It's not done, but it's more done than it was a couple of weeks ago. For days on end I woke up, went to the garden, dug dirt, then went home. Occasionally I bathed.
The community garden I'm a part of has a very special place in my heart because I started gardening there 2 weeks after my spouse of 11 years walked out the door, never to return, (except to come back for all his work boots). Weird. He should have known they weren't at home since I sent him a live video of me winging them out of the back of my trunk into the local dump.
I had planned on planting a bunch of tomatoes in my sister's large backyard that year but we realized she wasn't going to have room for the 20 or so plants I had. Not only was I going to be boyfriendless in 2013, I was going to be something even more devastating. I was going to be tomatoless. That would never do.
So a few days after the fella left, when I still couldn't see straight, when each passing day seemed to contain way more seconds, minutes and hours than possible, I walked through the gate of my local community garden. I was recognized (as the very famous medium sized blogger that I am) right away by a woman at the garden who has come to be my friend. One of the many friends I've made over my years there. She helped me find a place for my tomatoes, allowed me into their community and I've been entertaining them with the insanity that is me ever since.
That garden is what got me through the breakup relatively unscathed. It gave me something to do, something to focus on and as anyone who loves gardening knows, it gave me a few hours of dirt meditation every day. Hours where I didn't think of what I was going to do, how I was going to pay my mortgage or if I'd ever have someone to make memories with again.
So thank you garden. I love and appreciate you. But this year you were a real f*cker.
I had to somehow make 2 unlevel side by side plots work and I had to do it in the span of a couple of weeks. Those weeks have come and gone and it still isn't done but at least I'm at the point that I can start planting.
I had originally configured a completely elaborate gardening plan with focal points, arches and underground french watering channels. Then I snapped out of it, scrapped that plan and realized I'm super and I'm a human but I'm not superhuman. I simplified everything, made a basic, old fashioned layout and started digging.
Here's a breakdown of past few years at my community garden. The first year I rented half of a plot from someone so I could just plant my paste tomatoes for making tomato sauce at the end of the year. I managed to mash in a couple of squash plants as well. So I was gardening in a 20 X 10 foot area and was perfectly happy with it.
The next year an entire plot became available in the garden so I moved and set up shop in a different plot. The year after that another plot in a location I liked better came up and I moved to THAT plot and built my raised bed garden in it. The following year the original plot I was in with my tomatoes came up and I got that plot in addition to my raised bed plot. At this point I've therefore graduated from a 10' x 20' plot, to two 20' x 40' plots. But they weren't next to each other. Which lands us in January of this year when I found out the plot next to my raised bed plot was coming available. Are you getting confused? That's O.K. We're almost at the end of my saga.
Since January I've slowly been moving plants, drawing up plans, starting vegetables and digging dirt.
This is how my new plot (which sits to the left of my old plot) looked when I started. It may look like a mess but it's actually a great plot with great soil. The guy who had it before me created raised rows that he amended with compost and manure, plus he planted green crops for green manure in between all the rows. It just about killed me to have to level it out, but level it out I did.
THIS is my raised bed garden which I ended up disassembling completely to make my new plan work. No more wood on the raised beds for me. Not for this year anyway. I'm using all the wood from my raised beds to create a perimeter around my new double garden. I'm still doing raised beds, they just won't have raised sides. It's too much money and too much work for this year.
The process of combining these two unlevel plots had me pondering two directions. Either leave the left garden as it was, slightly raised and terrace it down to my lower plot. Or level them both out. I figured I'd just start digging and see where the soil took me.
The first thing I had to do no matter what was level out the new plot. That involved lugging a few wheelbarrows of dirt to some low points on the land and then using this old fashioned, tried and true method: dragging a wood pallet behind me like a donkey.
.
If you have a lot of land to level there is NO better way than dragging a pallet. Unweighted it simply levels the ground, if you put a couple of buckets of rocks on it, you can actually drag huge amounts of soil to different spots in the garden.
I did this for 2 solid days.
The end result. The end result was also a stomach bulging with newly formed muscles that'll turn back into non muscles in about a week. I was excited, thrilled, filled with the overbrimming sense of accomplishment one normally only gets after cleaning out the fridge crisper.
Then I looked to my right.
Yup.
For the next few days I hung out with my friends the snakes while I transferred soil from the left half of my garden to the right. It was at this point that I realized making both plots level was going to be the easier of my two options. I just had to dig down on the left side garden to make my beds and transfer all of that soil to the right side of my garden to build it up. Easy.
It was around this point, on day 6, that I cried. Just a little. Then I remembered my epic stomach muscles that I'd be the proud owner of for the next week or two and I stopped crying long enough to take a picture of them and send them to my niece. Then I noticed that after burning 37,000 calories a day and buliding washboard stomach muscles I still had my blobs of back fat. And I started crying again.
It was a very emotional time.
That's me. That's my shovel. That's the prettiest I looked the entire time. Proof of that coming up.
By this point in the whole situation I'd lost count of how many days I'd been doing this, why I was doing it and if it was normal to repeatedly punch yourself in the head at night from sleep shovelling. A friend at the garden saw I was perhaps a bit overwhelmed and dug at least 4 of those trenches for me. Had he not, instead of writing this blog post, I would most definitely have just buried myself in one of my trenches and called it a good life while sadly humming Amazing Grace to myself as a raccoon ate my face.
There are people up at my garden who can be there the whole day and still look like they'd be able to go out for dinner straight from the garden. With the Queen. I became this mess after 4.5 seconds in my plot. I gardened from morning until night.
Are you bored yet? Because I was by the point. I was also delirious and as I would later discover, hypoglycaemic. My friend Serena spotted it and gave me juice. And part of a chicken carcass. And some salad, which I ate off of the lid of the salad container, because I forgot about how Survivor taught me you can fold a leaf and use it as a spoon.
I love how pretty I am. I'm so very proud to be so pretty.
Another day, another moment to stop and smell the onions. Here we go again. Someone pass the juice. Along with the snakes, voles, raccoons, and general crawly things that live in the garden I made friends with something astonishing. Something I've never seen before and didn't even know existed.
I made friends with The Green Hornet.
Except it isn't a hornet, it's a bee and it's called a Sweat Bee and it lives in the ground, not in a regular bee hive. But it is a genuine bee and it is LIME green. That photo is straight out of my iPhone camera. No enhancing, no increasing the colour, no nothing. THAT is how the bee looks.
Seeing that little bee gave me all the energy I needed to plant the very first thing in my garden. I haven't finished building the garden but I had to get my strawberries transplanted from my old plot to my new one. A few more hours of digging later and they were moved to their new home.
Like I said, the garden isn't done but it's more done that it was. And that's all someone who ever wants to accomplish anything can ask for.
As long as you're closer to your goal today than you were yesterday you can rest easy in knowing that you'll eventually get there.
(As long as you don't punch yourself unconscious in your sleep and remember to drink lots of juice.)
Have a good weekend!
Nancy Blue Moon
I feel proud knowing that you share with others..you are a good lady...
DanielaMX
Hi, Karen. I've been a "stalker" on this site since before the fella left. Remember, quite clearly, I cried with that post.
I work and live in a tiny apartment, but reading your blog has encouraged me to start small projects. Like compost in a planter. Very successfully, I might add.
Finally this August I will be having a garden. Living in a climate so different from yours I know your experiences will be just guidelines, but they will be great in accelerating the learning process.
Thanks for sharing yourself.
Karen
This is the kind of comment I most love to get DanielaMX. I'm so happy when people let me know that I've helped or encouraged them to do/make/or create something. Where is it you live? Far, far away? :) ~ karen!
DanielaMX
:) In another galaxy, by climate terms.
Northeastern Mexico, exactly. Thanks for all you do.
elizabeth wiik rubenstein
I love reading about all your projects....I don't do any of that anymore ( projects ) and I couldn't be happier ! I can totally relax, read, travel, knit, not do anything ..whatever I want.
This is what I am doing in my yard this year...no vegetable garden, of course...I am letting ANYTHING that blooms, be it a pretty weed or something I'm not sure of, I let it grow ! I have strange little flowers all over my yard...it looks awesome. My grandson already knows not to run over anything that looks at all like a flower with the lawn mover. Not even dandelions...they are the bees first nourishment each spring. He probably thinks grandma is a little crazy, but he stays clear of the weed/flowers !
Thank you for your wonderful blog...makes me relax even more...you're doing all the work ! :-)
Cindy
Looking at all that work you did by your lonesome, makes me realize what a wimpy girl I am! I have a couple raised beds I made and planted and felt done in! You look like skin and bones but must be all muscle! Like an ant that carries like a thousand times its weight. That doesn't look like a garden plot, it looks like a whole farm! Now I gotta go out and make at least one new raised bed today thanks to you, as I was gonna lay around and eat chips. :))
Cheryl
I feel your pain!
This year, after letting her garden go fallow for 6 years, I decided to tackle my mother-in-law's plot.
Yesterday's task was finally getting seeds in the ground. Today I woke and crawled out of bed like a little old lady with arthritis.
But it will be worth it in the end, right?!
Helen-Mary
OMG you've done a lot of work! I am well acquainted with the "what-the-hell-was-I-thinking" tears-thing, so you made me laugh out loud. Thanks.
Jody
I'm exhausted for you. I think I'll go have a nap. With all this food you are growing are you opening a stall at the local farmers market? What has happened to your front garden at home? Still veggie or cottage garden?
Joy
Karen, I am simply in awe. I'm exhausted just reading this post. You rock!
Lin N
Awesome job, very cool bee (never heard of a sweat bee.....haha auto correct tried to change it to 'swear bee', which was probably you before the wee cry and maybe some instances later. 😁) and them thar are awfully healthy looking strawberry plants! You garden on grrrl! 👍
Carolyn
This is off-subject, but are you advertising a purple mattress? If not, it's your twin.
Kathy
Oh you! God, I'm still laughing. From this day forward, when I'm at "that's enough of this shit" (and then turn around in a bit and get back into it) I will now call it a good life and sadly sing amazing grace. That will have class unlike the vile words I can string together with a disheartened well shit to sum it up. Not bored one moment, love seeing someone do something I"ve never done. Chickens, moving earth, or pizza oven it's all good.
Linn Caine
"As long as you’re closer to your goal today than you were yesterday you can rest easy in knowing that you’ll eventually get there."
No truer words were ever spoken. Thanks for the inspiration.
Linn Caine
Ha! Ha!
It seems as though I should of read the posts before my own. A few of us found comfort in your words.
keep it up!
Kim C
I can almost imagine you being back in the 1850s and absolutely kicking butt! Of course there would be no internet to widely share your mighty talents with the likes of my, too often, lazy self. You are one terrific motivator. Thanks for keeping it real...pretty gardening clothes, glazed look in your eyes, spoonless lunches and all!!
Kelly ~ It took me 10 years to lose 10 pounds
Great pictures that bring your story to life, as always! Thanks Karen.
Gayle M
My hubby and I are doing this same exact thing to our garden area, mostly to try to get rid of the quack grass infestation that strangles anything I planted. UPS guy just dropped off 12 4x4 cedar garden bed kits, too... our yard has what I thought was a slight slope...til we started trying to level it. Add retaining wall and steps to what I thought was going to be a simple project. YOURS IS AMAZING--those abs! Oh, and the garden looks great, too. LOL
Leisa
Geez Louise that's a lot for one tiny human to do. On one of my more epic gardening days, I thought I was having a heart attack...gotta remember to eat and hydrate. Way to go!
Alena
It reminds of the year when I decided to completely redo my front yard. I started end of May and I barely finished in late October just before we started to get the first frosty nights.
(I work full time and sometimes I had to wait for the weather to cool off a bit before I could go out and start working. I don't do hot weather.
Never knew you about the trick with the palette - thanks! That's very useful.
I am no longer in shape to do so much work (my body decided to age very prematurely). Anyway, even if I could work I would be outta there the second I spotted the snake.
I don't do snakes either.
Oh, sorry, I think I forgot to say WOW.
Eileen
Came in from weeding to cool off a bit, found this post...I am in equal parts inspired by what you do and depressed at how little happens at my end. Not that I don't have the aspiration. I just keep forgetting to take the "follow-through and finish" pills...'cause I'm sure that's what it takes. Right?
Amie
Your amazing washboard abs, yet still lingering back fat, are entirely worth it! That is a lot accomplished by one person! GO KAREN GO!! Think about the squats you will do agin you start planting ;)
Karen
Back at it today! ;) ~ karen!
Judith
Way to go, woman! You earned all those muscles fair and square. Cute snake, very cute bee. And I agree 100% that our gardens are both life/sanity savers and real f*ckers.
Karen
Yep, lol. ~ karen!