So, I do some work with Heartland Tree Alliance and as a part of that we’ve all been taught to not plant trees in silly places.  What did I do?  I goofed up and planted a Redbud tree in my front yard.  It’s a short ornamental tree that’s well suited to Kansas City.  Unfortunately I didn’t consider the fact that there is only one side of the house that I can drive around to haul things in and out.  The other side has the leach field from my septic tanks and you can’t drive over those or else they will cave in.

It’s okay, it was a free bare root stock tree that’s only been there a week so I’ll just transplant it to another location.  But just thought it was a good time to remind others that you really should consider the grand plan of your property before you make tree decisions as trees can have a huge impact.  And certainly NEVER plant a cottonwood under power lines.  Those suckers shoot straight up and get huge and then fall over.

On a much lighter note, I also planted 4 cherry tomato plants from my neighbor Klaude.  His thumb’s so green I’d swear he’s related to the Jolly Green Giant and you can’t beat free.  I planted them in some containers I had as I don’t really have a good garden plot set aside yet.

I’ve also been troubleshooting the battery in the van recently.  Bugger won’t start and the headlights were very dim.  I tried charging but the charger came back so fast saying that it had successfully charged that I didn’t believe it.  Also the headlights were very dim.  So I tried jumping it from my Corolla but that didn’t work either.  I picked up a new battery, an Everstart Maxx 65N, which was well rated by Consumer Reports but it also didn’t really act particularly right.  I’ve set it on the charger and the charger is at least acting normally and taking a while before reporting back to me.  Hopefully by the time this post is sent to the web, I will have a running van again.