Dishing the Dirt

I repotted an office plant today. It's a nice big ficus that someone was strangling in a teeny tiny pot. Well, it was probably an 8-10" pot, but the tree is taller than I am. There was basically nothing but roots in the pot. I got a pot from a friend who had found it discarded (perfectly good!) and splurged $5 for a bag of dirt. Outrageous price for dirt, given the size of the bag. (Dirt is cheaper in Winnipeg, although still not dirt-cheap.) As I suspected, there wasn't quite enough dirt in the bag. However, if I buy a second, I'll have way too much. Why's that always the case with dirt? I've got a bit of old stuff sitting outside (it was for my outside planters, not my indoor plants), so I'll have to see if it's full of bugs. There are way too many nasty bugs in NC. I wouldn't mind having leftover dirt if I were expecting to need it at some point, but I'll be moving back home soon... and will have no need for dirt between now and then.

Repotting was kind of fun, though. There was a great big root coming out one of the holes in the old pot, and since the old pot was cracked anyway, I decided to sacrifice the pot rather than the root. I tried to break the plastic pot with my hands last Thursday, but it wasn't cooperating. So today I brought in my hammer and a few other miscellaneous tools. It's hammer time! I'm not sure I found all the pot shards that went flying, but I definitely enjoyed the depotting process. :) Thankfully no one lost an eye. I'm feeling considerably more cheerful and less frustrated than I did about a half hour ago.

Now if only I could hammer out this dang proposal!

Good news on the oven: I called to check, and they were able to replace the element. So I'll test it out tonight by baking up the remaining pita dough that's growing in the fridge. (Hmmm... I wonder how this'll work?)