My Week of Living Sweatily

In between the odd moments of perspiring and swilling beverages, Ma has been working outside this past week. Approximately 4-6 hours per day.

Most of the cool hours were taken up with waiting for peoples to finish their daily math lesson, then it was out to the trenches.

But first, the trenches had to be cleared of quack-grass.

That stuff is completely evil, by the way.

Anyway, the garden looks almost 2/3 decent.

It finally rained this afternoon and this got finished by shower time:

--digging out more grass
--rearranging a section, complete with stones and grass cover; a bed for the tomoatoes
--threw a few more flower seeds, here and there: cosmos and California poppies. And some very cool looking vetch seed that I scavenged from a ditch...
--transplanted a Colorado Spruce

The evergreen looks rather sad, at the moment. I watered it before digging it ('bout 2 feet high) and then liberally after transplanting. But seriously, I thought those babies were stiff. This thing has wilted down like a droopy petunia, so I hope it lives. It was the bluest tinged of all my pine trees.

Tomatoes are always a problem in our garden, the dirt of which is infested with blight fungus.

So this year's strategy is to place them right behind the rushes and sedge, in hopes that those plants will filter some of the water (water splashing on the dirt and then to the plants is often how the wilt can be transferred).

The little bed of five plants is surrounded by medium sized limestone (again, from the ditch), with grass packed between the stones and the dirt. Another layer of grass overtop, with plastic fencing laid over the grass, anchored by stones.

Hoping the tomato plants do not get splashed by fungus laden dirt.

Now that it's rained I should be able to go out and pull some of the grass out of the strawberry beds.

Seriously hatin' on that grass, but oh well...

Tonight's supper will be scrambled eggs and bagels; a nice compromise between letting people starve and me fixing a meal when I'm beat.

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