Baked Goods

Seeing as I cater to a more educated readership I’m sure you are familiar with the mythological Greek sailors who ventured out on a 3 hour tour, only to be shipwrecked on an uncharted island for three seasons and three made-for-TV movies. Unlike most Greek myths this one had a happy ending though as the Harlem Globetrotters visit the island in the end and play basketball on a tropical island.

On Saturday I lived the gardening equivalent of the myth. My story centers around a rototiller that I rented for a minimum of three hours. Our previous garden was condemned and re-zoned for a child play area so this year we are relocating the garden to the side of the house, just inside our new fence. So Matt (brother-in-law) and I set out to relocate some raspberry bushes and convert a lawn to a garden. 

I can honestly say that I fully expected to be done within the three hour period. I really wish I had been done when I returned the rototiller 7 hours later. But in fact I didn’t finish until a full 11 hours after I picked up the rototiller.

Given that you are an inquisitive reader you are probably asking yourself, “Do you even know how to use a rototiller? Are you sure you were using it correctly?”. These are valid questions but a rototiller really isn’t that difficult to use. Unless of course you are trying to till the most compact soil on planet earth.

Luckily I didn’t spend the entire time tilling though. That would have killed me. Clearly I’m not dead as I’m writing this blog post so you are probably wondering what I did the whole time. Here is a rundown of how I spent my 11 hours gardening on Saturday:

• Picked up rototiller at 10 a.m.
• Rototiller sat in car in driveway until Matt arrived. I’m not man enough to get rototiller out of car myself. I can’t remember if the guy at the rental shop needed help or not. I will pretend he did so as not to diminish my manliness.
• Waited for Heather to return so she could mark the garden plot Matt and I should till. She was off getting “deals” on kids clothing at a consignment sale. 
• We use the rototiller to add on to the existing raspberry row. We have one raspberry bush and two blackberry bushes that need to be moved from inside the fence to their new home outside the fence.
• Matt notices lots of mature raspberry shoots and suggests we add a new row of raspberries. Seems like a good idea so we proceed.
• Matt and I realize that digging up grass so that we can till new row for raspberries is really hard. We use sod to beautify the location of two bushes we removed at the end of our driveway last year. All of these activities are very time consuming. If any of the transplants die I will surely cry.
• Notice neighbor is out mowing his lawn. Notice that neighbor starts talking with gardner who is mowing other neighbors lawn. Notice that gardner starts mowing neighbors lawn and neighbor is whistling. Neighbor has just mowed lawn for the last time. He says he got a good price.
• Matt and I rototill the new raspberry row. Tiring but not too bad.
• Matt and I transplant the new shoots. They are light and easy to manage.
• Matt and I transplant the raspberry and blackberry bushes. They are heavy and cause us great pain and suffering.
• I look around and notice the huge piles of sod and dirt on our lawn and sidewalk. I begin to contemplate how we might move it all and where we will move it to.
• At this point I imagined that the Harlem Globetrotters showed up and played basketball next to the new raspberry row. That would have been something special.
• Now time for lunch. Heather and Cassidy have finally returned with some sort of meat wrapped in flour. We eat and are happy.
• We begin tilling the new garden area. Drawing on our newly acquired knowledge that digging up sod is really hard we decide to just till the grass as well.
• We learn a new lesson: tilling grass is even harder than digging up sod. After a couple of passes with the tiller it appears as if an angry pickax-wielding smurf* came through making tiny little holes. Not the glorious tilled garden plot we hoped for.
• We rest for a bit. Tilling is really hard. 
• After repeatedly tilling, resting and tilling some more we eventually finished. We mixed in a bunch of dung and some leaves I kept from last fall. The leaves were slimy and yucky. I hope the vegetables like them.
• Matt and Cassidy leave for some church barbeque. Heather and I have no such escape.
• I till a little spot in front of the house that has produced nothing but weeds and eye sores since we moved here.
• I return the tiller 5 minutes before closing. There is much rejoicing.
• Now I return to my previous conundrum – how am I going to move all of the sod and dirt out of the front yard?
• I decide that a wagon that can be used for hauling both yard junk and kids is the way to go.
• I find out that finding such a wagon is difficult. Three hardware stores and one garden center later and nothing. Turns out we have to go to Toys R Us.
• The family returns from Toys R Us with one unassembled wagon. It is getting dark so I quickly start assembling the wagon and Heather goes to put the kids to bed.
• Now I have a wagon but it’s dark and I’m lonely. The mounds of heavy earth aren’t helping the situation.
• I begin moving the earth mounds from the front to the back of the house. With each trip I try to avoid eye contact with anyone in the dinner party assembled on our neighbors back porch. I don’t think I’m invited and I’m filthy.
• It is very dark when I finish up at 9 p.m. I swear an oath against any animal that steals anything from our garden this year. They will suffer, oh how they will suffer…

In the end it was all worth it, even if the Harlem Globetrotters didn’t show up.

* Smurfs are tiny and would carry a really small pickax. This paints a picture of very small, meaningless holes in your lawn.