Last Glad Standing

Even though we've had a couple of frosts lately, this gladiola is still blooming. I need to dig up the bulbs before we get a hard freeze so I can replant them next year. This one came from the batch I planted last year and dug up. I'm not real good and remembering to do these sorts of things but since I've cut back on the work load seems like it's a lot easier. Funny how that works now, isn't it?

Came across this fungi/saprophyte thing growing in the back yard while mowing. Seem to get a lot of different types that pop up. I was kind of surprised to see this one so late in the year. It's a bit bigger than a baseball. Enough of the flora and fauna tour of the back yard. Now to the important stuff. 

I'm starting to like the two days per week thing with work. Yesterday I ran some errands, cut both the front and the back yards, got a haircut, pulled the mower blades off so I could sharpen them, did an oil change on the truck, topped off the washer fluid in the truck and the car all before four in the afternoon, and I've got four more days before I've got to go back to work. Which means if I'm going to keep on this pace this winter, I'm definitely going to need some better heat in the shop or get something set up down the basement. 

When I was in Noblesville last week I went to a Tractor Supply Store and they had a nice forced air propane heater. 60,000 BTU output for $99 bucks. My work area in the shop is only 20' x 20' but with a couple of big chunks of cast iron in there, it takes a while to warm it up with my little kerosene heater. The heater doesn't have a fan on it so if you're not moving around the heat just goes up rather than out, plus kerosene stinks.  I don't know how loud the forced air heater would be but I think I could rig it up in the back part of the shop and pipe the warm air up front. I read in the paper the other day that if you're 65 years old, the average life expectancy is 84.6 years of age. If that means I've got another 20 years left, no reason to spend them shivering in the cold or holed up in the house all winter - especially if you pro-rate the cost of the heater over the twenty years. Five bucks a year? I can do that. There's a TSC only about a 5 minute drive from school. I'll stop in and give it a closer look.