22 | March | 2009 | Tiny Cat Pants

When the Butcher got home, I was still on the couch, in pretty much the same position he’d left me.

“Take the dog out,” I said.

“Then you at least have to get up and feed the animals.”

“I can’t. Gardening is trying to kill me.”

“It’s called ‘exercise.’ It’s good for you.”

“I’m too out of shape to garden.”

“Gardening will get you in shape for gardening.”

“Oh great, then I’ll be ready for next year. Apparently I’m a biennial.”

“It could be worse. You could be one of those plants that dies at the end of the season.”

Anyway, the end result of my hard work on Friday and yesterday is that the big bed with the bottle tree (which is only two bottles away from being completed, and I have word that the two bottles are in transit) is prepped and planted. There’s something coming up in the south end already which I’m going to take a “wait and see” attitude towards, but I’ve got Mexican sunflowers at the other end, hollyhocks all along the back, marigolds lining the front and a mix of daisies (which I don’t think will bloom until next year) , black eyed susans, columbine, and some other stuff scattered around. Last year Leslie gave me a bunch of holiday cards embedded with wildflower seeds that her workplace had left over and I planted those near the bottle tree where the morning glories will be. I didn’t bother to soak or knick the morning glories, though, because I don’t read instructions until it’s too late.

And I left myself a place for the coneflowers that should be arriving next week. And I planted parsley in the bed, because Saraclark said the caterpillars will like it.

And there were peonies already there, of course, so it should be very flowery and awesome.

Then the Butcher and I ripped out some privet. And really, I just need a macro so that I can hit “shift+control+P” and have it type “ripped out some privet” because I swear that’s 90% of what this yard needs. So, we ripped out some privet along the back fence and put in our raspberry. And yes, probably, I should have bought more than one, but I’m trying to strike a balance between splurging a little because my soul needs it and living frugally.

Anyway, it was while planting the raspberry that the Butcher and I noticed something very interesting. Mud blob does not appear to live on the other side of the creek. The dirt in the hole that we dug for the raspberry was the same color as the potting soil we brought back to fill in the hole with.

I don’t know if this is why they had their garden clear back there or if this is a result of 50 years of gardening back there and amending the soil or a mix of both, but you could have knocked us both over with a stick. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I found Illinois dirt back there or anything, but it is remarkably better than the stuff in the rest of the yard. (For instance, while I was loosening the soil up around the bottle tree, I found this triangle thing that I thought was a piece of plastic. I bent down to pick it up and realized that it was just some mudblob that had come to the surface when we dug the hole for the pole and then dried against the pole–so that it had a straight flat side. I could have killed someone with its sharp edge. I hope they don’t have Mud Blob under the prison or prisoners who read my blog have just discovered a whole new way to construct a shiv.)

Anyway, we’re going to till the garden today, so I do have a question. I have been taking Bridgett’s advice to heart about not tilling what you don’t want to weed, so I was planning on having a garden that was a series of beds separated by grass. But then I thought, “Oh god, how wide would those grass strips have to be to get a lawnmower down them?”

So, here’s my question (and here’s the garden plan as it stands now as a reminder). Instead of doing what I have planned here, would I be better off to turn all the rows so that I have the three three-sister plots at the top and then two long beds at least the width of the lawn mower apart that run north and south instead of a bunch of short east-west beds like I have planned here?

Here, let me show you a sketch.