These days you can’t buy a nice full size pickup loaded with all the gadgets unless it has wheels 20 inches or larger. In order to get into the cab of the truck, especially if you have a short 5’2″ Mom like I do, you have to add running boards. That solves one problem. It made it easier for me to get into the truck also, but we won’t tell Mom. I told her that I had them installed just for her.
The second problem comes the first time you try to crawl into the bed of the truck. As one who had back surgery and a knee replacement, crawling up into the back of the truck to unload a load of bagged gardening products was exhausting and painful after the first up and down, especially if the ole “Arthur” is acting up.
Three years ago I drove my sales rep crazy looking for something to help me, and he referred me to an accessory shop that the dealer uses. They had stopped carrying one that mounted in the tailgate as they had so much trouble with breakage, and showed me a ladder that mounted to the inside of the tailgate and folds out and down to the ground. I recently noticed one of GRIT’s advertisers selling one that mounts into the hitch receiver and runs parallel to the bumper.
Life is much easier now that I don’t have to do broad jumps. The ladder did create another small problem, well two. If you drive down the road with your tailgate down, nice people are yelling at you at stop lights that you are about to loose something out of the back of your truck. The second problem is when you get a load of bagged goods, the loaders are trying to move the ladder out of the way.
Blackie checking out things.
On the hooligan front, I have a problem with Patches breaking jail again. She’s the one who constantly tests the fence to see if it is working. She has it figured out just how close she can get once she gets the vibration warning before getting shocked. I tied her up while changing batteries in her collar. I check it after replacing the battery and it still didn’t work. My attention turned to the connections as they are the first area of problems with an underground fence. One connection at the bottom of the property was in standing water. I cut a section out and redid the connection with an exterior wire nut, and it still didn’t work. When I first installed the fence, the wire was a small multi-stranded wire that corroded easily and was easily broken by critters such as the groundhog living in the nearby dry creek. I replaced a problem section hit by lightening and chewed by the groundhog with a newer solid strand wire, and it looks like it may be time to replace the rest. Going through the zoysia in the front yard will be a chore as the old wire will need to come up before the new goes in. If the new fence is near an old section, it cancels out the radio signal to the collars. Pulling up the rest down the property line between Mom’s house and mine should be easy with all the rain we had. Down in the lower forty, I’ll just dig a trench with my middle buster a few feet in.
We’ve been getting a lot of rain. Even 0.24 inches just sits on top of the saturated ground. Last summer 0.24 inches of rain would have quickly soaked in, and the ground would still be cracked. I might need to stock the garden with catfish this year.
