jaunthie | More garden progress

The weather finally cooperated this weekend. Saturday was not too soggy, and Sunday was actually dry. Cold for this time of year, but there were actual sunbreaks, and no rain.

And so, at last, FINALLY, Sunday saw the first Mutual Gardening Society effort of 2011. Jake came to my house and brought her rototiller, and between the two of us, we managed to do more gardening in a few hours than I could have managed over the entire weekend on my own. She rototilled the entirety of my backyard veggie bed while I weeded out the undergrowth choking my rhododendron bed and did my best to eradicate the dandelions invading the lavender and lilac bed. I turned over the second front yard veggie bed (again) while she planted potatoes in the first one. We planted onions all throughout the second veggie bed, leaving room for peas to grow up over the arched trellis (or so I hope; I haven't planted the peas yet.) We planted scads of potatoes in the backyard bed (ye gods, if all the potatoes I planted actually produce, I am going to be up to my eyeballs in spuds starting about mid-July) and set out the soaker hoses (one of the most absolutely ANNOYING gardening chores thanks to the curly nature of soaker hoses, but well worth it if you can actually get the things set, held down with rocks and staples, and functioning throughout the gardening season). By the time she left, I actually had functioning garden beds in both the front and back of the house, with things planted in them. Plus she helped me set up what will hopefull serve as a cat-deterrent system over the newly planted beds, as the neighbor's cats have taken to using my freshly-turned beds as litterboxes, which is NOT GOOD under any circumstance, and particularly NOT GOOD when you're trying to grow things from seeds and starts.

I still do not understand how it is that the two of us working together manage to accomplish what it really should take four or five people to do in the same amount of time. But I am infinitely grateful for whatever wrinkle in the space-time continuum consistently pops up in our favor when we get together to garden, and doubly grateful that Jake gave me the first session of good-weather-work. There's still tons more to do in my yard - for instance, the new flower bed is still just cardboard on grass - but I'm miles ahead of where I was a scant two weeks ago. And I can't wait to get to her place and start returning the favor. Hopefully next Saturday will favor us with decent weather.

Now if I could just make similar strides in my writing work and in house chores, I'd be feeling pretty good about this spring. As it is, my job's keeping me quite busy, I'm trying to work out more, and I don't know where I can find a few more hours in the day... But that's pretty much a universal constant. If we all had all the time we wanted, it would be a very different world, wouldn't it?