Monday, April 28

Gouging the Planet With My Hands

The garden is installed or implanted or inseedified or something. There are plants were there were no plants. It's topsoil puberty behind our house.

I bought an armful of plants from the hardware store -- tomatoes, squashes, sweet potatoes, potatoes, marigolds (to ward off bugs), and strawberries by request of my son. I sectioned off the garden for him to take care of, and he gets a tomato plants, the strawberries and half the potatoes. He's three. He can do this. If I tell him to pretend he's peeing on the plants by watering them -- and we only pretend this, deputy -- he'll be all for it.

I thought it would take two hours to put everything in the dirt. It took four. I am the pained. The weather was perfect, though. Overcast but warm with a nice breeze. I didn't till the ground this time. Instead I put down weed-blocking fabric and planted the goods in holes I cut into the fabric. I mixed up cow manure, compost, and fertilizer as potting soil and covered some of the taller plants with mulch. It's all done. I hadn't tried to do everything in one day before.

And then I hear we might get hail today. Hail clobbered the garden a few years back, killing a good chunk of the tall plants. I hope this garden is too new to be hurt. Everything is so close to the ground, so they may not be so walloped.

My hands are a mess. They're stiff and achy. But I also think I could crush a mailbox with one hand now. I ran a few miles the day before I worked the garden, and I hope this work jumpstarts my metabolism to whittle away the winter pounds accumulated at the drawing table.


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