Day of Compost

I made a list of things to do Saturday. There were 9 items. I did 3. I raked leaves and put them through the chipper-shredder. That accounted for 2 of the items on the list. I assumed from the beginning that I was going to have no help, so I paced my work.

One valuable thing I experimented with was starting the chipper-shredder. I know this is a small point, but it helped me. I have degenerating something (I think torn tendons or something like that) in my elbows, which makes it hard to pull the starting rope when standing up. I figured out that I could compensate for this basic weakness by sitting on the ground, bracing the chipper-shredder with my feet and pulling with two hands. That gave me enough leverage to get the rotation on the engine.

I could get the engine to spin just fine; however, with long intervals between use, the engine still is reluctant to catch. So, my next point of learning was spraying a bit of starter fluid in the carburetor. We had this problem earlier in the fall. I replaced the spark plug and squirted starter fluid in the spark plug hole. I was about to do that (not being very smart) when I realized I could take off the cover of the air intake very easily -- just 2 screws -- and there it was. It did the trick.

The next challenge was scooping the leaves. There were some that had sat on a tarp over winter. They had settled and were pretty wet. I had to feed those in at the top. However, the dry leaves I rakes could be scooped in with the feeder in its down position. It still took two hours to get the compost done.

The third task was planting more tomato seeds and some cucumber. Doug Shaw gave me left over Brandywine that he got from Burpee. I lost track of where my Marglobe and German Johnson seeds went, so I was glad to have something else (an heirloom, too) to plant. I should have a total 36 tomato plants this year.