Garden Butt

So, about a week ago, I was in a half-doze after the alarm went off, and I thought I heard someone on the radio say that the price of flour had tripled in the last 3 months. (FWIW, that turned out not to be a dream or hallucination - it actually has). Now realize, the price of flour 3 months ago was apparently 69 cents for a 5 lb bag, and now it's slightly over $2.00, so this is not going to be an immediate crisis in my family.

But I read a lot, and not too long ago, was reading something about the effects of the Great Depression on the events leading up to WWII, and they showed a picture of 2 children with a wheelbarrow full of money, supposedly the amount needed to buy a loaf of bread in Germany during that period. Combine that mental picture with the habits born of about 10 years living in hurricane country, and, well, the result is, we're going to have a big vegetable garden this summer. That, and I rushed out and bought 2 5-lb bags of flour and shoved them in the freezer - if things get bad, maybe I can trade them for a couple of wheelbarrows full of money.

The garden will not be big in terms of acreage. We have a handy spot near the place where our gravel driveway becomes a minor parking lot. It's been the vegetable garden since our first full summer in that house, since it's the only spot in our yard where there is dirt available and the trees don't shade everything. It's 10' by 24', so our ability to go wild is constrained to something fairly manageable.

A few minor drawbacks to this spot: first, it slopes downward toward our neighbor's yard, and second, it has an apparently endless supply of weed seeds. The first problem isn't all that big a deal - the slope is pretty gentle; no need to do anything special. The weeds, on the other hand, are a major pain. Every spring, I got out the handy home tiller, fluffed up the dirt, raked out the previous year's weed stems and leaves, made tidy rows and hills, and arranged the drip irrigation, and every summer, found (conveniently) that weeds make a handy mulch - very good at keeping the mud off one's shoes while harvesting.

But I'm really sick of the weeds, and fairly sick of hauling the tiller down the drive all the time (the noise of the blades on the gravel is definitely akin to fingernails on a chalkboard). So this year, I thought we'd try another way. One which my husband insists he's been suggesting every spring for the last 8 years. I don't actually remember his insisting, but if proclaiming that he was right all along gets me a little help setting up, this was his idea a long time ago and I was just too stubborn to admit it before. We're doing raised beds this year. Two of them, each 4' by 8' by 1'(ish). Sunset magazine (http://www.sunset.com/sunset/garden/article/0,20633,1152183,00.html) has a great article with simple instructions on how to build them and useful lists of materials - and ours look very much like the picture. I'm going them one better, though - I'm going to mark them off with string in a foot-square grid and plant in each 1' square - supposedly you can cram in a lot more that way.

Add that all up, and the theme of this past weekend was "Garden Prep". Saturday morning started with Pilates (good exercise but oh, so insidious), and moved from there to weed stem removal, lumber shopping, cutting things to length, and applying stain. At that point, I had to stop so we could go to a party and drink scotch.

Usually, Pilates alone puts me in a state requiring a long nap in the afternoon, so I was a little surprised to be vertical at dinnertime. I was even more surprised to be flexible and limber and pain-free as we left the party that night. I felt good right up until I tried to roll over in bed at about 3 am on Sunday. I'm thinking I hadn't had enough scotch, personally.

But we couldn't quit - we had raised beds to build. And I have 70ish seeds sprouting in a seed-starter greenhouse thingy sitting on the wine fridge in the kitchen and they're all going to need homes. So Sunday morning found me in my painting shorts and t-shirt in the garage applying more stain (it was 41 degrees outside according to the radio). Sunday afternoon involved construction of box number 1, hauling it down the driveway to the bed, throwing weedkiller all over the original garden dirt, covering it with weird silver landscape fabric, and a spot of post-hole digging (my husband's job - I suck at post-hole digging).

My family has a term for a common ailment that strikes us as we try to clean up lawns and gardens every spring: Garden Butt. You get it by overusing your glutes while digging stuff up on hands and knees, or by repeatedly bending from a standing position while digging dandelions or something. I have Garden Butt, I'm pretty sure, but I also have garden shoulder, garden shin, garden elbow, and garden fingers, so it's a little lost in all the noise.

And we still have our second box to assemble and post-hole dig into place. We'll eat good this summer - or die trying.