Finally. I mean, finally. I got in the yard. It’s been a spring of avoidance around here. I’ve made up every excuse not to get the garden ready. It’s the spring’s fault, really. Cincinnati’s spring has been cold. And buying plants has felt like splurging.
But yesterday I got paid and today was gorgeous: sunny and in the 70s. I had the great privilege of spending almost the entire day getting the garden bed ready (we have two raised beds in the backyard–one is fruit, and by “fruit” I mean an enormous, Godzilla-like blackberry, and the other is flowers and vegetables, mostly annuals.) The flower and vegetable bed suffers from clay-like soil which I vigorously amend every year. Due to my negligence, the bed had become home to what seemed like thousands of weeds.
Most of my day was spent just like this. Hunched over the earth, staring down the weeds, hacking through the clay. Amazing how good that makes me feel.
Later in the afternoon, I treated myself to a trip to the garden store. Granted, I looked like a shit storm at a volcano eruption–doused in manure and vermiculite–but garden stores are the only place you go where no one looks at you funny for not having showered and being shellacked in shit. Well, maybe not the only place.
Basking in the colors and mulling over my tomato options, I lost myself wandering up and down the aisles at the garden store. Because the soil is still so bad–and the past few years haven’t been very productive with vegetables–I limited myself to a few peppers and another tomato (I have a Mr. Stripey, my favorite, already growing the front.) I loaded up on petunias and impatiens, though. Can’t go wrong with pretty colors.
I got a few things in the ground this evening and my plan is to finish tomorrow morning. So, maybe that’s what tomorrow’s picture will be. I also leave town for a work trip tomorrow. Be warned that I may get a day or so behind. Hopefully not.
Hope McAllister Miller 