stuck at home...

Well, the AC stopped working on the truck again yesterday. I finished the day at work, but by the end of it, I was a puddle, so back in the shop it goes. It should be done today, and the mechanic knows that I am not happy.

So today, I was sitting here feeling a little depressed, so I went outside to work in the yard... it's a little too hot to be working too hard, so I was actually just goofing off, but I did manage to take some pics...

True to form, the hotter it gets the more the Pavonia blooms...

And today was trash day, and one of my neighbors was throwing this out...

It's a banana tree! Most probably Musa basjoo... the winter hardy variety. To be more accurate, they're winter hardy if you wrap the stems in newspaper or burlap or bubble wrap for the winter, but nobody seems to want to go to the trouble. Otherwise they come up from the root and get about 3 or 4 feet tall before the next winter hits. The ones in my yard get 8 feet tall and bloom, but only because I wrap the trunks every winter...

This plant was still in it's original nursery pot, complete with $9.99 price tag, and while I'll admit that it had definitely seen better days, it's very far from dead. Bananas are oportunistic growers, given a good drink and put in the ground this one would be fine. So I nabbed it, planted it in a pot that somebody else had put out for the garbage a couple of weeks ago... (I'm such a scrounge...)

Trimmed off the broken thrashed leaves,

and in a couple of weeks I'll have a really nice plant to sell at the flea market. Or, if I put some smaller plants in the base of the pot, wait a month, then I can double what I was gonna charge.

And all the while, Phennig was sitting on the carport finding this all rather amusing...

So, I guess something productive happened, and today wasn't totally a bust...

later...