chunks of flommus
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to-day’s yard tale

Over the winter I did a lot of research on how to improve the soil in our back yard, which is full of compacted clay.

I decided against cover crops because that would require a LOT of work and future maintenance and I didn’t want our back yard looking like a fallow field.

I purchased a liquid humus and a clay soil amender and that meant I needed a hose-end sprayer. So I did what I always do when I shop on the internet: I googled best hose-end sprayer.

And I bought the best hose-end sprayer, too. It’s got all metal part and lots of ratio tips, but it’s a professional sprayer.

And I am not a professional.

Well, I eventually figured out how to use it (the instructions were not that user friendly, but I guess if you’re a true professional you’d probably
1) not need the instructions and
2) if you did you’d understand them).

But I didn’t originally see the chemical tube in the box that had to be attached – only this long little plastic thing with an indent on the end that was shaped like a hexagon.

And the ratio sprayer tips were hexagon shaped too, so I thought it went on the end after you screwed on one of the tips. It didn’t have an opening in the end so it didn’t make sense to me how it would draw up the product and add it to the water, but I figured it must be some professional thing I didn’t understand.🤪🥴

That thing was just the little tool to make screwing on the sprayer ends easier, like a hex key.

Of course I needed some sort of tube to go down inside the bottle. It was loose in the box. I sprayed the yard for ten minutes before realizing nothing was going on, and when I unscrewed the bottle, the hex key was just floating there on top of the solution.

I’m a dumbass.

—emily duchaine

Flommist Emily Duchaine lives in the Pacific Northwest. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and listen to the Talking Heads. She pretends to be a professional businesswoman most days. Copyright © 2021 Emily Duchaine.