Baldur

Baldur has become the owner of two pickup trucks in the last month. This after a drought of about 3 years without a vehicle of his own.
Let me explain this latest adventure.
In midJune I found a 1999 Dodge Dakota listed for sale on Craigslist. It was in a town about 45 minutes away from here. The price was reasonable and it appeared a good sturdy little truck.
The seller was a very nice grandfatherly old man.
He told me his nephew had passed away and as executor of the estate he was selling off the few belongings of the deceased.
The truck is purchased and Baldur takes it home for a good cleaning. I stop and get a couple of extra keys made.
Then it is off to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get the thing registered.
I don't have the right paperwork.
They need a form from probate court officially listing the gentleman as executor and thus authorized to sell the vehicle.
I call him back. He is not officially the executor, despite what he had previously told me. Grrrrrrr.
He said he would check with the court and call me back.

Baldur

Two days later Stanley (that is him name) calls back.
It becomes more complicated.
He had power of attorney over his nephew's affairs in his last few months, so he had assumed that still gave him authority to make decisions. That power terminated the moment that the nephew died. The family is estranged and Stanley had no idea how to contact the nephew's closest living relatives, his brother and sister.
PLUS the Probate was closing for a 2 week Summer Recess in just a couple days. GRRRRRRRRR
He agrees to refund my money.
Baldur and Robert drive the 45 minutes to his home and return the truck.
He sees that it is much cleaner and that I've made keys so he refunds my money (cash..as it was how I paid him) plus gives me $20 extra for my troubles.
Goodbye beautiful little Dodge Dakota.

Baldur

The very next day a neighbor tells me that a friend of his is selling a very similar truck. He gives me Moe's phone number.
Would you buy a used truck from a man named Moe?
I go to meet him and see the truck. He actually lived within walking distance of Boughbreak though we'd never met.
The home appeared fine from the street but the backyard was a graveyard of older vehicles and rusting hulks of large pieces of power machinery. Everything was shrouded in a mantle of vines and weeds.
The truck is just about identical to the one I had just returned. It is a 1998 Dodge Dakota with the same color paint and interior. There is less rust on the body but the inside of the cab smells like a pile of sweaty socks on the floor of gymnasium locker room on a very hot day. It runs well but obviously needs a new muffler.
It also has dozens of Dale Earnhardt NASCAR decals plastered all over the windows. The price was about 1/3 of what I had just paid for the previous truck.

Baldur

Moe retired last year. He bought the truck so that he may use it for a small landscaping business he had planned to run. Then he had a major stroke.
He is unable to do the work and thus no longer needs the truck.
I buy it and drive it home.
Before even spraying the interior with deodorizer Baldur goes to the Department of Motor Vehicles to register it.
Hooray! there is no problem this time.
The next afternoon is spent washing the truck, spraying the interior and scraping off the mobile tribute to Dale Earnhardt.

Baldur

I drive it around for a few days and then consign it to the repair shop.
Baldur's mechanic is a young, heavily tattooed biker, named Gonsalves.
Gonsalves was immediately enthusiastic about the little Dodge Dakota.He said he would have bought it himself in a heartbeat. I apparently stole it at a bargain basement price.
The trucks spends 4 days in the garage.
$512 later the truck has a new muffler and tailpipe, a replaced transmission fluid line, a new taillight housing, replacement pistons to hold up the tonneau roof over the bed, an oil change, replaced filters and an immaculately clean interior.
Gonsalves really shouldn't have bothered with replacing the pistons for the tonneau roof as I intend to sell that and drive the truck with the bed exposed.

Baldur

With the repair costs added this truck was still substantially less expensive than the first one. It feels like a brand new truck.
The compressor for the Air Conditioner is dead, but I have no plans to replace it. Also the casette player in the dashboard is useless. The radio is all I really need anyway.

Baldur

My next project is to remove the rust from the front and rear bumpers, something I can do myself.
I also need to find a caddy to place over the hump in the cab so I have a place for a cup holder.

Normal

Very interesting truck history, Baldur - feast or famine. Sounds like your Gonsalves did you proud and you really got your $512 worth. Enjoy! Hope the cab airs out successfully, and soon!

Baldur

Thank you Normal. The smell is indeed gone, but it took at lot of scent-neutralizing chemicals and then a week of getting those to lose some of their eyeball searing properties.

Baldur

As some of you may know, the Northeastern USofA has been gripped in yet another heatwave. The epicenter seems to be Boughbreak.
Baldur cannot remember a more oppressive Summer.
But gardening goes on.
Over the past Winter when my garden work is mainly cerebral I read on the Internet that Epsom Salts make an excellent fertilizer for some plants.
It did seem counterintuitive to add a Sodium to my garden soil but as it turns out Epsom Salts do not contain Sodium at all.
The product is Magnesium sulfate. Baldur must redefine what constitutes a Salt in his personal knowledge base.
In any case it is recommended for roses and tomatoes, plus many other plants.
Here the adventure begins.
Baldur planted 15 tomatoe seedlings this season. 6 of these have surpassed 8 feet in height. The others have become roiling multi-limbed vegetative octopii.
While there are many small green fruit on these vines none have as of yet come close to ripening.
I was out in the garden just before sunset yesterday with a ball of twine trying to lash the new growth to support stakes.

Baldur

-is +was

Baldur

I also needed to remove some yellowing foliage. Tomato plants have a tendency to overshadow their lower leaves as they continue togrow by leaps and bounds.

Baldur

Baldur is also faced with a looming houseplant dilemma.
A few years back an odd plant was added to the collection here at Boughbreak. Ficus deltoides, or the Mistletoe fig, is supposedly a very dwarf, slow growing relative of the more common Ficus benjaminum.
The write up had said that 'it will go many years without you seeing significant growth' HAH!
This plant started in a 2" pot, it had perhaps 5 rounded leaves and 2 ruddy looking berries.
10 years later it has 3 limbs each reaching close to 18" in length, and hundreds of leaves with dozens of ruddy berries. The branches cascade over the edge of the pot and across the top of my sideboard. I am running out of room but have learned that Ficus do not like pruning. They demonstrate this by dropping all their leaves and dribbling white latex sap.
A solution would be to suspend it from the ceiling in a hanging planter, but that could cause domestic stress. Anything involving suspension devices and bolts placed into the plasterwork make Robert upset.

Baldur

The ficus seems an integral part of Boughbreak and I would hate to give it away. I am wondering If it could be trained up a wire form, basically woven into a more compact shape.
Some removal of houseplants is of course inevitable. Boughbreak can only accomodate a Norfolk Island Pine for 10 years before replacement is necessary. I have learned that they can be stunted if I steadfastly refuse to fertilize them. Eventually however, despite my best efforts they grow to ceiling height.

Baldur

This morning is the monthly Quaker Book Swap in the next town over. Oh how Baldur loves this event!
Now that I have a vehicle again I can attend this more regularly.

For 2 hours the Quaker Meeting House becomes a jumble of free donated books. One donates book(s) and then takes what he/she would like.
Baldur always has a few volumes that he is unlikely to ever read again.
Their selection is always quite interesting, and the woman in charge is using this system to gather books for nursing home residents and shut-ins.
It's a Win-Win situation.

Lizzi

I made the chickpea garam masala 3 days ago and am looking forward to trying it again. Delicious! And I now own a large bag of garam masala...a lifetime supply.
Thanks for the good recipes. I haven't tried making the naan yet, but I finally have a recipe for it.

Normal

Oh, how I wish we had your nifty book exchange. My shelves are always
overflowing and I run out of people to unload them on. In fact, they keep trying to give them back. Mine are also full of marginal commentary, so
the libraries are not keen on them for their resale. A quandary!

Ebenezer

Have you tried to bonsai your Ficus? Go online or to the library for information on how to do it.

Baldur

It was unbearably hot and humid on the day of the book swap so it was not very heavily attended. That worked in Baldur's favor.
I finally got hardcover copies of 'Lord of the Flies' and Thalassa Cruso's 'Making Things Grow Outside'.
Baldur also lugged 17 volumes of the Time-Life books series 'The Seafarers' back to his truck. Now the search begins for the 5 missing volumes.

Baldur

Hello Ebenezer, the bonsai process has always seemed so daunting. Baldur files it up in the same category as grafting and air-layering.
Air-layering was a technique I had considered for the Ficus deltoides but there are no branches that are wider than 1/4" across anywhere on this plant .
Certainly it is a good candidate for Bonsai-ification. Wrapping the branches in armature wire to train them into a less trailing form would definitely give it the appearance of a small tree.