Finally!
And as I dropped my first man-burro load of gardening tools onto the path alongside Plot 68 and started to turn for my trip back for a second load I noticed something different in my 288 sq ft rectangle of clumpy brown dirt. I was sure I had seen a small drip of color against that overwhelmingly large backdrop of brown, but where? Oh hey! Over there in Radish Territory is something....green. Holy crap! Grabbing my camera and diving headlong into the dirt adjacent to my newly spotted strip of verde, I was incredibly proud to learn....it had actually worked! If you place tiny seeds from little paper packages a half inch below the surface of the earth then water them....they grow.And now, my radishes had sprouted and my life as a successful gardener had quite possibly begun.
Suddenly feeling invigorated and filled with a new sense of purpose I grabbed my hoe and started working the soil in other parts of the garden. The weather was cooperating. The sky was overcast and the temperature was in the low 60's so the work required few instances of pose striking, and daydreams of ice water were almost entirely non existent. There were few people at the community garden today so everything was reasonably quiet. Having turned on the Ipod at a low volume I was able to listen to the low murmer of other gardeners discussing the planting of their own vegetables while enjoying the redneck sounds of The Flatlanders as well as the lilting strains of alternative country's angelic Kimmie Rhodes. So there I was, working my hoe through the earth and listening to music backed by the muted scratch thwack scratch thwack of my garden implement percussion section, and after about 30 minutes or so of this, I am happy to say, gardening made an incredible transformation from being a frustrating pain in the ass to being an incredibly relaxing and fullfilling way to spend an afternoon. With every pull of the hoe I felt rewarded as the dry gray top layer of dirt was replaced by the moist dark earth below, and what I figured to be a 30 minute attack on a small piece of the garden soon became hours of satisfying communion with Mother Nature herself. After marking out a section for my Blue Lake Pole Beans at the NW corner of the garden I grabbed my hoe and started working. I added a cup of organic fertilizer to the soil and began turning it over with the primary goal of finishing as soon as possible, but as I went along I really began to enjoy myself and before long I had worked myself into some sort of a zone. In fact, I was startled more than once by one of the neighbor gardeners as he walked by on his way to and from his plot. I was focused. After I don't know how long I was able to deem the pole bean territory as ready for planting and I unfolded and placed my premade collpsible bamboo teepee in the center of of my newly prepped square of moist brown soil. The teepee has three sides so I hoed a shallow furrow along the base of each of these sides and unhurriedly layed my seeds along the bottom and covered them lovingly with dirt.
Next I prepped another section and created Summer Squash Territory and then moved along to create both Cucumber Land and Potato Nation. I hade not brought enough fertilizer from the car and made repeated trips back in order to get more, but even these long walks across the Sumner Community Pea Patch became welcome and relaxing events in my day. I was having some sort of a gardening zen thing happening and I was loving it, and before I knew what had happened 3 and a half hours had passed and my garden was planted. Only one problem came to mind as I stood and proudly viewed my handiwork. There were no tomatoes. Not a single plant. What had I done? Tomatoes were my main focus when beginning this project, and now, as I experienced my zen moment gardening epiphany, I had forgotten to save room. Oh damn.
I'm gonna need another plot.
--It's Fosco, Dammit!
1 comment:
Excellent start my friend, so now go get those tomatoes in, the next plot will really get you Zen like.
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