That is one messed up till job, Farmer Val.
I’m going to admit something to you. I really only have time to work on my garden once or twice a week. All week long, I was thinking about my next post and how I was going to title it “How To Give Up”. Yes, I was going to give up on tilling by hand and borrow my neighbor’s tiller. I didn’t, however, because I have a little voice inside my head. I call that voice “Imaginary Kristee”, named after my friend Kristee who has never allowed me to give up on anything the entire time I’ve known her. Once, I was going to skip class, and Real Life Kristee said “just go, it’s only a couple of hours of your life.” I told her I was just too tired, so she brought me a latte. So when I told Imaginary Kristee that I was giving up on tilling by hand and was going to borrow a tiller, she said “Just do it. You’re almost done, and the time it would take you to go get the tiller, till, and return the tiller, you could be done.” I felt this was right on, so I took Imaginary Kristee’s advice. Also, in the last post, I wrote about what I was going to do before I actually did it. That was a big mistake, and I apologize for that. In fact, I didn’t do any of what I said I was going to do, which makes me a liar. I’ll try not to lie to you again.
I also had coffee with a good friend yesterday, and as she was explaining to me her spiritual journey through a problem she was having, I started thinking about the problem I was having. Narcissistic, I know. I care deeply for my friend. But a lot of what she was saying about her situation I found could actually apply to several situations of mine. I thought about my garden and how I wanted to till it up myself without the aid of a machine. It was sort of therapeutic, like natural birth or the way a butterfly forces itself out of its chrysalis. Any mechanical help would be detrimental to the process, and this garden is about the process, not the product. Also, this garden is really less about a garden and more about my own personal transformation from a troubled thirty-something to a grounded and sorted individual. It’s a very zen sort of project. It’s a Zen Garden, I guess.
Carl Sagan said “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” In honor of that notion, I began, or rather, continued, making my garden’s universe. I put on my gloves, grabbed the potato fork, and got back to work. Here’s what I did:
1. I took the potato fork and pried the grass chunks out of the ground. I did this with more purpose than I did last time. I had intended on chopping up these chunks of sod, but that didn’t work out.
2. With my bare hands (just kidding, I was wearing gloves) I grabbed the sod chunks and carried them to the compost bin. When I got tired of walking to the bin, I pretended to be an ancient Greek Olympian and chucked them into the compost bin from a great distance like I was throwing a shotput. I found that pretending to be an Olympian is like, so way fun. So way. I had considering running around the house with my arms in the air singing “We Are The Champions”, but the only one who would appreciate that would be my son, and he was with his dad that day.
3. Once I got rid of most of the grassy clods, I took a garden rake, otherwise known as a “row rake”, and pushed and shoved the dirt around until I felt that it looked mostly even. There were still some large dirt chunks and grass, but I wasn’t worried!
More dirt!
4. Next came the fun part. I bought four bags of topsoil at the grocery store. It wasn’t very much, but after digging I found that we have pretty good soil in our backyard. If you are copying me, you may want to get more soil than I got, especially if you have particularly sandy soil. To avoid making a dirty mess, I just laid the bags of dirt on top of the garden space, sliced open the bags, and pulled the plastic out from under the soil. It was awesome.
5. I used the garden rake and pushed around the new soil until it all looked even. I also used the rake to remove some of the leftover sod pieces and bigger chunks of dirt that I couldn’t break up and put them in my handy compost bin.
Now, my garden is ready for planting! You’ll notice from the picture below there are still some grass pieces and chunks of dirt. I’m going to leave those there and hope they eventually decompose to fertilize the soil. When I go to put the seeds in this evening I’ll toss ‘em if they get in my way. I talked to my dad last night, and he assured me that it is nowhere near too late to plant seeds. I’m very excited about this, because there’s nothing quite like poking your finger in the dirt. I’ll be doing that later this evening. For now, I have papers to grade and lesson plans to write.
Nicely tilled and ready for planting!
