All on a summer's day

[sonia]

• Carefully unwind and pull out some of the clover wrapped around and through the wooly thyme along my back path. Every year I think about giving up this battle, and then the clover starts to bloom in the middle of where I don't want it, and I work on pulling it out.
  
• Chat on the phone with a friend who's out on his own after a painfully slow-motion extraction from his marriage. He sounds so much more like himself.
  
• Dither about the heat, then attach the bike trailer and bike over to the garden store. It feels great out there. When did I start thinking that 80-90F is oppressively hot? It's not even humid.
  
• Detour a few blocks for a yard sale, and score 2 nice pairs of shoes from someone with who buys shoes for my size feet. Pass another yard sale and get an old style wood frame & canvas bag laundry hamper to replace the worn polyester-y one I got years ago. It's good to have the trailer!
  
• Finally get to the garden store, and buy a 4' by 7' trellis for the raspberries. My trailer is 32.5 x 26 x 22 inches, but it's well designed with lots of tie-down loops. With copious use of bungee cords, stabilize the load and bike the mile home on quiet wide neighborhood streets. It was fine until the last block, when something started dragging. Walk the rest of the way. I meant to photograph the load, but automatically unloaded when I got home.
  
• Put on long sleeves and hiking boots to install the trellis behind the raspberries, and tie them up. Of course, eat a handful of ripe berries along the way.
  
• Okay, NOW I'm hot. Sit around in sun dress, write this entry, and possibly finally write the article for this month while listening to the Shawn Colvin CD I picked up at the first yard sale.
  

It's good to have more energy lately. I felt swamped for a while, but now I'm catching up on a backlog of errands and tasks.

Comments

[tylik]

I should really think about picking up a trailer. I can carry a lot with my current set up, and I have the car share to fall back on (except I almost never do)... I might hold off until after the next move, but especially if I'm somewhere bikeable* a trailer is the obvious next step.

* And Cleveland - or at least the part of Cleveland I'm in, which is better maintained than most - is bikeable by my definitions, so it's not a high bar.

[sonia]

I debated and debated about getting a trailer, but once I had it, it was clearly a huge win. It's held up really well over the last 9 years, too.

Maybe you know someone whose trailer you could borrow occasionally? I think trailer-shares would be a great idea, if only one could trust people to take good care of things. I only get mine out once a month or so.

[tylik]

Ooo, that's a thought. My closest local friend does a lot of biking, though she's not so much into hauling things generally. And she already has a key to our garage, since she keeps a bunch of gardening stuff there for working on the park. (She sold her house and is currently housesitting - but it looks like she's buying a couple of houses next to the park next.) I don't know if she'd be interested, but I'd totally trust her with my gear.

(And Kendrick, too, really, but I wouldn't arrange it for that.)