Everyday Ramblings

Yesterday when I posted on Facebook, the post got so long that I regretted not having made it a blog post instead.  Belatedly I decided to paste it here.

I'd like to do some elaborating later, especially on this year's big onion growing experiment, which has involved tracking the results of having planted four different bunches of onion plants.  Two of them were sampler packs, each containing three different varieties.  Some are short day onions, some intermediate, and some long-day.  We're in the intermediate zone, so growing other types should rightly be considered experimental.

Today I harvested the produce from one bunch of onion seedlings--50 lbs. Several other notable things happened.

Between yesterday and today's efforts, we hoed and discarded about half of a trash dumpster cart full of "sandburs," AKA puncture vine. These are some of the worst "bad boys" of local natural vegetation.

My brother finally got the copy of his naturalization papers he first requested from the immigration office in September 2015. Now he can reapply for his driver's license.

Hiromi finally paid the second time for postage for a package that he mailed to Japan for the first time in December 2016. It was floating around in the postal system all this time (having arrived at least once in Japan) because when the correct address was typed into their address-label making machine, it looked right on the screen, but the "state" (prefecture) name was omitted in the actual label on the package--an equipment glitch. Yesterday he was told that the package had returned to the local post office (for the second time in a week) because the postage had first been purchased more than six months ago. He worked for hours this afternoon to try to file for the refund they told him he could get online.

We saw a Roadrunner (bird) in the backyard just beyond the patio--twice today. I marvel at how readily they frequent the area around buildings in the country. These birds are very striking, and still fairly rare in this area.

Last night at dusk around 9:00, I saw from the house that a small group of animals was scrambling in and out of an empty frame on the ground that is to be a future strawberry bed. Right now we're filling it with compost materials, including kitchen scraps. When I went to the back door to get a better view, I saw telltale white stripes on a black body. By the time Hiromi got outside with his gun, the skunk family had disappeared.