Last Friday, I walked north under a threatening dark sky. Ducked into a nearby hotel and read for a while until the storm passed. An hour later it was still spitting, then the spitting turned back into rain while I walked to a hardware store to look for soil testing kits (which they did not have). Went to a nearby cafe and sat under the awning, out of the rain, surrounded by friendly birds (shown above). When the sun started to come out again, I walked about a mile north to a garden center and was caught in another heavy and sudden shower, so I waited under a tree for it to pass. Bedraggled, I finally made it to the garden center, where it turned out they didn't have soil testing kits although the guy on the phone had said that they did. So I sloshed back the way I came, hitting yet one more hardware store, where nobody had ever heard of soil testing kits. It looked like the day was a wash (in more ways than one) so I headed back to where I started. On the way I was stopped repeatedly by some Greenpeace kids, the ones who cheerfully ask if you "have a second for the environment." It took all my willpower not to stop there, on the sidewalk, and tell them that the real question is does the environment have a second for me?