great freedom

I enjoy great freedom in three areas of my life. One of those areas of freedom is my motorcycle. This is a motorcycle that spent 20 years rusting in a pig barn. It is not generally known that pig barn rust is the worst kind of rust. Not only that, the wiring was continually being nibbled on by local pig barn mice who suspected that there was something good inside those wires.

Someone gave the motorcycle to me. Yes, it was free. When you get something for free it is very liberating. I found that I could take things apart on this motorcycle and have no fear of ruining it. After all, it was free, and free gives me freedom. If I messed it up I wasn't out anything. There's a lesson to be learned there about owning things that are worth so much money that we're terrified to try anything with them. Be free, own junk; a statement that regrettably does not have universal application.

Well, now, after 6 years of tinkering around with this motorcycle, and after a lot of help from people who actually know something about motorcycles, it's a pretty nice motorcycle. Except a mechanic called "Grumpy", at Grumpy's Goldwing Service told me that my carburators on my 76 Goldwing GL1000 are junk compared to the 82 and 83 Goldwing 1100's. So I bought a set of 82 Goldwing carbs off ebay for $141. That's a good deal, by the way.

They are supposed to fit right on my motorcycle. So I took off my carburators and as I'm inspecting the 82 carburators I see a little tube that I can't identify. What the heck is that little tube? It's the one I'm pointing to with my thumb. I'm pointing at the gas line with pointer finger. The little tube by my thumb has me wondering.

Any ideas? I'm just about ready to put these carbs on and just see what happens, but if anybody out there has a guess about what that little tube is, I'd be interested in hearing it (reading it). The "little tube" is to my carburators what the "little horn" is to end times Biblical eschatology.

One final thought. Be free, own at least one piece of junk that you aren't afraid to mess up.

manure I have known and .....appreciated

This is a disgusting post so you may want to stop reading now. I'm serious.

When I say "manure", I'm not talking about "movie manure." My favorite "movie manure" bit is seeing Biff getting a mouthful of it in "Back to the Future." That manure had the appearance of being fresh, so it would be considered "hot" by gardeners. Hot manure can burn your plants and I never use it. Plus it stinks.

I'm also not talking about "literary manure" which would be stories in books having to do with manure. These stories are intended to be gross or funny depending on the story teller. The most memorable literary manure I read about was in "Seabiscuit" where a race track had mountains of manure from all the stalls. Jockeys discovered that tremendous heat was generated by composting manure and they would go immerse themselves in the manure up to their neck to "sweat off" some pounds.

Old people have a lot of funny stories about outhouses. Any story that has anything to do with an outhouse is bound to be funny.

This post is simply a commercial to encourage you all to use real composted manure to fertilize around the house.

I recommend finding someone who has one or more horses and asking the owner if you can have some manure. Any self respecting horse can produce tons of manure every year. Horse owners usually have a pile of it that they are more than happy to get rid of, especially if you are willing to shovel it into the back of your own truck. Get manure that is a couple of years old because it is dry, fully composted, looks like wonderful black dirt, has no smell and it will have wonderful microbe activity going on.

I use "the stuff" on all my flower beds, around my trees and even on my lawn. I recommend using a lawn aerator in the fall and then putting down a layer of manure on your lawn. Rake the manure a little bit so it goes down into the little holes that the aerator makes.
In flower beds it is best to work the manure into the soil around your plant material if you can do so without disturbing the roots.

I don't recommend using what's called "sludge", which is human waste that has been treated and composted. I used it for two years and it worked great, looked like rich black dirt and had no smell. It was dry and less compacted than horse manure and thus it was more "springy" to step on or work into the soil. However, I didn't like finding the occasional toothpaste cap and other small items in the sludge. I also wondered about all the medicines that people take, the possibility of it being toxic, and here I was growing my tomatoes in it. It lost favor with me.

Chicken manure is great but you have to be real careful with it or it will kill your plants. If you want bird manure it's better to have bird feeders, trees and bushes in your yard to attract the birds to your yard where they can make their little deposits, eat bugs and add interest to your garden area. The only problem is they make deposits on other things like your cars and your favorite chair on the patio.

So don't go out and buy some lousy $30 chemical mixture fertilizer in a bag that will pollute our waterways when you can go shovel some manure for free. It will work great, you'll help the environment and you'll get some exercise. I think you'll like the results.