Plowing

Last Saturday morning, Nanny called and said, "Pete's here to break up the garden. I just thought I'd let you know."

Translation: "If you want him to do it like you want it done, you'd better get your butt down here."

So I dropped what I was doing, hopped on my bicycle, and pedaled down the driveway to "supervise."

Mr. Pete was cranking the big blue tractor as I got there. Pop-Pop was standing off to one side, directing the action with a tomato stake pointer. Four more tomato stakes marked out the corners of the garden. The layout looked okay to me, so I just sidled up next to Pop-Pop to watch as the breaking plow peeled up the soil.

Because of last year's blight issue, I had decided to move the tomatoes to a whole new spot, far away from the usual garden plot to a corner of the former horse pasture, just across the road from my house. While Mr. Pete was breaking the garden, I pedaled back up the driveway to open the gate at the corner of the pasture so that he could get in there with the tractor. As I was opening the gate, Joel was coming down the driveway on his bicycle. We rode back down to the garden together, and when Mr. Pete finished in the garden, I pointed up the driveway and asked him to break up the spot for the tomatoes. when he started down the driveway on the tractor, I turned my attention to scattering some garden lime on the newly-plowed ground.

Evidently, I was not too clear with my directions, for a minute or two later, I heard Joel yell, "Did you tell Mr. Pete where you wanted the tomatoes?"

"Yeah."

"He's parked the tractor in our driveway."

I squinted for a clearer view. "Maybe he's just walking off the place he's going to plow."

"He's in our YARD."

I squinted again, and sure enough, there was Mr. Pete, standing with his hands on his hips in the only sunny, tree-free spot in our yard. I made one of those involuntary "eeek!" noises. "Catch him!"

Joel jumped on his bicycle and pedaled up the driveway as fast as he could. I dropped my bag of lime, grabbed my bike, and followed him. Thankfully, Joel reached our yard in time to stop Mr. Pete from plowing it up.

Whew...close one.

Another neighbor, Mr. Charles, came later in the week with a harrow to knock apart the big clods that the breaking plow had left. Seeing the smoothe soil, I wanted to hurry to the greenhouse for some tomato plants, but Nanny said Mr. Charles was coming back with a tractor tiller to really pulverize the soil. He didn't get to it before the week was up. Now it has rained, and it will be several more days before he can finish. Hopefully, by next weekend, we'll be planting.

Within two days of planting the cabbage and broccoli that I planted a couple of weeks ago, rabbits ate them. All that remains of them are nubby little stalks. Rabbit stew is sounding very delicious to me right now.

But Pop-Pop acquired some wire cages, so I bought some new plants to try again, as soon as the ground is dry enough.

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