I walked down to the garden about 9 a.m. today, store-bought canes in hand (see last post), intending to string the wire between the green bean poles, stick the canes in the ground, and call it a day. I hadn't even made it all the way across the back yard when Nanny came out of the house and called, "Did you find the wire?" I hollered back that I knew where it was, and went on to the garden.
While I was pushing the store-bought canes into the ground, Nanny arrived with an arm-load of green canes that she had cut from the edge of the woods. We had just enough to do the green bean rows.
But when we finished that job, Nanny said, "Are these butterbeans the running kind?"
Pssshhht. As if I knew. They had foot-long runners on them, but I didn't see anything curling. And I didn't have any more metal posts and canes to make another fence.
I looked around. At the end of the garden was a small pile of 2x2 poles that had once been tomato stakes. I told Nanny, "Maybe we can go ahead and drive these stakes into the butterbean rows, and run some string between them later if it looks like they're going to be climbers." We gathered up the stakes and hammered them into the ground. Naturally, we didn't have enough stakes. But there were more pooped-out tomato plants in the garden, still attached to their stakes, so we stole those stakes to finish the butterbean rows.
Then Nanny said, "Are you going to plant greens? If you are, pull up the rest of those tomatoes, and I'll run the lawnmower through there to make it easier to plow." So we pulled up almost all the rest of the tomato plants, and Nanny hauled them away in the lawn cart while I pulled up and hauled away the sunflower trees that had long-since fallen over.
By then, it was 11 a.m. I hadn't had any breakfast and my stomach was rumbling. "I'm going back to the house," I told Nanny. "I've had enough for today."
I came home and fixed some breakfast. While I was eating, I decided that I ought to go ahead and plow up the spot for the greens and get them planted today, before the rain from hurricane Ike gets here. After breakfast, I went back to the garden. The big tiller actually cranked, and I steered it to the garden.
On the second round of tilling, something faintly intenstine-ish flew out from beneath the tiller and landed beside me. What in the world...? I stooped to get a better look. Ewwww! It was an animal - I'm not sure what it was, but it was pink (didn't have much hair), and it was gasping. I cringed, and stood up, not knowing what to do. Whatever the thing was, it was clearly in pain and needed to be finished off. But...geez.... Fortunately, while I was deliberating about whether to get the shovel or run over it with the tiller again, it shuddered and went still. I apologized to it and went back to my tilling, kinda grossed out by the thing, which I had to look at every time I passed it. Yuck.
I finished the tilling. By then, the heat had sapped my energy again, so I came back home. The ground still needs raking, and the greens still need planting. The sweet peas need a support system. They and the new green beans and butterbeans need fertilizing. The butterpeas, hot peppers, and okra need to be picked, and I'd like to get all of that done before the rain gets here.
But, right now, I have to run over to Mother's to change some light bulbs.
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Addendum:
Got the light bulbs done, came home to get my gloves, and went back to the garden to rake the tilled soil and plant greens. When I went to the shed to get the rake, Pop-Pop was on his back on a creeper under the big John Deere tractor. "Laying down on the job again, are you?" I said, as I passed by.
"Hey, what'd you do with my girlfriend?" he asked (referring to our stylish scarecrow - the one he calls "the Garden Ho'" - which I'd taken down earlier, when we were pulling up tomatoes).
"She's out there," I said, "laying on that pile of tomato stakes."
"I just can't keep a girlfriend," he muttered sadly.
I got my rake and went out to the garden. Before raking, I sprinkled pelletized lime over the soil to "sweeten" it for next year. Nanny came out to help about the time I finished spreading the lime, and we made short work of raking up some rows and planting the seeds. We planted turnips, spinach, kale, lettuce, and mustard. Oh, and a row of beets. (The beets I planted last time came up sparsely and have since disappeared. I'm trying them in a different spot this time. Never did get a single carrot to come up.)
Nanny and I tidied up - pulled some grass from around the three tomato plants that we'd left standing, and weeded the sweet peas. I hooked up the Miracle Grow sprayer to the water hose and fertilized the new beans. I even gave the old green beans a shot, just in case they still have a little energy left in them.
I picked a few squash, a few tomatoes, and an eggplant.
With my last ounce of energy, I hauled the scarecrow back to the center of the garden and put her hat back on her head. Can't have Pop-Pop missing her, can we?
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