My Hop Arbor: Pure Hoppiness

“It is amazing how much mature wisdom resembles being too tired.”
- Robert Heinlein

K and I finally erected an arbor so I could plant my hop rhizomes. We found it seats perfectly in the notches in the footbridge that were to hold a crappy railing. The heat is on today, but when we finished the arbor late Monday, it was still in the 70s and pleasant. Tuesday, I planted “Brewer’s Gold” on the right in this pic and “Sunbeam” on the left side. Now, Friday, we’re having a Santa Ana desert breeze knocking around the wind chimes and nudging the temps up ten degrees in the hour before noon. It’s >90F in the shade now, and I have to check the veggie garden and provide some emergency supplemental water to the new sunflowers.

Not to mention that the compost isn’t going to turn itself. I’ve got a kitchen garbage pot full of coffee grounds, rotting banana skins and something else that smells nasty. It has to go outside with the full bin of shredded paper, where they will join and confer with their garbage ancestors and move on to the next spin of the Mandela/spinning compost bin. Ah, the cycle of life!

It took us all day Monday to get the damn arbor up, and attach a trellis at each end to add stability and provide space for hops and sunflowers to climb. Without getting lost in cataloging the miseries of getting old, let me just say, I sure can’t do what I used to do in the time I used to do it. Or as K says, it takes me all night to do what I used to do all night.

So, let’s just call it mature wisdom and leave it at that.