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About Gardening:
I am a gardener when I have time. I do enjoy helping things to
grow. Mrs. Gaffer is an even better gardener. I defer to her most
of the time. I like to help out with the important work, like
harvesting and eating the produce. We really like to do this together.
To me, there is nothing more romantic than sharing the first string
bean or pickle. We don't even need moonlight. We just sit on a
garden bench in the broad daylight and share. I suspect our neighbors
look away.
Many of our friends are also gardeners. I suppose it's something a bit like birds of a feather. Most of us have nice gardens and we produce nice flowers and vegetables. So far as I know, none of us produces perfect garden stuff. Our tomatoes have cracks and are irregular in shape. Our corn never has 16 evenly filled rows of kernels. Even our straight eight cucumbers are not straight. Sigh!
I have come to believe that there are only a handful of people in the entire world who can grow the stuff of seed catalogs. These are the horticultural experts and they are all employed by seed companies. They don't grow the stuff for fun. They are dead serious and they use the latest scientific methods along with trick cameras. Their mission is to mislead us. They want us to see those catalogs and believe we can grow stuff like that. We know it's not true, but we keep on dreaming.
Every year, a bit after Christmas, those catalogs begin to come in. That is the time of dreaming and dumbness. We can look out at a field under two feet of snow and visualize a flourishing garden. We look at the field, we look at the catalogs, and we make out orders. It's not just one or two orders, but a dozen or more that we send off. Each year, we find we have ordered enough seed to plant a whole produce farm. That's an improvement. We used to order enough to plant a township.
Our garden is about the size of a decent city lot. That's about 60 feet by 200 feet. Of course we have rototillers. That's right, we have two; a his and a hers. Hers is a small, front tine, tiller. Mine is a larger, rear tine, tiller. Sometimes we both get out there together. We have a rototiller rodeo. It's not quite a contest, but neither of us is about to be out tilled. Actually, we are getting too old to argue and fight. This is about as close as we can get.
Tilling is about the first thing we can do in the spring when we are chafing at the bit to get outside. We usually start too soon. And, for sure, one of us will get a tiller bogged down in the mud. Then it's a matter of figuring out how to get it out. Neither one of us is strong enough to rescue the thing. Our mud is a particularly viscous stuff. In the spring, it's more like glue than earth. Once it grabs a tiller, it hates to let go.
The last time Mrs. Gaffer lost her tiller, I had to use my pickup truck and a long chain to get her to dry land. Even with the chain, I came near losing my truck. I'm glad I didn't. I just hate it when that guy with the tow truck shows up and grins at me. He's always so smug about it. "Did it again, eh Willie?" I'm not normally spiteful, but I wouldn't mind if he got stuck in my mud. I wouldn't laugh. I'd just look at him with a grin and say, "Want me to call a wrecker for you, Bobby?"
After tilling, Mrs. Gaffer and I begin to lay out the garden. We use precision instruments for this. We use, my legs and feet. For small stuff we put the rows one stride apart. This works for beans, peppers, and radishes, etcetera. One stride is room enough to get a tiller through. Tomatoes are two strides and pickles take a lot of space at three strides. Corn is special. I'm sorry, but I have to use a colorful word here. Corn pollinates via the wind and must be planted close. We plant blocks of four rows, with the rows 1 foot (my foot) apart. We put the blocks 1 stride apart.
Once the garden is laid out, my work is done until harvest time, except for an occasional run with a tiller. There are many things which we call weeds simply because they made the mistake of sprouting in our garden. In the field, they would be wild flowers. Though, I love them in the field, I till them in the garden.
Other than tilling, I just sit on the deck with a Heineken and an A. Fuente cigar. My task is to watch the garden grow and warn Mrs. Gaffer if it's not growing correctly. I'm not sure she appreciates the warnings, but I bear up under her hard looks. I just have to be patient. I also have to watch for the first of each item to be ready for harvest.
This first item is always an occasion for celebration. That's when we do the garden bench thing. Like I said, we are a bit to old for anything more strenuous. We just enjoy what we can. Fresh garden produce is in that category. It keeps us moving, in a manner of speaking.
Happy Gardening!
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