Working in the Garden

The last couple of days we had three young men doing the back breaking work in our back yard, weeding, cutting back dead plants, tilling up the soil, mulching and bagging all the trash; in other words we had slave laborers working for Scout Camp money. Mostly I managed; but actually did some manual labor myself as the garden was prepared for planting.

I had the youngest boy, Logan, hauling leaf mulch from a pile I had behind the garage. He’d fill up a five gallon bucket and dump it into the soil of the tomato garden. I had him dump several buckets into where the green beans would go. He did that and pulled weeds for two days instead of goofing off around the house on spring break.

Landon and Tanner did the heavy stuff; moving concrete stepping stones, huge potted plant remains and clipping back branches. They also hauled the huge black plastic garbage sacks down to the street so they could be there when the trash men came. They will come by again this evening to haul the rest of the trash down for Thursday’s pick up.

This morning Lucy and I put up a string trellis against the side of the garage for the pole beans; lots of fun bending and extending muscles that neither of us use a lot. Then I planted one row of pole beans and one row of bush beans. In a couple of weeks I’ll plant a second and third row of bush beans so they all don’t come in at one time.

We did buy a couple of those Topsey-Turvey upside down tomato planters you see advertised on television and moved two plants from the kitchen nook into their permanent home. That was Saturday and they appear to have survived the transplanting. We have two more upside down planters and will get those done this weekend.

Tomorrow we’ll transplant the remainder of the kitchen nook tomato plants outside. The cucumbers seeds I can get tomorrow as well. Imagine, some folks do this every day; I think they’re called farmers.

The Hobo Kitties have been keeping a close eye on our efforts; moving their favorite hiding places to the back side of the garage or trash, preparing the garden soil and throwing out so many of their toys.  Speaking of Hobo Kitties, we also noticed Nefertiti, the original Hobo Mama Kitty has returned after almost a year’s absence. Lucy spotted her a couple of days ago; looks a bit thick through the mid section. It wouldn’t surprise us if she came “home” to have another liter. Life has a way of providing an endless supply of adventures around here.