No Plan Survives First Contact

The enemy was indeed brutal to the plans.  First the good:

Fix Z’s mac: The issue was, as expected, the SIMM.  There were cat hairs shorting across the conductors.  Cleaned it out, and it’s working fine.  I updated the software, connected his ipod, changed the batteries for the bluetooth mouse and keyboard, paired the phone with it so that he can move music to his phone, tweaked permission settings here and there to get things functioning as I want them, and called it good.

Bonus: While the Mac was going through its endless cycles of installing updates and rebooting, I ran three loads of laundry and folded most of the laundry backlog.  Yay me!  Zach also had the play date he’s been wanting to have with one of the neighbor kids.  I also got my phone paired with my laptop, although I still need to move contacts around.

But!  There is a birthday tonight, which will wrench a lot of plans.  Z & I went out for lunch and to get garden stuff, and decided over lunch to give the girl a gift card.  So we hit a grocery store for a card and a couple other things, and it took for eh ver, and then some.

Something that became apparent while we were going to lunch and such was that there is not going to be a significant gardening effort this weekend.  It was supposed to be in the 50’s.  Instead the car, which is always optimistic about these things, reads the temperature at 40°, which seems about accurate when you factor in the biting wind.  I did dutifully go to Home Depot for supplies, however.

I took 15 minutes in the cold to dump out the poor daffodil bulbs.  They faired better in their winter of neglect than I had feared.  I got about a third of them planted into a large pot (and this is 150 bulbs total, so when I say large, I mean about 2′ around!) and the rest are in mesh flats airing out.  I’ll pick out the ones that have rotted, but the vast majority are fat and happy and some are starting to sprout.

I also found a surprise I left myself!  There was a darling little maple seedling at Keet’s last Thanksgiving that I pulled up, and tucked into a baggie.  I stuck it in with the bulbs, and it suffered the same neglect.  It is, however, happy as a clam, with a big red terminal bud, ready to break out this spring.  I remember it had fantastic color and a deeply cut leaf shape.  I can’t wait to see it again!

I popped it into a cute little lavendar pot, and stood the pot in a bowl of warm water to wake it up.  Soon it will be a tree!

Keet's Maple