Weekend of Zen
This weekend, I took a much-needed break from blogging, from the Internets, and from the news (as I mentioned below).
Instead, I actually had a life.
Saturday morning, I had to drive up to Hellertown to play a benefit for Jack Sanbower, a bluegrass musician fighting esophageal cancer, while Christina spent the morning working on her taxes and digging up the garden. When I arrived back home in the afternoon, I got right to work myself. I made a trip to Home Depot for some perlite, and found a neat little tool called a Garden Hound, which helps you till the soil without breaking your back.
Last year, we didn’t do raised beds, and mixed the compost right into the soil. The aftereffects (discovered this weekend) have been a surprising, and much-welcome, population of earthworms: it’s a city of wrigglers down there! I found one worm that was literally half a foot long. Christina found one the girth of her pinky. The blind, brainless, squirmy little dirt-eaters were everywhere, suggesting that the garden is going to do REALLY well this year.
Between Saturday and Sunday, we managed to fill up the remaining two beds and to plant the tomatoes and basil. Hopefully by tomorrow, we’ll have the rosemary, the turnips, and the beets in the ground, with the hops to come on Wednesday. We’re also digging up the area around the beans, where the soil will have to be improved with more compost additions, and thoroughly mulched (with compost layered right on top of the planting medium, per Mike McGrath’s instructions).
It really is like Zen to work in the garden. The weather was a bit cool yesterday, but after 15 minutes of tilling and digging, my flannel shirt had come off and I was sweating. It really feels good to get your hands and fingernails all dig up the soil, pull weeds from the ground, and rip overgrown honeysuckle from the fence and pile the waste into garbage bags. The sense of accomplishment is palpable, and slowly but surely the back yard is beginning to fill up with crops and flowers.
Saturday evening, we watched “Superbad”, which was about the funniest movie I’ve seen in a LONG time. I can’t go into all the funny lines and scenarios, so you’ll have to rent it yourself.
One Response to “Weekend of Zen”
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April 14th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Luckyyyy. It snowed all day Saturday and was still snowing on Sunday morning when I got up. What a funky spring. Yes, Superbad is a great movie. One of our favorites. Sounds like the sunshine and gardening was just the medicine you needed.