Bouncing back and more sandstorms

Another sandstorm today. Hate them, they throw all kinds of allergens into the air and make you so dry you feel mummified.

They also rip plants right out of the ground. Had to go out in the winds this evening and manually tie the pea plants to their stakes because the winds just tore the natural supports away, damaging or even breaking some off at ground level. Still, of the remaining plants, many are starting to sprout small white flowers now. If the heat and wind don't kill them off beforehand, I should have peas in the fairly near future.

The lettuce bounced back and looks better than it did before.

What I need to do is get a garden sprayer and adapt it to be a soil injector, so I can inject a thin fertilizer mixture directly into the soil. Phosphorous and Potassium I'm not so worried about. Those wash downward into the soil, as do Magnesium and Zinc. Nitrogen and acidity have to be added and adjusted at a deeper level. Nitrogen becomes gaseous, rises and blows away. Acidity in such a dry environment becomes neutralized at the surface level, especially with these winds. Besides, surface treatments burn foliage. If I treat the soil below the root level, the roots will absorb the nutrients as they rise through the soil. That's the process which takes place with graves and septic tanks. The decaying matter releases Nitrogen and CO2 which rises through the soil and gets absorbed by plants.

I'm happy to say I've been adapting rather well to the day shift. My greatest fear was that I would have some day/s when I wouldn't wake up to the alarm. Honestly, I have had a couple of mornings where I hit "snooze" too many times or turned the alarm off and fell back asleep. I did wake up and make it to work on time, just had to move a bit faster than I really felt like at that time. Getting up at or before 4 AM to be at work by 5 or 5:15 AM has never been quite my style before now.

Had a conflict with another employee at work yesterday. She was hired at the same time I was. Had seemed like we would get along well but things happened, tensions rose and it all hit the fan yesterday. (Wow. Can't recall that ever happening in less than two weeks before.) Won't go into specifics but I will say that there were at least two witnesses. The program director asked each of us for a written statement and apparently their statements were rather supportive of me in the situation. I dislike conflict and prefer being able to work things out with discussion. That just was not available as an option here.

Finances are still on the edge. Haven't gotten any short shifts like I had hoped. Not scheduled for Friday, so hoping I can get a full 12 hour shift for Thur night. Wouldn't be completely enough but would help. If nothing surfaces, have to see if I can get a loan to carry me for one week. I'd rather avoid that but do what I have to do.