THE JOURNAL

9 June Tuesday

Flower boxes are now in position on the long sweeping corner out of Ardfinnan.   There are thirteen of them.  They are freshly coated with red gloss paint.  The arrival of these boxes along the low concrete wall on the edge of a potato field is a sign of summer.  I think they are attached to the fence so that they won’t topple into the road.  Each box is about three meters from the next box.  The boxes are densely planted with petunias, geraniums and something white which I cannot quite identify while driving.  I will be better able to name the flowers as they grow a bit bigger. It is not a place where I would ever be walking.  I do not think it is a corner where anyone would be walking.  These flowers are for viewing as one passes in a moving car.  They are also for viewing from the four of or five houses across the road.  I think they are mostly there for viewing by the Tidy Towns Competition Committee who will be around later in the year. As a village,  Ardfinnan is very competitive in the world of Tidy Towns.  It took me three times going by in the car before I was able to be certain that there are thirteen boxes.

10 June Wednesday

The man on the radio said that the livestock population of this country is larger than the human population.  I think that the human population rests at about 3.8 million.  I wish he had given a number for the livestock.

11 June Thursday

There is a big machine doing this particular job.  All of the farm machines are big now.  It is silly to comment about one of them being big.  Driving on these narrow lanes is getting more and more dangerous especially when everyone is getting the hay and the silage in. The machines are as big as the road.  More and more often the huge machinery coming at us will be preceded by a car or a truck with lights flashing.  We see the lights and we slow and we salute but still sometimes there is no where to go.  Pulling off the road is not always easy as there is no where to go except into some bushes but the bushes won’t let us in even if we wanted to drive into them.  A few days of good weather means nothing stops. The weather has been good.

The big machine I am currently most interested in lays out long strips of plastic.  After this machine has been in it, a field looks like corduroy.  There are brown mounded rows of earth and then there are long parallel strips of plastic which look white or silver depending on the light.  This method was first used for carrots but now it is used for corn and maybe for other things too.  The plastic heats up the earth underneath it and the seeds germinate faster and the plants grow faster.  This machine unrolls strips of plastic which work as incubation. As the plant grows, the plastic, which I think is biodegradable, breaks down to let the plant through.  Maybe there are little slits in the plastic to let the plant grow up.  I do not what happens as the plant grows more.  Maybe the plastic breaks down in the sun and the weather. Maybe the plastic gets ploughed back into the soil. I need to find out more about the corduroy method.

12 June Friday

A car was left with the motor running right in the center of the completely empty car park at the graveyard.  It is a very small car park so being right in the middle of it meant movement was pretty well blocked by this car.  The driver of the car was down in the graveyard visiting with someone who is buried there.  I mentioned this to a friend.  I said I found it odd.  She said it is a normal thing to stop on a daily basis to to visit your mother or whoever is buried just so that you can say whatever it is you need to say.  She said that just because someone is dead you do not need to stop talking to them.  I agreed that that is fine and I agreed that it was not unusual,  but what I wondered is wasn’t it strange to leave your motor running.  She could not agree that it was strange.  She said, Well, sure aren’t we are all in a rush this days?

13 June Saturday

I overheard one man saying to another  “She is very good-looking to talk to.”