"I love shark week. All kids swim for free." - Josh Stern

I started out in Fred, putting a second coat of paint on the wainscoting and beginning finish electrical. We left about 11:00 for Decker's Nursery in Altadore, 15 miles north of us, and came back with an apple tree and three azaleas.

Everything else we're going to plant can wait until I'm home in three weeks, but they're just about out of their bare root fruit trees. We got a 3-in-1 that has Sugar Crisp, Braeburn, and Golden grafted onto the same rootstock. That way one tree pollinates itself instead of requiring another of a different variety. I planted it inside the deer fence or it would be gone in a month. But that area doesn't get a lot of sun because of all the tall Douglas Fir trees on our property, so it may not do real well.

I planted the azaelas at the front end of MoHo. The plan was to do no landscaping, leaving things just as God made them. Putting down the gravel has made a huge difference in the amount of mud that gets tracked in, but it also made things look a bit bleak in some places, including up against MoHo. So three small inexpensive azaleas and some cedar bark helps. Will they survive? Digging the holes revealed that area is as much gravel as dirt.

What they use here is called 3/4-minus, aka 3/4-fines, which means the rock pieces are 3/4" in size with all the dust resulting from the crushing process included. That's OK because after a good rain or two that dust has washed to the bottom, virtually disappearing. The problem is that over the years the gravel sinks into the soil (or clay in many places on this lot) meaning the top 6" is almost impossible to get a shovel into. I mixed in a LOT of bagged amendment into each hole, so we'll see. The climate and amount of sunlight is perfect, so if they can survive the soil they'll do fine.

All that hole digging and planting had to be done this afternoon because a) the bare root tree needed to be in the ground, and b) we're meeting Bob & Marla for church tomorrow and then having a leisurely lunch together before they head back to CA. They've been up all week looking at potential building sites out at the coast and *may* have found something. It would be great to have them that close, though we'd prefer less than 40 miles away.

I have two friends who are rabid Bernie Sanders supporters. Thinking about them reminds me of a saying, the original sayer of which I can't remember.
"If you're young and aren't a liberal you don't have a heart. If you're old and not conservative you don't have a brain."

Given what's going on in the Republican Party of late there is neither heart nor brain.
Good grief.

OK, I'm not done for the day. Can't be. I've got a little over 48 hours before I leave for Tanzania and have SO much work to get done. I'm going to go pack the suitcase of stuff I'm taking out to Cory and Kim so I can be sure that it weighs less than 50 lbs. If I get everything in but it's over that weight...I may have to leave my underwear home.