, external Candida skin infections but it isn't likely to do any harm and it is inexpensive.

Total time-on-task was just a little over two hours.

A few of the peony divisions I planted in the Upper Orchard were blooming.

The names of the varieties are unknown, but that doesn't make them any less pretty.

A squash seedling. It looks quite smug, self-assured and pleased with itself. An inch of rain will do that for a plant.