We went camping last week and came home to a garden fuzzy with grass and dry as a bone. Saturday afternoon, I got after it. The dry ground seemed to be the most pressing problem, so I stretched the hoses from Nanny's faucet and turned it on. Water spewed from every connection and from the several places that we'd patched with duct tape near the end of last season. I tried to place the spews where they'd do the most good and made a note to pick up new water hoses the next day.
Sunday, armed with new water hoses and a new sprinkler, I got after it again. The first problem was that I could not get the old hoses unscrewed from the hose cart. The Husband came out to help and ended up twisting the connection in two in the middle; the old hose came off, but the new one couldn't be screwed into place because part of the old connector was still there. I decided to deal with that problem after the weeding was done. I started with Gloria, the little red tiller, digging out the grass in the narrow middles of the bean rows, then I pulled the grass out of the rows by hand. The next job on my list was to run the lawnmower over the three empty rows and plant more purple hull peas in them. While I was pulling grass from the bean rows, The Husband offered to mow, then he offered to run the breaking plow over those rows. I said, "If you do that, you'll have to run the disc over it. I think the big tiller will do okay." But he insisted (I think that he really just wanted to drive the tractor), so I told him to have at it.
He put the breaking plow on the tractor and made quick work out of breaking up the ground, but the progress came to a halt when he tried to attach the disc. He called me over to help. We could get one side of the hitch attached, but not the other side. We worked and worked and sweated and cussed. My frustration level was getting pretty high (I was racing daylight) when Nanny came out to "help." I am ashamed to admit that I bailed out of the disc-attaching at this point, figuring she could give orders as well as I could. They finally got the thing attached, but about the time The Husband got back to the garden with the tractor, the hydraulic lifter-thing quit working. He detached the disc where it sat and parked the tractor.
While all of this was going on, I cranked Gloria back up to finish the weeding. She ran out of gas after about 3 minutes. We had gas in a can in the shop, but I was too lazy to go get it and heave it out to the garden, so I dragged the big black tiller out of the shop, intending to work in the wide rows between the tomatoes and the squash. I made a couple of passes, and as I was turning around at the end of a row, I scrunched the tiller's right-hand tire right off the rim.
With all of the equipment out of commission, I tackled the hose problem again. That broken connector piece appeared to have been WELDED onto the hose reel connector. I by-passed the hose cart altogether and hooked the hose straight to the faucet. I did, at least, manage to get most of the garden watered. I came home muddy, wet, sweaty, and horsefly bitten.
Monday came. The tiller tire was fixed. I talked The Husband into putting it back on the tiller so that it would be ready to go when I was ready to go again. But I wasn't ready. Screw the garden.
Most everything looks fairly well, now that it's had a drink, except the pepper plants. They died. All but one. I stopped at a garden center this afternoon, bought more peppers, and planted them after dinner tonight.
I picked about 10 nice-sized cucumbers.
The green beans have matchstick-sized beans on them.
Squash will be ready in a few days.
Tomatoes hanging in there.
Okra is growing. It's loving this monstrous heat.
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