This Morning

It's August.   All the rain we've had has made the local flora explode even more than usual this year.   The fields are covered with Queen Anne's Lace, and rudbekias.   The ditches are full of figwort and false foxglove and campanulas and helenium.   It's spectacular.



Lily woke up to the fog this morning and grabbed the camera.   She snapped this perfect view of the exuberance of an August morning.

Hope your day is a fabulous one. 

New Garden Beds......again.

Just when I think I've finally got enough space in the veg garden, I go and decide that we're never going to be able to find sweet potato starts this year and I plant carrots and basil where the sweet potatoes would have gone.

And then a good friend calls to say that she found some sweet potato starts and hurry over there before they're gone.  

So we had to go get some because last year we didn't get any sweet potatoes and it would have been two whole years in a row without our own sweet potatoes and that wold have been bad.

The girls don't agree.

Whatever. 

So I looked at Eric and said, 'I think we need another bed.' and he didn't even flinch.   He said, 'Let's do it.' 

And I wanted to cry because I'm a little tired of digging and hauling gravel this year already.

Enough already!

So we called Quincy to get more gravel and sand because we had finished the last loads.  

Just FYI, there are over 7 tons of gravel and sand each when he delivers.   That means that we have moved 7 tons of gravel by hand since January.  And 7 tons of sand since last summer.  

By.  Hand. 

As in, one shovel full at a time.

I should be totally buff.

Anyway.  

The story is the same.    This is what it looked like before we started.   I didn't get a Before pic, because I was too busy digging already and I wanted to get it over with. 

First we have to decide where we want it, then we have to dig the grass out.   See all that grass to the front and left of the potato towers?     It had to go. 

I did it all in one 5 hour shift.  

Tip:  Take motrin before you start.   It helps.  

After I dug the grass out, I have to carve the clay down so it's smooth and the water drains right.

The grass in the center rectangle got covered by the sweet potato bed, some more geotextile and 12 inches of sand and chicken dirt.   I didn't bother digging it out. 

After we line the paths with geotextile to keep the weeds down, then we load the paths full of gravel.   Eric did the vast majority of gravel hauling.     Vast majority.  

And he loaded the bed full of sand and chicken dirt.

Then I planted the sweet potatoes.

Then we surrounded the whole blasted garden with deer fence to keep things out.  It works pretty darn well.  Too bad deer fence won't keep the weeds out.  

That pool ladder in the middle of the garden is an extra we had around so I put it to use to hold the sprinkler.    Works like a charm - easy to drag around and keeps the sprinkler high.  

The end.  

The Limestone Bench

Last week we needed to move a heavy limestone bench to a part of our property that hasn't seen a truck for a few years. 

As you can see, we got the truck there anyway.




It was the kind of thing my dad would have loved.   He got a kick out of pushing his vehicles and equipment past their reasonable limits. 

Legend has it that once he snowplowed most of a large parking lot in his little jeep with only two gears - 2nd and reverse.  Or maybe it was just reverse.   [This is how legends happen.   Dads do crazy things and over time their kids forget how things really happened but we keep telling the story as if we actually remember what happened in all its glorious detail.   Folklore in action.]

And then there was the time that we took the van to Willow Slough in northwestern Indiana and Dad drove through what I am sure was miles of flooded road.   In the van.   With water up to the floorboards [but not high enough to get inside the van.   I think.]   I was sure we'd float away any minute.  

My sisters have even better stories to tell, I'm sure.  

Anyway.  

Last week we channeled Dad and drove the big truck down this very narrow path through the brambles and roses and past some baby dogwoods that I've been wanting to get to be big dogwoods....

...and down this path under some very low hanging branches, which got caught in the ladders on the top of the truck....

...so that we could put this bench in a private corner of the woods next to the creek. 

The truck just barely fit, but fit it did.  

The bench looks nice here.   And Dad would have laughed at me for being worried about the truck. 

He'd have grinned at me and said, 'What were you worried about?   Doncha trust me?'


And he'd have teased me for the rest of the day. 

And then maybe we'd have sat on the bench for about two minutes before he'd have said, 'Let's go.  We have work to do.'  

But maybe he'd have gotten up early the next morning to come sit here and watch the squirrels and deer in the early morning mist.