June 1 2020

There's a large elm tree that lives in my next door neighbor's yard, it's fortunate for the tree it doesn't live in my yard, if it lived in my yard it would be fuel for somebody's fire pit. I've been told I shouldn't talk about cutting down a tree, as it may trigger the Green people, so I asked my Irish friend if he would be offended if I cut down a big elm, he said not at all, he could use it for his fire pit. This big elm is shedding it's seeds and a large number of them are landing in my yard, in fact it looks like snow drifts of elm seeds. It's been a bit breezy this season with wind gusts between 50 to 70 klicks. That's windy even for Saskatchewan. A broom and shovel are out of the question so a high volume shop vac is the tool of choice. It took me an hour to clean the patio and it got me wondering just how many seeds I had picked up. I'm not that good with numbers, unlike my brother Lou, who is so good with numbers he's counted to infinity...twice. So what I did was get one of Deanie's quarter teaspoon measuring devices, don't worry, she doesn't know I put elm seeds in it. It easily accommodated 8 seeds, that means 1 teaspoon should hold 32, now a tablespoon holds 3 teaspoons, so that's 96. There are 16 tablespoons in a cup, 1536. There are approximately 4.39 cups in a liter, 6743 elm seeds in a liter. I filled my garbage container to the brim, it is 176 liters...so  I was thinking, if I said to dad, "Dad, I picked up a million elm seeds today". He'd say "Hooww many?" "One million, one hundred and eighty six thousand, seven hundred and seventy five." .....and he would smile.

Have a great day

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