Busy time of year here, had several rock shows and music projects. I have been hacking down four-foot tall rocket (greens) plants that went berserk this year for some reason. Some have stalks so thick as to require loppers and others can be weed-whacked, left to dry, and baled up. The goatheads are not apparent yet, but neighbors to the south see them sprouting already, months ahead of schedule.

Today I have spent hours extracting the control board from a washer, very difficult process which should have been very easy, but manufacturers seem to delight in making things very hard to get to and hard to maintain. I ordered a tiny part which a welder friend will solder on if he can get the board's housing plastic off--I did not attempt it because it looks like it will require 5 hands holding screwdrivers at once. None of this is 'just call a repairman' territory; aside from them being far away, this is a case of known bad design, where so many units fail, you can no longer buy the control boards, they don't have any more. Well, some fellow in Morocco is selling them on ebay but what are the chances it would have the same fatal flaw I'm trying to fix?

Working hard to get lots of things done so I can hit the road early April for a loop through the South.