One of those days where a few little things went wrong.
Stopped by the housewares big box for a hanging basket to hang off the garage, and wound up finding a pretty one filled with coral, pink, and red impatiens…along with a bag of soil and cocoa mat baskets and sphagnum moss and peat moss and a tray of pink, red, and peach “sweetunias”, which I bought to plant in the wrought metal hanging baskets that up to this point have hung empty from their post, like something from a skellie garden.
Then I stopped to gas up the car. Place was packed, so I had to stop far enough from the pump that I had to stretch the hose a bit. Either that did something to the hose shut-off sensor–assuming there is one–or I didn’t get the spigot in the right position for Kuro’s fuel level sensor to, well, sense the fuel level. I realized this when gas spurted out of Kuro’s intake, down his side, and all over my hand. Not a lot of gas, maybe a quart or two. Still, car and driver smelled like gasoline as we wended our way to the grocery store. Bought said groceries and was standing in the checkout line when what did I hear but a rumble of thunder as the predicted 40% chance of rain turned into a 100% sure thing. A real cloudburst, and me without a brollie. I should have waited a few minutes for it to let up, but instead I dashed across the parking lot to Kuro, loaded in a hurry, and drove home dripping wet. Assumed I wouldn’t be able to work on the baskets until tomorrow because of the rain, but the closer I got to home, the less the wet. Pulled into the driveway to find not a drop had fallen.
Unloaded wet groceries. Changed into dry clothes. Dried off and stashed groceries. Went outside to work on baskets because hey, sunny!
I knew it was going to be hot today, and it was. But the sun ducked behind clouds occasionally and all would have been fine except for holy macaroni the humidity. Florida-level humidity, when all you’re doing is standing there and the next thing you know you’re dripping wet. I mean, planting little pots of flowers is not that strenuous an activity, but inside 10 minutes I looked like someone had drenched me with the hose.
It didn’t help knowing the hanging baskets would be a challenge, which was why I bought light filler like moss and filled half of each cocoa mat liner with styrofoam peanuts to lessen the amount of dirt etc even more. The post is one of those with the two-prong support that you drive into the ground, and I’m sure somewhere someone made a nice bonus designing away that third stabilizing prong. But dammit, the thing does not stay straight up and down and will not balance properly unless one basket is much lighter than the other in other words mismatched in other words sort of defeats the purpose of, you know, a matched pair of baskets. So the lovely baskets that I visualized hanging side by side are separated. One is hanging on the post, which as a result is standing perfectly straight. The other is hanging from a hook near the back door, and it does look nice there. But I’m going to get hold of some of those metal staples that you use to secure landscape cloth, pound a few of those along the length of the support, and see if they help steady the post.
Well, I’ve added more flowers to my surroundings, so it isn’t all bad. I hope they attract hummingbirds. The hummingbird feeder certainly doesn’t seem to. I moved it into the shade so the nectar wouldn’t get hot, but I’ve only seen hummers drink from it twice, and the current nectar level doesn’t seem to have budged over the last few days. I’ll give it a little more time–I always saw more hummers after the Rose of Sharon and hibiscus bloomed, and that’s a month or more away.
It’s already after 7pm, and I feel like I’ve been awake for only a few hours. I’m outside–it’s cooled off and dried out. I used a small sprinkler to water the flowers–the water attracted butterflies, which flew through the drops. A pretty sight to end the day.