Spring of 2023

 "Seek not the good in external things.  Seek it in yourself." - Epictetus

 Until only this past week this spring, the weather has been highly uncooperative for doing much outside.  Below are brief clips of different snow and hail events from the past couple of weeks.

The ground has thawed, and for the most part the snow has melted.  That just leaves the miserable weather to deal with.  I'm behind on a few things that normally would have been done for the spring season, like swapping snow tires off the Subaru and removing the snow plow - maybe conducting a spring burn of dropped trees and branches. 

The spring outage at work is coming up quickly, so for a couple of weeks I'll be living there, except to sleep.  I managed to get a few things accomplished.  I removed the snow marker stakes, once the ground thawed sufficiently that they could be pulled out.  

Then I put on my grungy sweatshirt and sprayed for bugs.  This is also my painting and burning shirt - thus all the holes made by glowing embers falling on it.

A few seed bugs have already put in an appearance, and I wanted to get out ahead of them.  Below: The western conifer seed bug.

The Permethrin that I used last fall knocked these bugs down really well, so I used it again preemptively.

Fortunately the wife was paying attention, and asked me WTF I was doing spraying that crap without a respirator.  I'd forgotten that I had a deep cough for about a week afterwards last year, and that I'd bought a respirator to avoid a repeat occurrence.

Looks like those things you'd wear in little league back in the day.

Afterwards I managed to get 40 lbs of 16-16-16 (%Nitrogen, %Phosphorus, %Potassium) fertilizer on the grass, even though some of it fell on patches of snow in the shady areas.  The fertilizer bag was weird, because it stated that it was "Not for use on lawns in Washington State", which is right next door to Idaho.  Not sure why that would be, because 16-16-16 is what everyone has used on grass forever.  It seems they are pre-occupied with Phosphorus, which is certainly understandable.

I also spread quite a bit in the woods, in places where I'd like to see more trees.  Those thin areas are where I can see neighbor's houses, vehicles and livestock.  Trees and undergrowth are preferable.

And I managed to get some sweeping up done.  The plow doesn't just move snow.  It also picks up gravel and dirt, particularly when the ground hasn't frozen and developed a sheet of ice yet.

Tomorrow I'm trying a different tire shop.  I spoke at length with a tech about all the issues I've had since visiting the other shop.  The new leak, the fact that the car isn't seeing the TPM sensors, and the rear brakes.  

I had asked the guy at the previous tire shop whether the generic TPM sensors he was installing would work on an old Mercedes.  He airily assured me that they are all the same, and there would be no issue with the car recognizing them.  That of course, did not turn out to be the case.

The guy at this new tire shop said that "No, those ordinary ones don't work - the transmitter frequency isn't correct."  He has some TPM sending units that he says "should work", but he's ordering both kinds, so that if the cheap ones don't work (saving me $400), he can get it to work with the correct ones.  He will also fix the slow leak and the rear brakes.  All he needs is the car for an entire day.  

And money :)