Our Gardening Adventure

             Margaret and I have started a garden. We started a half-hearted garden last year, which mostly consisted of putting some seeds or plants in the ground or something and then ignoring them. I guess I must not have the proverbial, "Green Thumb" as, surprisingly, this didn't yield a bountiful harvest of fruits and vegetables. This year though, we declared from atop a mountain of recently tilled soil, things would be different. This year we would sink our pink little fingers deep in this grimy muck and mire and, through back-breaking labor and the sweat of our regal brows, pull forth from Mother Earth the fruit of her fertile womb. We would play the role of mother, creating a welcoming and nurturing environment for the plants - father, planting the seeds in this environment - nursemaid, nurturing and maturing these seeds into plants - doctor, delivering the bounty of our labor - and finally cannibal, sinking our sharpened teeth into the juicy goodness of vegetables we planted. This year, our long-winded declaration continued, we would not be distracted with petty things such as work, sleep, food, or Halo: Reach. This year our garden represented our child - and if we couldn't take care of a garden (and here we shook hands in solemn agreement) we would immediately sell our child to the highest bidder upon its birth. The stakes were high, our ambition higher, and our dedication higher still.  Garden, prepare to meet thy makers.

              So, since Mag's dad has recently given up his hobby of raising five children and eleven and a half grandchildren, he's faced with the problem that haunts many an older man - free time. This isn't a problem for the young, as the young are most excellent at finding ways to waste copious amounts of time without ever feeling as if the time has been a waste. Because of this he's taken up gardening. The guy's a pilot, which means he doesn't halfass anything, and he has been reading some book on square-foot gardening (cleverly titled, "Square Foot Gardening") so we decided to try that.

             I'm not much of a carpenter, but I used to play with LEGOs a lot, so even I can put together a 4 foot square box with 2x6s. Of course first we needed the lumber, so we made a trip to Home Depot. We got the wood and a variety of other things in giant heavy bags which we were going to mix together to make the most fertile of soils. After returning home Mag (also known as my Honey Baby Sugar Bookums) began her mysterious mixture of our forthcoming mineral conglomeration, and I got to work on screwing the boards together. This sort of thing is really more fun than it out to be, and I can only suppose it's because of LEGOs. After I built the box I was going to overlay a sort of tic-tac-toe board on it so I had to measure and re-measure the sides, doing the most basic sorts of math to figure out where each end would go and marking it with the oldest, most beat up pencil I could find (I feel this is appropriate for carpentry). Meanwhile Mag mixed together the following substances:
- Composted soil from her dad's compost tumbler.
- Cow manure.
- Organic

                 We also had a sheet of something to lay at the bottom of the box. When we had everything put together in the obvious and appropriate way, we began planting the seeds. I made up a little grid on a piece of paper (in case our memories fail us in the future) and we marked down what we were planting in each square - okra, tomatoes, peppers, marigold (to keep pesky little pests away) and a few un-planted squares for our as-yet-to-be-decided vegetables. We planted the seeds, stepped back, congratulated ourselves on a job well done, and waited to see what nature would do for us.

              That night we had 60 mile per hour winds, multiple trees knocked down on our street, a large branch fall across our driveway, and a hail storm. However, it's a week (or so) later and just in the past few days our okra and peppers have sprouted, and I'm confident more are on the way. I was worried that the massive destruction caused by the storm may have drowned our poor little seeds, but evidently they drank up that hail like the lifewater it once was. I don't even like vegetables, and usually avoid them at all cost, but I can't wait to eat these suckers.

                                  

THE END