This week I planted my last little plant in my garden. It marks the end of a whole lot of heavy lifting. I’m hoping that I don’t have to spend any more quality time with the wheelbarrow or the metal fence post driver for a long, long time.
I discovered that the problem with spending the early part of spring taking Master Gardener classes is that then you get all these bright ideas about expanding your garden. Things like "oh I’ll just make the fence go out to here" don’t seem like such a big deal, until you have to spend hours outside with the extremely heavy fence post driver clanging on endless T posts.
Like most plans, my big garden expansion took a lot longer than I thought. Starting in mid-April, I pulled out fence posts, put in more fence posts, moved many rocks, expanded two veggie beds, and dug three new ones. My garden beds are made from cinder blocks, so I also moved 56 cinder blocks from the driveway down to the garden area. One at a time.
Then I moved countless wheelbarrow loads of dirt into the new beds and the enlarged older beds. After that, I laid down landscape fabric in between and spent still more time with the wheelbarrow covering the fabric with wood chips. (While I have been working on the garden, James has been busy with his loppers and chain saw clearing overgrown forest areas and running hundreds of 20-year old, 4-foot tall trees through the chipper…yes, we have a LOT of wood chips.)
At long last, over Memorial Day we put up the hoop house and I put in the soaker hoses. Then I planted many plants and seeds, so now all I have to do is water.
After 2.5 months of heavy lifting, today’s first small reward was three perfect delectable organically grown strawberries.
It was all SO worth it 😉