Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

First, a nostalgic snapshot of the Hanover Green from Dartmouth’s Baker Tower web cam. Ah, the beautiful lights, the holiday cheer… oh look, the Hanover Inn and the Hopkins Center beyond the green… Look at the picturesque snow … with a phrase epitomizing the Dartmouth spirit loving stomped into the virgin snow. Makes me all homesick for college again. (Thank you slyppi for the link!!)

This morning around 6:30 there was a spectacular noise. I was half asleep but I’m pretty sure it was a crash of some sort. M comes downstairs from the 3rd floor and I call out, “Is everything okay?” To which he responds, “I think the noise came from down here somewhere.” This means I have to get out of bed and find the source of the crash. Which I can’t pinpoint because I was half asleep when it happened. I checked the obvious places first - the bathrooms. Nope, nothing crashed there. M turned on the lights and identified the source: the 3′ tall, leaning tree I’d put on the windowsill in the stairway had leaned itself onto the landing spewing soil everywhere. And has broken its pot.

Now, it has not escaped my observation that it is indeed December. Nor did I miss that most people are not doing any gardening, indoor or outdoor, at this particular time of year. I went back to bed for a little bit dreading what lay ahead for the day: The Quest for the Big Plant Pot.

I did get lucky after a fasion. My first stop was the little hardware store near the house. The nice little old man only laughed at me because I was already laughing when I asked for a big plant pot. Of course, he also laughed at the Fop, I think, when he went to get a radiator key, so maybe this is just one exceedingly happy hardware store dude. Or maybe we’re just naturally hilarious. Must be something in the water.

He did send me over towards Kmart and one of the nurseries near there in hopes I’d find something. Kmart was almost a bust (I had a bucket in my hand to use as a makeshift pot) until I asked one of the employees. She sent me out to the “Patio” section. When I went through the double doors to the “Garden Shoppe”, I could have sworn I was walking into a storage area and quite definitely somewhere I should not actually be. But, hey, some nice lady sent me here so I’ll poke around. Essentially the shelves were still vaguely stocked with garden stuff but there were pallets of other stuff stacked in front of them.

Slinking around hand trucks, broken carts and boxes, I found the pots I wanted to buy - the only ones visible that were big enough… behind 2 rows of boxes on pallets. (Pots plural because I wanted a spare just in case…) Not to be thwarted by mere boxes I looked around for a tool to grab the pots. Did you know they make vicious looking hoe-things with a blade on one side and two very sharp prongs on the other side? You did? Well awesome! Did you further know that this is the perfect tool to wrangle large, plastic plant pots from a high shelf behind two pallets of random stuff? I didn’t think you did. ;)

It’s a vicious, vicious tool - really part mattock, part hoe and part pitchfork. All edges were sharp and fierce! Genius. I want one for when the zombies come. (In hindsight, perhaps given my clumsiness I should have chosen a different tool, but no one was harmed in the fetching of my new plant pots!)

At some point this afternoon I actually re-potted the leaning Norfolk pine into its new pot. It seems very happy as I straightened it up quite a bit in the process. I’ve placed it on the porch in a position where hopefully the sun will entice the top bits to straighten up as well. Ideally, there will be no more plummeting trees this winter, but if one does decide to take a flying leap, I have an extra pot.

… Of course, now I’m out of potting soil …

tags: dartmouth, gravity, indoor gardening, kmart, plant pots, random, shopping, silly, trees, winter