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| From 2010 Spring |
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| From 2010 Spring |
There's a good chance that we aren't past our final frost of the season. But for now, the plants and trees are hurtling forward with their plans for beauty and fruit.
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| From 2010 Spring |
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| From 2010 Spring |
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| From 2010 Spring |
In Trina's garden, we've been hard at work. The city decided to remove a tree along the street this winter. Lucky for her, this will let the sun shine onto a spot of garden that was previously shaded, making it a better place to grow vegetables. Which means that first the soil has to be prepped. This has meant some serious labor. The city had ground out the stump and some of the roots. But the dirt was packed and clay-ish, grown over with lily grass, and still rife with tree roots, all tangled into a thick lace.
Our first assault involved a rented motor tiller. I had not used one of these before. I do not want to ever use one of these again. I am not (completely) averse to hard labor, but being dragged around a small garden by a noisy machine was something I immediately found I do not enjoy.
Perhaps in a previously tilled garden the machine would have been fine. It would have happily churned through the soil and left a soft, plantable garden bed. But in our garden-to-be the tiller latched onto the thick grass and matted roots, and for three long hours it was all I could do to hang on and desperately try to keep the thing from dragging me forward.
Eventually, about two minutes before my hands would have completely vibrated off my arms, I had churned through enough grass (and untangled it from the tiller blades) and carved and "combed" through enough roots (and untangled them from the tiller blades) that I had finally reached the thick dirt and had somewhat succeeded in breaking it into smaller hunks.
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| From 2010 Spring |
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| From 2010 Spring |
If I make it sound like I did all the work with the motor tiller, that is unfair. Trina did enough of it that I was able to photograph her. For the rest, she was civil enough to not interrupt my labors. This was a good thing, since it left one of us with enough strength that she could lift a spoon to both our hungry mouths, and she could help me and my useless stumps-for-arms in other practical and helpful ways. I will vehemently deny that my arms and hands were too tired to brush my own dang teeth. Even if they were
Sunday, strength back in my hands, our work to prepare the new garden bed continued. First task was to drive up the valley to get a pickup truck full of horse manure, also known as poop. The owners of the poop seemed unnaturally happy to help us shovel the poop into the truck bed so that we could haul it away for free.
We would have driven right back and started in on the garden, except that we had accidentally dressed in our riding clothes, and happened to have brought our mountain bikes along, and also had managed to bring along two little trail dogs who were all fired up and ready to run. And there just happened to be some trails near where we got the poop.
So we parked and did a fun and scenic ride for three hours, which (I expect) will be the subject of our next Update. And THEN we (ate lunch) drove straight home and (took a nap) got straight to work (had afternoon tea) out in the garden where we worked furiously to shovel poop into the dirt and to turn it all together to transform our root-and-clay mix into the beginnings of a loamy, productive garden soil.
After some-odd hours of shoveling and root-chopping and turning and mixing, I can honestly say: It's not quite there yet. But we're getting closer.
--Greg
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