THE GARDEN

THE GARDEN

Spring has sprung and beautiful weather such as we are having today inspires one to do, well, stupid things. I was inspired to start work on my garden today, a really dumb idea. I now hurt in places I forgot I had.

I’ve always enjoyed gardening. My dad was a gardener. We always had a big garden back during the World War II days when gardens were almost a necessity. But even beyond those days, dad always had a garden. And guess who got to do most of the weeding, hoeing and other work in the garden. Yep. Good old Chuck, that's who.

Still, I came to enjoy those moments in the garden when I could become lost in my work. I also knew that there was the promise of some reward for my efforts, not so with some of the other chores I was assigned. Pulling a fresh tomato off the vine, whipping it on my dusty jeans and taking a big bite was a special pleasure. I especially enjoyed popping open a young pea pod and rolling the young peas into my mouth with a flick of my thumb along the bottom of the opened pod. There is nothing like it. I feel sorry for those young people whose parents never had a garden so they could see how produce goes from seed to table.

There was a down side to gardening in my youth, however. I was raised in the southwestern corner of Missouri on the edge of the Ozark Mountains. It can be warm there even in April and the humidity is often as high as the temperature. Sweat was your companion as you worked in the garden and with sweat came gnats and other pests to buzz around your face. Then there were the rocks. I swear we grew rocks in that garden. Every spring after dad hired someone to plow the garden – usually a farmer with a team and horse drawn plow – I would go out and pick up the bigger rocks and throw them into a pile at the edge of the garden. Each year the pile grew larger because each year there were more rocks to remove.

That is not the case where I now live in upstate New York. My garden sets atop about 14 feet of sand. We are, in fact, located on top of an ancient lake that can be tapped even today for water by driving a point into the ground and attaching a pump. The soil is so sandy that for 40 odd years now I have spaded yards of compost into the garden to help provide nutrients and to help the soil hold moisture.

That is where my backbreaking work on the garden began today – the compost pile. Each year I dump all my yard waste (lawn clippings, leaves, carrot tops, etc.) onto the compost pile at the south end of my garden. I learned long ago that every time I mow, all the rich fertilizer I put on the lawn in the spring, and later in the fall, is found in those grass clippings. Why let that fertilizer go to waste? It goes on the compost pile instead of into a bag to be carted off to the landfill. But a compost pile must be turned to allow moisture to get in there and promote decomposition. That’s what I did today.

After turning the compost pile, I got to the bottom layer, which is where the rich earth is. I had some black soil that would make an Illinois farmer envious. I then shoveled the composted soil into my garden cart and dumped it at strategic places around the garden where I could raked it out into a more or less even layer ready for spading.

And that’s the next big job, spading the garden. My garden is too small to warrant investing in a small garden tractor, so I have to turn the soil by hand with a spade. It’s good exercise, but a back breaker unless I take my time and rest often.

My motto is rest often, drink beer and don’t work too hard. We can’t plant in this part of the country for another week or so, so there is no reason to rush. The warm weather and sunny sky beckon, however, and I must be outside doing something. And there is the promise of those vine fresh tomatoes, zucchini, and other vegetables this summer.