How to Start Your Garden

Yesterday, April 17th, was Joe's 39th birthday. I just can't begin this post without saying that he is a great man. He is a kind person, one you would want to have around as a friend because he'll give you the shirt off of his back without you ever having to ask. He may be picky about food and the preparation of it, but you'll never regret eating at his table. He is genuinely interested in people and he is my favorite friend!

We did all of our gardening on his birthday AFTER taking my daughters to an indoor yard sale so that they could sell their homemade jewelry. I didn't expect them to do well, honestly, but Chloe made $50 (more than covering the cost of her materials and she still has tons of materials left, so her profit margin will be quite high) and Caylea made $40 but spent a lot of it. That's the problem with an indoor yard sale. You're there, you see something you like, you spend the $5 you just made. I got some good laughs out my soon-to-be 14 yr old. She came home a happy girl and Chloe was so excited about her sales! They are both planning on doing it again in May. Maybe I should start an online business for them, but I have no idea how.

Back to the Gardening...how did I get off topic??? Right. I'm Tori. I'm easily distracted. Okay. First, you pick up all of your children's toys from the yard and you have to be careful because the sneaky little things hide them where you'd least suspect it and you don't want to hit a toy with a lawnmower! Then you mow while singing. Singing makes it fun and no one can hear you, so it's very calming. You contemplate weed-eating but since your experience with that is basically nil, you decide to wait until your Dad gets here in May to teach you how to operate that machine. That's brilliant, I think. I hope he still likes me after reading this. :)

Next, you pick up all of the limbs from the 'incident' with the neighbors. Apparently our farmer neighbor wasn't happy that the beautiful cedar trees in our back yard were hanging over his fence into his pasture. I can understand that. He got permission from our landlords 1 year ago to trim those trees. He did trim them while we were in the States. Coincidence? Hmmmm....To put it in the best terms, and according to my colorful landlord, he "Got drunk with a chainsaw, I think." The bushes were trimmed from 5 feet down to 2. The beautiful 20 foot tall cedar trees were cut in half or completely down. The 30 ft tall pine trees were mutilated as well. They picked up the vast majority of the limbs, but they also left a ton on top of the trees. I guess they only picked up the ones that actually hit the ground. They also left a ton of bush debris behind the bushes. I ended up picking up what equates to 4 large trash cans full of limbs. Cedar limbs are no fun, by the way. The sap is everywhere, the smell is everywhere, and after a little while you get really tired of getting poked.

The next step was to climb the apple tree. I am desperately trying to save its life. Last year it did not fruit well. As soon as the apples actually started blooming, they started rotting. We weren't able to eat a single one. I did some research and found that #1 aphids had been 'milked' onto the tree, which acts kind of like a fungus and is no good and #2 I hadn't pruned it enough the year before so it was overloaded and tired. I pruned it significantly last winter and have been 'nursing' it ever since. I spent some time up in its branches, singing again because by that point I didn't care if anyone heard me. I cleaned up the mess. It looks terrible. The only thing worse than the hair cut I got in the states (which I've been fixing myself over the last 2 months) is the apple tree. It's pitiful. Pictures to come later...

As I was doing all of this, Chloe was cleaning the patio furniture and Josh was helping me haul limbs. Caylea was cleaning the inside of the house for me. She got a pretty good sunburn in Colorado and I let her do inside work to protect her face. Josh got burned too, but he wanted (and, as a mini-man needed) to be outside, so he got sunscreen and a hat.

When we were all done with our various chores, we looked at the garden area. A yard, to me, is like a kitchen. You have to clean it before you can cook in it. So, the yard was clean and now it was time to cook! We got out our shovels and I taught Josh how to dig up old plants with a shovel, by the root. We threw them out. The kids and their friends had been making mud pies with the garden dirt, which was fine until I saw that the holes were everywhere and that I was going to have to resurface the garden area by hand. I got the big, heavy rake-looking thing and used it as a hand tiller. After 30 minutes of back-breaking work, the garden area looked phenomenal! I threatened the children with death (while smiling) if I found any more holes and gave them the job of coming out every day to cultivate the dirt...get any rocks, sticks, etc out so that we could plant our veggies next weekend. Hopefully Germany will be done with the early morning frosts by then. If not, we'll plant in 2 weeks. There is no rush. German summers are beautiful and super great for growing veggies quickly, but if you plant too quickly, German winters sneak up after 3 beautiful 70 degree days and shoot down plants with a 40 degree day. No fun.

So, step one is done. The yard looks beautiful. I enjoyed mowing again after a 5+ month break. The house is clean, Caylea's birthday party is today, and with all of the kids coming over, it'll be dirty again by 2. :) I'm practicing hospitality without Joe. It's HIS gift and I've just been dragged along for the ride. I like having people over, but he's better at it. He makes grilled chicken or fish. I make pasta salad. He gets good wine that is color-coded to match the food he cooks, and I make sure there is plenty of sweet tea. He runs here and there directing the preparation and cooking of the food, doing much of it himself because he likes the presentation part. I run here and there playing with kids and end up getting distracted and burning something. I put a pot of water on to boil before I started this post. It's been a while. I think I better go see if it's all evaporated by now....