Fall Harvest Moon
Kate and I drove out to Plato, Minnesota today. Picked up broadcast fertilizer for both the vegetable garden and the orchard, plus the concentrated liquids for sprays and drenches. The broadcast fertilizer goes down now, worked into the soil. Tomorrow. The rest will be next year, including the nitrogen in the vegetable garden. Different vegetables, different sorts of nitrogen.
Luke has a building up on the concrete slab Bill and I saw when we were out there in June. He’s running a small business right now from a crumbling concrete block building. It’s stacked full of barrels and bins, weights and mixing apparatus. A bare bones operation. He mails all over the U.S. from Plato.
They missed a shot there in Plato. Should have Aristotle Avenue, Diogenes Boulevard, Zeno and Anaxamander and Thales Streets. But no. Main Street. 2nd. 3rd. Coulda been good.
The fields of corn are dry, most not harvested though there was a cleared field or two. Orange and green in the landscape. There were, too, shallow lakes with wind rippled water, a bright deep blue, one with an egret pointing toward the west, white on blue, beautiful.
It takes an hour plus to get to Plato from Andover, a journey from the northern ex-burbs to the far south-western boundary of the metro area. Each time I hop in the car, drive to someplace like Plato to pick up something, I remember how far away Indianapolis was from Alexandria. Less than 60 miles. Planning involved. Rarely if never done. Now, to pick up some fertilizer we get in the car and drive further than a trip to Indianapolis. Because, you see, it’s all part of our area. Our metropolis. Our urbanized region. Strange.