Fake rocks, work tickets, Primaries

Yesterday's work-tickets

Yesterday was another light day

I drove to the local big-box store and bought a grout bag, sand and Portland cement powder. 

Then I used scrap wood to make a fixture to hold tennis balls. It was 36" long (because that was the length of the scrap) and it can hold 12 balls. I cut 1" long slits into the tennis balls. The two sides of the fixture are 1-3/4" apart. By squeezing the balls and pressing them into fixture with the slit perpendicular to the sides of the fixture, the slit opened up like a coin-purse.

I mixed up the sand:cement 2:1 with enough water to make it a little soupier than gravy.  It is essentially concrete without coarse aggregate in it. Unlike mortar (which is Portland cement, slaked lime and sand)  it is not very caustic, should be a little bit stronger than mortar and should harden even if deprived of atmospheric CO2.

Then I filled those tennis balls using the grout-bag. The open "coin purse" slits closed up after prying them out of the fixture. Removing them from the fixture was the most difficult part of the production run.

I will have 24 artificial rocks to practice throwing after they harden. They are 2-3/4" in diameter and weight 7-1/2 ounces. That compares to a baseball at 2-7/8" diameter and 5 ounces of weight.

The rocks are bright yellow and should be easy to find for reuse. The picture in my head is to take ten of them to the field and pitch them downrange. Then collect them and throw them back toward the starting point. That will be 100 throws if I do that five times.

The other two items on the work ticket list were to walk with Mrs ERJ and to continue processing the wood from the Honey Locust branch. That added 40 minutes and 60 minutes respectively.

Today's work-tickets

I am up to eleven items on the list. That is what happens this time of year. Lots of work. Taking a break the last few days didn't help matters.

Two items of note: I am going to cull some tomato vines. The seeds I bought from a seller on Etsy germinated but are clearly a lot of mongrel seeds. I will be removing the vines that have zero or very light fruit-set. That will make more room for the vines that are pulling their weight.

The weather look-ahead implies that we (Eaton County, MI) are entering a week when we might get rain. This is a good time to broadcast turnip and radish seeds into squash patches and in other places.
 

Primary day

Michigan Primaries are today. There are two millage renewals on the ballot. One is for 9-1-1. The other is to fund "justice involved youth programs".