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We got the garden plotted out, got fence posts up, started more seeds (for the second time, after the dogs played salad toss with the first batch), and borrowed my cousin’s tiller.
Only….. The tiller stopped working. And wouldn’t start again. No matter what we tried.
Big, big garden, and sacks and sacks of top soil, and no tiller.
It’s been who-knows-how-long-if-ever since anyone worked this ground, and the top soil was scraped off when the house site was cleared, leaving….clay. It needs amendments, bad. It needs help. And we have no equipment to do it right.
So, change of plans–just work the top soil in down the rows and hope for a miracle next year. Like, we’ll have a tiller. For now, it’s obstacle gardening, and probably not a promise of a very good garden this summer. Yet, we perservere with what we have and what we can do.
52 showed up with all this top soil in his truck.
I was totally going to help him unload since, you know, he brought it. I climbed up on the back of his truck and reached for a bag. Eeeek!! Do you have any idea how heavy dirt is?! I think I managed to get like three bags off the truck while he tossed off 20. I don’t know what he would do without me!
Then somebody had to start working that top soil in. You know, by hand. Too bad I was busy getting my seeds potted from my starter pots.
They are so handy–just push the pots straight into the dirt or they peel off easily if you prefer.
I got all my herbs into pots, and did several pots of flowers, too. I’ll save the rest of the flowers for the garden.
Oh, yeah, the garden……
It’s amazing how I can hoe and take pictures of hoeing at the same time, isn’t it?
Or could it be that I am not hoeing?
I am documenting the hoeing. The traditional, earthy, spring ritualistic activity of the fervent gardener. It needs glorified. Photographed. Admired. Revered, even. From afar. Not everyone should hoe. There are the hoers, and there are the hoe-watchers.
Hoeing is not to be taken lightly or indulged in without proper knowledge, skill, time, and talent. To hoe is to know the soil, to be one with it. It requires, indeed, a deep spiritual connection with the soil and its holy partner, the hoe. Those without that proper spiritual connection should not blaspheme the hoe by touching it. Hoeing is for those few enlightened, perfected souls who understand the hoe in all its beauty. Hoeing is–
WHAT IS THIS? I can’t hoe. Didn’t I just explain that I am not good enough to hoe? I am not worthy of the hoe!
Hunh.
