Questionable Questing

You want to grow melons? Alright. You fucked up the watering schedule or it's just too hot? Oops, they're rupturing on the vine lol.

Oh, tomatoes? Do you know how fast caterpillars are going to rip the leaves and green fruit off those suckers? Lol.

It's almost like gardening and farming is actually pretty hard and you don't just throw the seeds on the ground and go do something else until they've done their thing, heh.

I don't know if there's a LN where some modern salaryman type tries to pull the farming cliche and winds up realizing he's going to starve to death but there probably should be.

And the never ending battle against weeds...they never truly die.

Sadly the power fantasy means there is almost never realistic consequences to someone attempting various "easy slow life" methods. Even if they don't get some cheat power randomly, they just happen to be perfect at everything somehow...

Honestly, if making a joke on "Farming fantasies" to the tune of "(Onion) heads, Harvest Moon. (Dragon) Tails, Rune Factory". You could make a potential "economics" reality check if one could be "turbo farmer; grow full crops in weeks instead of months."

TLDR: "War asset" - Peasant edition.

More on gardening!

So, about a week or two back, brother who handles most of that goes 'Man. It is a pain to water these melons by filling a bucket and dumping it out. But water flows downhill, and they're in line so that I could just set this outside faucet going for 15-20 minutes.'

To which I want to object, but go '... Okay, we're most of the way through the billing cycle, let's see how that works for you.'

Spoiler: Great. For him. But he has repeatedly forgotten to shut it off, the bill is in, and I get to point out that, hey, it's ~$50 higher because water isn't fucking free, why did you think that this price was going to stay the same, if the use of water goes up the price charged goes up.

So he is going back to the bucket thing now.

And the patch of grass in between the faucet and the melons is too damn lush.

Secretly place a small sign saying "$50 grass, no treading on" =P

It's one of the reasons gardening is more hobby for me.

Between the effort and water bills it's not really worth it $$$ wise.

It's more for fun.

Yep. That's why I'm not really involved in the gardening, though in hindsight I probably should have been, at least for things like 'You, uh, you sure you want to plant those melons and tomatos right on top of each other?'

Spoiler: We have gotten like one tomato from that plant as it struggles to not be choked out by melon vines. We've gotten more from an ornamental planter that got attacked by caterpillars, lol.

Come to think of it, there's a lot of media about nature working in peace and harmony and I don't think a lot of people really realize that one animal will eat another without blinking.

One plant will also absolutely murder the one it's growing next to for better light and to keep it from eating the good dirt nutrients.

You gotta give them space.

It's even better. A lot, and I mean a LOT of plants will poison the very earth to everything that's not specifically them. Some do it reactively, too, putting a bunch of poison into the ground in response to competition, but then there's Black Walnuts, which just poison the ground semi-permanently for dozens of feet around them.

LOL the Peace and Harmony of Nature is a lie... a Healthy Ecosystem is basically a large number of very small cold wars all going on at the same time in a manner that keeps everybody at least a little in check.

Was planning on just buying him a garden hose, but then I went 'I should check when bills are due before buying stuff'.

Surprise, fucking hot month and apparently having the AC on at all, even set to a cool and relaxing 90 where the thermostat for it maxes out, was a mistake and I should have just turned it off long ago.

So no, as I work out the budget he can continue using a bucket, that's fine.

Oh man, I just keep my bedroom cooled and let everything else go.

And here I was proud last month that I managed to keep the electric bill from crawling any higher, lol.

Turns out it was conserving energy for a sprint.

It's been a fun billing cycle for the utilities.

Well, all I can say. At a stretch, is if it ever get's that bad. I'd see what I can do, commission wise (at a stretch.)