Tilling the Land

I love to till the land. Now, when I say I love to "till the land", what I really mean is I love the idea of tilling the land (probably a hangover from my Little House on the Prairie days). A few weeks ago my friend Karen and I hatched a plan to turn her backyard into our very own vegetable garden. I was envisioning us kneeling in the dirt weeding, patting the head of our adorable garden gnome, throwing our heads back with laughter as we picked our bountiful harvest, and finally turning our efforts into delicious dishes which we would serve with obvious pride and delight to our admiring friends.

It turns out that while I was envisioning this dream world of gardening paradise, Karen was planning it out and she expected me to do actual work, which included dirt under my fingernails, sweat on my brow, and finally - the greatest insult - she expected me to do all of this completely gnome-less. This weekend when we were at Lowe's picking up our vegetables, Aaron ponder the purchase of a plastic owl, but an actual gnome has yet to materialize (unconscionable!). What follows is a picture journal of our journey to garden-dom (you will notice the decided lack of gnomes).

Karen's dad breaking ground. I didn't get there early enough to help with this part which was highly disappointing to me because I love to till. Still, lookin' good Mr. B!
















Karen and her family are planners; left to my own devices I would have just aimed the rotor-tiller and gone to town. Karen's mom is pictured here surveying their good orderly work.















Finally! Our beautiful garden plot! We emptied forty bags of topsoil and mushroom compost into this little garden, but at the end of the day we could stand back and view our labors with pride.












The above pictures are from the first weekend alone. This last weekend found me, Aaron, and Joanna piling into my car for the trip into Illinois (the home of the venerable Karen). When we go to her house for the day we usually call out "not it" and scurry to someone else's car. This weekend was my weekend to drive however, and I didn't really mind at all. It was the perfect excuse to unleash Mark Driscoll onto a completely captive audience. At the end of the day Joanna was begging for more of his sermons and I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself.

This last weekend was a bit less sunnier than the previous one, although this weekend we didn't have to face THE IVY, that leafy-green bane of my existence. Last weekend I almost lost my life yanking out a stubborn bit of it. Funny story: Karen's dad was still measuring the garden and with nothing to do but watch (boring) Karen decided to put us to work de-ivying her back fence. We set to work and I soon decided it wasn't for me. I began to half-heartedly pull at the ivy-covered fence and talk to my neighbors.

Joanna didn't engage me as she clipped away at the ivy with her shears, Aaron was breaking up a large tree-branch and couldn't be bothered, and Karen was going back and forth from the garden plot to the fence. I was the only one talking, or singing, as the mood struck me, but pretty soon I became intent on pulling out this extremely stubborn ivy root. I yanked and yanked and yanked and finally it came loose, sending me sprawling onto my back, almost head-over-heels into the neighbor's lowered concrete driveway. I jumped up and pointed out to Aaron that I had almost been killed. I think he rolled his eyes at me. I looked around for additional sympathy, but there was none to be had. So much for friends...

Anyway, this weekend went a lot smoother. No near death experiences. Here are the pictures from this weekend for your viewing pleasure.

Poor Aaron spent a decidedly long time planting the onions after Joanna and I plopped the lettuce, zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes in the ground and blithely went off to other projects.















The other project Joanna and I tackled was hosta-planting (whatever those are)! Karen was like "act like you're digging a hole" and I'm like "I am digging a hole!" all nine of them. Joanna is in the background, serenely looking on. Her job was compost-mixer. Lucky...




















These are all the pictures I have at present (until I can steal more from Karen's Flickr account). The garden is my summer project and it has been a tremendous amount of fun. After a day of gardening we hole up in Karen's cozy living room and talk about theology, relationships, patriotism, C.S. Lewis, and Canadian citizenship while drinking tea and eating brownies. Sometimes Joanna serenades us with piano sonatas (or tries to drowned out the theology talk, no one really knows) and sometimes we pile back into the car and go to Annie's for custard. We are a happy little lot. The only thing that could possibly make this anymore enjoyable would be the addition of a garden gnome.

We'll see what next weekend holds...