Unmovable Objects

When I was in the fifth grade, I learned about the Europeans of the 16th century slogging their way across the Atlantic to settle in the New World. My New England pride made me question why anyone would have settled anywhere but here. The fact that biting winters and less than ideal farming conditions existed could not sway my sympathies.

Now I get it.

As part of the raised bed installation process I have roto-tilled the earth upon which the vegetables will be placed. The idea is to give the plantings as much loose, easy soil to burrow down into as possible. The first three raised beds went into the ground relatively smoothly. The fourth has been a struggle. I have encountered hundreds of pounds of debris below the surface of the earth. I say "debris," because it hasn't just been rock that I have lifted out of the ground. In these thirty-two square feet I have uncovered cement, concrete, and even rusted piping. It makes me think that at least a small part of the hill on which our house sits was filled in by men with machines.

The process for removing the debris is the same every time. If the rototiller hits a rock, it bucks. If the rototiller can, it will grab the rock in its tines and chuck it to the side. If the rototiller cannot discard the rock, it will continue to buck. That's when I will turn the rototiller off and set it to the side. I will then prod the soil with my shovel, feeling for the edge of the rock, then stomp the shovel's head as far down into the ground as my weight will compel it. After rocking back and forth I can usually pry the rock loose and remove it with my hands. But not always.

A couple of days ago I came across a rock that I just couldn't move. I dug and I poked and I prodded with the shovel for nearly twenty minutes until I'd finally cleared the soil from around the rocks edges. The rock (pictured left) was huge. I tried lifting it, rocking it, prying it, and smashing it with the side of my shovel, but the rock refused to budge.

The rock now lives in harmony beneath our fourth raised bed. Amen.

The Ever Expanding, Perfectly Contained Garden

And the parade of raised beds continues.

I spent another two hours outside on Saturday with our fourth raised bed, and the work still isn't done. Two more hours of hammering and drilling and roto-tilling and shoveling and wheelbarrowing. Phew. I've calculated that from start to finish each raised bed takes approximately 10-12 man hours. Considering that I work full time, that the mess inside the house is deteriorating, that I'm applying for jobs in eighteen different school districts, and that the weather's been nasty it's been tough to squeeze in all those gardening hours.

Fortunately, this is the type of work that I thrive on. It's not quite mindless, but it does allow for me to step into a well-worn grove and to stay there for a while. My thoughts can wander about, play in the dirt, or enjoy a picnic lunch, thoroughly free from my meddling. Building these raised beds has provided my brain with the perfect opportunity to take a break from itself, to expand and contract in any way that it pleases.

Not to mention, the garden is progressing, and there is beauty in its order. I have loved (LOVED) our garden the past two years, with its wild, sprawling energy, but what's emerging from this new space on Lincoln Street is equally vivacious...yet perfectly controlled. Ahhhhhhh. As wide as Camille's fancy-free aspirations and the vegetables' mid-summer exuberance might be there will be order in the garden. Sweet, sweet order in the garden.

Onwards raised beds!

Into the Ground

Well, that was not as easy as we'd supposed. Today was the day that Camille and I sunk our first raised bed into the sandy backyard...and filled it with compost. So much compost. So much heavy compost, the majority of which will rest unused by the side of our driveway, and will one day come to be known as "Compost Hill" or "Mt. Compost" or "That Place Where Camille Buried Her First Husband (and Smiled More Than She Should Have Even Though the Sun Was Intermittently Yet Directly in Her Eyes."

Ah, but before the compost went into the raised bed, the raised bed was treated with thirty-two feet of polymer lining. One of the men at the discount lumber yard suggested the idea, predicting that the sides of the raised beds would rot considerably slower if they weren't directly in contact with the dirt. An excellent idea. Better still, Camille and I had a landmark moment: we were able to work together hammering the lining to the inside of the raised bed without (me) giving helpful suggestions on the best way to hammer a nail into wood or (Camille) rushing through the job, quality be damned. Hurray for us.

Once the lining was in, we dug four post-holes in the dirt, and sunk the bed. Then came the compost, four heaping wheelbarrows full. This was around the time when we realized that Mt. Compost (delivered in two hydraulic truck-fulls over the weekend) would become a permanent fixture. It's not that we won't be able to find a use for so much compost, it's that we'll never be able to move it. We just don't have the will.

The first raised bed is in the ground though, and there's something to be said for a good, hard day of work. Only five more to go.









(Note: the photo at the top of this entry of a potential murder/cover-up is actually a photo of the four heaping wheelbarrows full of compost that were used in the raised bed, not Mt. Compost. Mt. Compost is considerably larger, and set twenty-five body-lengths to the right)

--David