Gardening Days

I seem to be in the garden whenever the weather permits. Perhaps more so lately since I started but never finished tearing two rooms apart inside. It’s easier for me to procrastinate about those jobs than about putting off the more pressing need to get the garden in better shape for summer. We’ve had to redo all of our vegetable planting areas and John built a very deep and large timber planter box that he placed in front of our patio outside our family room. That area gets all day sun, when it’s out. Today it’s getting all day rain and tomorrow and the next day mixed in with thunderstorms. So on the occasions when it’s not too windy, too wet or too cold we run outside to work on our assigned spots to transform them. But each area takes hard slog to get it going and some of them required carpentry skills that I sure don’t have. So John had several big construction projects awaiting him most days and then I could put my puny two cents in to fine-tune anything that wasn’t exactly finished.

Yesterday I figured out just how this overwhelming amount of work came about. Not only did we miss our regular autumn overhaul due to constant inundation and flooding but we missed our winter clean up as well for the same reason. We’re really inept in cold weather. We like to sit by the roaring woodstove and warm up rather than brave the wind and rain and sleet and muck that accumulates from our many deciduous trees and our intensely active muckrakers, our free range flock. So no matter how many times I sweep our front pathways or wash them down during a normal week, our squawking critters excavate any speck of dirt at their perimeter looking for the perfect worm or other bug that might be in there somewhere.

The reason for all this lengthy explanation is simple. I made incredible progress yesterday by helping John with his project (of the day before) doing what I wanted to do after planting the butter beans that were going where the saffron was leaving. And I also found quite a few saffron corms in the soil that he’d turned over that he’d missed.  But then, drumroll please, I noticed other nearby areas (where his plots are) that really needed my touch badly. So while he dug into his saffron plot to remove the corms from the ground to replant elsewhere, in the newly created plot that he so cleverly invented last week, I cleaned up and spruced up his vegetable plots (crying out for my help) and in my spare time I raked a huge forgotten area covered in large pieces of brush, dead branches, pruned pieces of shrubs, tree bark from our epic eucalyptus that come off in pieces that are often over10 feet long, and all kinds of rubble mixed into it like the old twine matted mess with small pieces of chicken wire stuck in it. As I worked diligently picking up every speck of undesirable mostly organic flotsam and jetsam, I was filling up a large container that John begrudgingly carried over to the fire that he set in the next paddock to burn off our rubbish. That’s what people do in the country on days when it’s safe and not too windy.  Eventually I stooped under a huge shrub and took out many years’ worth of these materials so our chickens could have a level and smooth area to rest on. It seemed like I was doing God’s work somehow because it was not only to beautify the environment but also to improve it for our chooks who depend on us to provide the best environment we can, (probably so they can then destroy it later). But if they dig in there under that big bushy thing…then so be it. It’s not near my pathways at all. Far from them really and I’d rather it was there than in front of our house where we walk, or try to get through the best we can. Besides that they really do help overall in their foraging through our soil.

So after an hour of raking and bending down and picking up until I couldn’t straighten up, I emerged victorious and proud of myself. That feeling lasted all day and into the night. It was finally gleaned from a job well done. Emphasis on finally should be noted. But the last few loads were too big for the container I was shoving them into so John promised me he’d put them on a tarp and carry them to the fire at some point in the future. I’m picturing sometime next month after some well deserved nagging on my part that I happen to excel at. Thus I did not take any shots of the still unsightly mess that also needs further organization of the wire we use and the baskets we use to cover plants or prop them up, etc, lots of etc. So random garden shots might accompany this blog until everything is properly addressed, including the shot or two of the teepee area where we usually plant beans, but not this year since we haven’t cleared the quadrant of mostly self-seeded lemon balm and elder, that have now totally taken over. I might also put in the lovely little plot John just created using tree trunks as the perimeter. That’s where the saffron landed late yesterday but it’s now covered with chicken wire to keep our feathered friends out of there and so perhaps a photo of it won’t show much. Instead I’ll include the mother hen of one of the three she cares for that are waiting for their afternoon meal near where I was working. We let these babies out now that they’re big enough but they still go back into our large hen house to sleep and eat their meals in there too. That way we know that they get fed and aren’t stepped on during the flock’s havoc to eat everything on the ground that John distributes for them each morning and late afternoon.

I just want to know one thing. When did my life become so complicated that I have to defend my plantings like this? All this chicken wire is starting to wear on me but when I look at my cabbages that now seem to be up to my thigh level…well I feel pretty good after putting them in a fortress. Enough said.