Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Alexa announced we’d hit a glorious 83°F today—basically Mother Nature’s way of saying, “Get outside and plant, you lazy humans.”So our first mission was to unload the Grey Ghost (which sounds like a haunted battleship, but is actually just our vehicle full of plant children). Then we carefully transferred the babies to the garden and parked each one under its future cage—like assigning tiny green inmates to their own little tomato jail cells.
OK, everybody is ready! Everyone is in position, and off we go!
You could almost hear them yelling, “Plant me first!!”
We set up a production line and went to work!
-
- Mary digs the hole using the power rotary drill.
- Mary put in some fertilizer.
- Paul takes the name tags and ties them to the cages
- Paul plants the tomato babies while Mary plants the peppers
- Paul installs straw mulch underneath the plants
- Stand back and admire our work!
Placing straw mulch is a tedious job—especially when you must bend over like you’re trying to apologize to the soil. So we fixed that problem!
Enter the porta-bench: my new favorite piece of gardening equipment and, honestly, my back saver.
Now I grab a straw from the back of the garden, haul a big bunch over to the planting area, park myself on the bench like royalty, and stuff mulch around the base of the plants—no back-breaking, no groaning sound effects, and only minimal complaining.
One handful at a time!
Sometimes I need to dig the hole a little bigger or deeper, depending on the plant selected. Notice that Mary keeps herself well hydrated (although I’d rather have wine, which could result in the loss of plant life).
Dig baby, dig.
Mary was minding her own business when she suddenly screamed, “HELP!”
Turns out her preferred mode of transportation—yes, the broom—had a catastrophic malfunction.
The engine compartment backfired like it was auditioning for an action movie, and the bristles launched out in every direction, spraying the ground like a Chia Pet explosion.
Fortunately, Mary was only a few feet off the ground, so it was less “tragic aerial disaster” and more “unexpected low-altitude parking mishap.”
She checked herself, and all was OK, her broom, however, needs some serious repair.
We must get this repaired by Halloween. Until then, I permitted her to use my shop-vacuum!
We worked from 8:00 am until almost 1:30 pm and completed two beds.
We watered everything down, making sure the roots were covered with soil!
Then, at 1:45 pm, we jumped in The Grey Ghost and headed to Lakewood and the H&H Nursery, where $175 worth of new veggies (and some flowers) awaited us.
We wandered around checking out the veggies, roses, and ground cover.
Back home, we carried four flats of new babies to the garden and placed them in their new spots; tomorrow they will get planted, if the creek(s) don’t rise and the good Lord’s willing.
It’s 4:00 pm, and time to hit the hot tub.
Sunset was rolling in, so we donned our “vintage-wrinkled” swimsuits and slipped into the glorious 96-degree H2O. Oh my—every muscle had an opinion, and then immediately changed it to ahhh. Naturally, we toasted the day’s success with a tiny glass of vino.
