If you have read some of my most recent posts, you know that I have been writing about my exploits and experiences after arriving at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and being assigned to the Joint Interoperability Test Center (JITC) at Fort Huachuca. My most recent post talked about my last ride in my red Chevy van and the reasons why I decided to part ways with my red Chevy van. In my post today, I am going to explore a completely different topic. I am going to explore gardening. Gardening is a subject that I (back then and still currently) know absolutely nothing about, so this ought to be a rather interesting post. Well, the fact of the matter is my wife is actually quite the green thumb. She learned gardening from her father who is also quite the green thumb. When we lived in Tacoma, Washington, they told me where to dig and what to till and they planted. Stuff just grew. It was like magic. We didn’t have a very big garden in Tacoma so we didn’t grow very much. But what we did grow and what our dog didn’t tear up grew very well. We had a Black Labrador named Molly in Tacoma that I’ve written some posts about. Molly had a penchant for tearing up fruit trees that I planted. Occasionally, she even tore up some of the strawberries that my father-in-law planted. One day while we were standing outside the PX at Fort Huachuca, I was checking out the bulletin board. I saw a flier that talked about the Fort Huachuca Garden Club. The flier also had a telephone number to call. I showed the flier to my wife. That was a mistake. Because of course she automatically wanted a garden plot. Thus, I called the contact number listed on the flier. The point of contact for the garden club was a guy named Johnny Waggoner. It turned out that I had worked with Johnny Waggoner many years ago when I was stationed at Fort Huachuca during my first assignment at Fort Huachuca in the Electronic Proving Ground. He remembered me and remembered that I had gone off to Officer Candidate School so we talked for a while to catch up. Then, I asked him about the garden club. I asked him if there were any plots available? He told me that there were a few plots available. I asked him what it would take to be assigned a plot? He said that I had to be assigned to a unit at Fort Huachuca and that I had to be assigned to housing on Fort Huachuca. I told him I could show him orders assigning me to Fort Huachuca and orders assigning me post housing at Fort Huachuca and asked if that would be sufficient? He said that it would. We met for lunch. The next day, I was assigned a garden plot and issued keys to the garden club along with a set of rules. Next, I took my wife down to where the garden club plots were located and showed her where our garden plot was situated. I even told her that my friend Johnny Waggoner had told me where to get composted cow manure. He had mentioned that there was a dairy farm just a mile east and a mile north of Benson where I could get the composted cow manure. He said that I would probably want to get the composted cow manure to fertilize the garden plot before we started to plant anything. And he also mentioned that I might want to get some gopher traps. I asked why I would want to get gopher traps? He said that gophers tended to be a problem. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I found out soon enough just exactly what in the hell that meant. My only problem was that I didn’t have any way to haul cow manure. Johnny Waggoner had also told me that I could get horse manure from the horse stables on post at Fort Huachuca. But he said he tended to stay away from that stuff because it didn’t get composted long enough. What that meant was that you would wind up with a lot of weeds in your garden if you used the horse manure. He said that it was just way too fresh or ripe. I understood what the hell that meant. Fresh shit meant it just came out of the horse’s rear end and whatever the horse ate wasn’t well digested. Either way, it didn’t matter whether I chose fresh horse shit or composted cow shit, I still didn’t have a way to haul it. And hauling it by wheelbarrow or by one bucket or two buckets at a time would not be very goddamn efficient. Oh hell no. I needed to find something cheap to transport cow shit. I referred to the local classifieds. My friend Jack, the HR guy from JITC, let me borrow his pickup truck one weekend to haul a load of cow shit from the dairy farm north of Benson. But I really needed to find my own means of transportation to haul cow shit. Then one day as I was searching through the classified section of the newspaper, I saw a trailer for sale in Huachuca City. The guy was asking $1200 or best offer. I told my wife that we should go look at that trailer. First, I had a hitch mounted to my Jeep just in case. Then we drove over to Huachuca City. When we arrived at the guy’s house, I inspected the trailer. I quickly noticed that the bed of the trailer would have to be replaced. I also noticed that the tires would have to be repaired because they would not hold air. I told my wife that I would offer him $800 in a take it or leave it deal. I walked up to the door and knocked. When the guy came to the door, I asked if the trailer was for sale? He said yes. I mentioned the problems with the tires and the rotted bed of the trailer and the amount of work that it would take to repair those things. He said he understood and he asked me how much I would be willing to give? I asked him how did $800 sound? He told me I had a deal. I told them that I needed to go to the bank to get the money and that I would be back in about twenty minutes to get the trailer. When I got back to the guy’s house, I gave him the money for the trailer and he gave me the title to the trailer. He also gave me a spare tire for the trailer. I took my hand pump out of my Jeep and put air into the tires of the trailer so that I could tow it home. Next, I attached the trailer to my Jeep. I connected the trailer lights to the wiring harness on the Jeep and tested the lights to make sure that they worked. I told my wife that we would have to stop by Home Depot on the way home to get some sheet metal and some two by fours to put in a new trailer bed for the trailer. I didn’t know it then, but that trailer turned out to be one helluva good investment in more ways than one. We picked up the sheet metal and the two by fours and some sheet metal screws at the Home Depot so that I could replace the trailer bed and then we took our trailer home. I proceeded to transfer the license and title of that trailer to my name with no exercises in futility.
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