Spring means manual labor

Hi! 

     Have a seat.  Want some ice water?  I know, you probably think I’m crazy.  With a large part of the country under winter storm advisories, what am I talking about “spring”?  Actually, we have about one more week (at the time I sit writing this) of winter.  Celestially speaking, that is.  Our Gregorian calendar tells seasonal lies.  Summer doesn’t start on the solstice any more than spring starts at the equinox.  We are rapidly approaching the quickening.  I don’t think we’re going to get a garden in this year, though.  And while last year we had raspberries, my husband burned down the canes.  I asked him not to, but he said he didn’t like where they were. 

I can’t argue about that.  They were in an odd place.  The previous owners had put a little bit of plastic netting like stuff around a small rectangle in the yard, stuck some trellis in the ground, and planted the raspberries right there in the middle of the yard.  There wasn’t enough room to mow around the little fenced in area, because it was too close to the pasture fence and too close to the railroad ties that sort of separate the driveway from the side yard.  Not very well thought out.  And the wood that was marking the bed boundaries inside the little fence was rotten.  The gate was rotting, rusty nails poking out all over the place.  It needed to come down. 

     But I still wish he hadn’t burned my raspberries.  Little Bell loved them last spring/early summer.  He called them “rose berries” and would ask me to go picking almost every day.  We didn’t get many berries, maybe a handful each afternoon, sometimes less sometimes more.  But we didn’t wind up wasting any either.  Little Bell ate every last one. 

     I didn’t get any pictures of it before it came down, but there was an adorable little A-frame greenhouse on the north side of our house.  It sat inside a better fenced off area.  The greenhouse was an older structure put up by the previous-previous owners, also Bells.  We still get their mail.  Anyway, I wanted to use the greenhouse, eventually, and since it had raised beds right next to it, I thought it might be a great spot to start our first little garden.  I have been doing diagrams and planning out companion planting strategies all dang winter.

     When we first moved in, the place was really overgrown.  I have pictures of the jungle that those raised beds had become, but I can’t seem to find them now that I want them.  I decided it would be best to wait for winter and everything to die back some before I tried to weed them out and clean them up.  Trying to keep the jungle from creeping back in during prime growing time was just impossible to keep up with while unpacking, organizing, and trying to get settled in. 

     So here lately spring has been snuffling around the door.  We’ve had some sunny days that are pleasantly warm with a cool breeze now and again to keep things nice and refreshing.  Perfect time to go see to that greenhouse and those beds!  So I tromp out there, shovel in hand, gloves on, ready to go.  I go in the greenhouse first to tackle some weird vines that have taken over in there.  As I am  hacking away at these crazy thick vines that have just thrived in there all winter, I notice that some of the beams of the frame don’t seem to meet up with the ground.  As I yank some of the vines free, huge chunks of the vertical supports just crumble away to dust, eaten clean through.  Termites.  Alas.  The plastic was also so brittle it was breaking off in bits and pieces whenever I bonked my head on it.  It was a little bitty A-frame, after all.  So it had to come down.  I was sad, but it’s a great level spot just under a pecan tree, and as luck would have it, it’s the perfect size for a swing set.  The location is also great, because there are two large windows that face that direction, so we can keep an eye on Little Bell without having to necessarily be out there hovering.  Win, sort of.  Silver lining?  Yeah, I’ll go with that. 

     So then I have to tackle those raised beds.  Maybe they could become sandy spots under the swings, or a proper sand box.  With these daydreams in my head, I start yanking out the dead vegetation only to see sharp edges of cut tin.  What the ever loving....?  I am actually really lucky I hadn’t sliced my leg on one of the corners while I was tromping through there this past summer looking at plants.  The stakes that had been used for corner braces had rotted away to nothing, leaving Vs of sharp metal edges just sort of lolling out into the hint of a path between.  The folks who lived here right before us apparently had visions in their heads about those cute raised bed gardens folks make out of galvanized water tubs.  I love them, too, but their solution was to use sheets of roofing tin buried in the ground with untreated garden stakes to hold the corners together.  I am sure when it was first done it looked great, country cute and all that. 

  

     In the picture, you can see the bit of metal visible through the overgrowth versus the actual width of the entire buried strip I’ve dug out. 

     There is less than a foot of space between each bed, and the longest of the beds was only scant inches away from the edge of the spot where the greenhouse was, which was done right proper with concrete pavers and buried hardware cloth to keep stuff from digging in.   So trying to dig these strips of metal out is proving to be challenging.  Standing up in the bed alongside, carefully trying to step on the shovel and sink it down to dig out the metal, while trying to avoid running my leg down either the sheet of metal in front of me or behind me is slow work. 

     Little Bell likes to come out with his big dump truck and a sandbox shovel and “help” by getting me to fill his dump truck with my shovels full of dirt and rocks so he can dump it somewhere.  We still haven’t decided where we’re going to try to put our raised beds.  Maybe I’ll put them over on the north side of the house, still, but just over the fence from where the swing set will be.  Then Little Bell can play on his swings and slide while I’m out there puttering around, and we can both keep an eye on each other.  The only other good spot would be on the south side of the house out in the side yard.  We’ll figure it out. 

     In the meantime, I guess I better get back to digging.  These things aren’t going to haul themselves out or the ground.  Exercise, right?  I have been saying I needed to do more of that.  See y’all later!