Call me Dusty - September 17, 2023

We had a funeral to go to yesterday morning at 11, and a wedding yesterday afternoon at 4.  Had just enough time to change out of the funeral clothes and eat a bite before we had to put on the wedding clothes.  

On the way home from the wedding, I said to The Husband, "We should clean off the garden tomorrow."  

This started because I read "non-ethanol" on a gas station sign.  I only use non-ethanol gas in the big black tiller.  I filled the tank a few weeks ago and haven't used it much since then, so it's full of gas.  I was thinking that I ought to run it out of gas so it doesn't sit there all winter.  

Hence the suggestion about cleaning off the garden.  It was mighty weedy.  If I'd tried to run the tiller, the grass would probably have choked the tines.  So the garden needed mowing before I could start tilling to run the tiller out of gas.  Since the bush hog was already hooked to the tractor, mowing would not be a big deal, once we pulled up the tomato stakes.

I said, "We should do it while Nanny is at church."

The Husband agreed.

So this morning when I heard Nanny leave for church (she toots her horn when she goes by), The Husband and I suited up for battle with fire ants and headed to the garden.  He followed me down the tomato rows with the tractor while I pulled up the stakes and dropped them in the tractor bucket.  Then he mowed.  While he was mowing the garden, I mowed the rest of Nanny's yard with the lawnmower.  Land sakes, it was dusty!  I took to mowing giant circles of the whole yard, rather than sectioning it off like I usually do, so that the dust that was billowing behind me would blow away before I got back around.  That worked until it became a waste of gas, then I just had to hold my breath while I drove through the dust.

While I was mowing, I saw that there were big chunks of cardboard all over the garden.  By the time I finished mowing, The Husband had decided to hook up the tiller (the big one that goes on the tractor) and till the cardboard into the soil.  I was 100% for that idea.  So he made The Nephew help him with the unhitching and hitching, and we came back to the house for a sandwich.  We ate and went straight back to the garden.  The Husband tilled and tilled and tilled, and moved dirt around with the bucket, clouds of dust just a-flying behind him.  Nanny and I eventually suspected he was mostly joy-riding.  

While he was tilling, I remembered that in the trunk of my car were 5 pounds of mustard seeds that I've been riding around since last year.  When the tilling was done, I scattered more than half of them over the garden - probably it was enough mustard to plant an acre.  The birds and squirrels can have at it and there'll still be enough seeds to make a cover crop.  

Boy, were we dusty when all this was done.