Here is a novel idea. I could start writing a blog each night with a list of things I would like to do the following day. It would make an interesting comparison with the reality of what I actually achieve after the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are flung in my path...
Today I had high hopes to slash a bunch of trails in the gulch with tractor and weedeater, seed a bunch of perennial peanut in the pots ready to go in the nursery and plant about 50 or 60 pidgeon pea seedlings, both near the black sapotes we put in a week or so ago, and in a windbreaking formation south of the barn...
I had a fair bit of mowing done, and had actually cleared a path down past the pond on the lowest terrace, which is something I have been dying to accomplish, when the steering gave out on the tractor. It would turn to the right, but no more than straight ahead to the left. There I was with the tractor pointing at the the pond. It was all I could do to reverse backwards enough to realign the wheels and then go forward again, using the brakes quite as much as anything to avoid dropping the tractor in the pond or sliding into other parts of the gulch...
So, I got it back to the tractor shed amazingly enough, and spent an hour or two trying to track down manuals that will help me figure out how to rebuild the steering box. Called a place in North Carolina that will send us everything we need and give us over the phone troubleshooting advice if we get stuck, which is amazing, and testimony to the passionate nature of 8N fans...
I fiddled around with the automatic goat waterer I picked up from the garage sale on sunday, but couldn't get it quite right and got fed up.
Then I took off with the weedeater and did some tidying up for the gulch denizens and lamented the sad state of many of the fruit trees down there... It is amazing how fast the grass will grow... more reaffirmation that we should do things right from the beginning and avoid a treadmill of fossil fuel useage.
Late in the afternoon I worked on the trail to the secret mango treehouse and looked at possible bamboo nursery scenarios down there... weed whacked off the weeds that were competing with the perennial peanut plantings around the edge of the pond... collected a whole wheelbarrow full of lillikoi from the "zone 5" that is the below the pond portion of the gulch...

tomorrow I will get up very early and go and water everything if it doesn't rain which is almost a certainty, then I will get on the phone and order the manual and bearings for the tractor, then I will go and work for Joan, and then I will go to school and do a quiz on the history of civilization... then I will do some grocery shopping and then I will fill the back of the van with newspaper for sheet mulching. then I will come home and describe how far off my predictions were.