Returning

The Tennessean better not be bullshitting on this. I fully expect to have black bears scaring the shit out of me in 10 years. Bears vs. Coyotes. Man, can you imagine finding a bear in your vegetable garden? Or eating your hazelnuts?

People, I don’t even know if hazelnuts will grow in Tennessee, but we’re going to try.

The Corps is trying to return a set of remains to his rightful descendants. Reminded me of my story, but I’m sad that people were actually looting. The guy who inspired the story, I thought he was, but I hoped I was wrong.

I really love Tennessee. I love the bears. I love the history. I love the people. One thing I have a hard time understanding about our state legislators, especially the ones we have now, is how much they seem to dislike Tennesseans. I mean, if you just look at the laws they’re passing, you’d think that the state was filled with nothing but assholes who need to be kept in strict line lest they taint the children.

But really, it’s a wonderful, strange place. I’ve been here almost thirteen years, longer than I’ve lived anywhere, and I still feel lucky and not quite sure how it is that I keep pulling this off.

Frost

As lucky as I was to have Saraclark come tell me what most things growing in my yard are and to have W. come out and tell me where and why my wet spots are, I wish I knew a someone who could come out and explain the weather to me. We had a frost warning last night. My yard and my neighbor’s yard to the north were frost free when I walked the dog. His northern neighbor had a light frost in the sunny part of his yard, but there was no frost in the AT&T yard. But once we got up onto Lloyd, it was clear it had been frosty up there.

So, I wonder if it was, like, 33 in my yard at ground level, just warm enough to keep frost from forming (try saying that three times fast), but 32 up on Lloyd. But if hot air rises, shouldn’t Lloyd be a hair warmer than my low-lying yard? Unless the 32 degree temperatures literally only came as far south as Lloyd and no further.

See, that’s what I would love–someone to come over and look at the landscape and look at how weather behaves and explain to me my micro-climate.

Oh, I forgot to say, too, that the compost smelled so good. But it brings up a question I also need science to answer. I take dirt out of a hole. In this case, really thick, muddy, clay-like dirt. I break that dirt into smaller chunks and I mix it with my compost so that it is more amiable to young things that don’t have super roots. So, I must literally have twice as much dirt as I took out of the hole. Plus, it should take up more room because it had been compacted, but I have broken it into little airy bits. So, how can the hole take it all? Especially after I put a plant in there? How is it physically possible that the dirt that just came out of the hole does not refill that hole, but that it needs the dirt and the compost to do it?

After I get my micro-climatologist down here, I’m getting a yard physicist. Come explain this shit to me, yard physicist.