Sometimes the truth hurts...

It must be work that we like since all of us here do it (and read about it and chat with strangers on the internet about it...)

I love it! I love the broken nails, rough hands and dirt everywhere. I think this Doug person knows what he is talking about.

I also think that there are those who enjoy paying others to do their gardening work and then they can go out with gloves on and clip some blooms to bring inside. Nothing wrong with that but not my style of gardening.

I sat outside next to my veggie sprouts and some dogs. I just took in the sun and admired everything: The dam* snow, the dirt, the way some bulbs have been plucked out by dogs and birds, the bits of glass dropped by crows, the species tulips sticking out by an inch (hoorah!), the clippings of old rose stems that I just threw on the ground and all that darn Lucy hair piled up in crevices between stones. Oh, and the pine needles, so many!

I drank my tea and put my fingers in the soil and it felt awesome. I did not wash my hands when I came in so eventually I'll have to clean the keyboard.

I pushed in some tiniest of bulbs and sprinkled soil on them. I put a few rocks around them to help keep them in place. I didn't even get up, just sat right there with my tea and seedlings and Gordy. Well, Gordy and Lucy started barking at the neighbor's dogs so inside they went.

I feel wonderful and am ready to start shoveling and moving things around.

I don't see it as work. How can it be work when immediately upon sticking even one finger in soil, the stress is sucked out of your body through that finger?

Ree-dickeliss.

;o)

Dan

Fun reading, and, Dan, don't you mean......

Ridiculoso!

;-)
Skybird

P.S. Greenbean, no "strangers" around here!

Yep, the shovel is my friend : )

I know lasagna beds are all the rage these days, but I don't have the leaves, newspaper, etc, to go that route, and I actually enjoy the sense of satisfaction that comes with the tired, achy feeling after a good day's digging.

Bonnie

Well I think it's hard work indeed, though thoroughly satisfying. But I am, let's face it, getting older and I ache and slow down much faster than I used to. Still satisfying, but more painful.

I'll try not to sound like the crazy here...

The BH and I did an event at a nearby elementary school yesterday where her program donated 6 trees to the school for their 'Natural World' day. Her and I oversaw the kids planting the trees. The K-4th graders were great: holding worms, jumping up and down raising their hands to answer questions, asking when they could go, and lining up in nice straight lines to take their turn. The fifth graders were already "cool" and some didn't want to do the work, until their parents started doing it and telling them how special it was that they were planting their own tree and they could come back as adults and see the tree they planted. Even the one girl who insisted on doing nothing took two extra turns digging.

It's an attitude and a point of view. And we teach it to our children.

Dan

Well said, Dan. I watched an episode of Garden Smart recently that featured the gardens of two older women in Vail. One of the women was 84 and still at it. What workers they are! And what beautiful yards they created despite such a short season and challenging terrain. They live by "Leave it better than you found it." I can't imagine not being able to dig in the dirt.
Barb

Great story, Dan.

I've never forgotten my time with The Tree People when I was in, I dunno, third grade. I wonder if that group is still around? I think they had something to do with my volunteering with FuF in San Francisco a ways back. Gotta get trees in the ground, gotta take care of them later, too.

I also think, as you said, that we do teach it to the children. I wonder if I'd be such a dirt/plant/bug nut if it wasn't for my grandpa and his amazing gardening and landscaping skills.

Bonnie, if it wasn't for all the dirt shoveling and snow shoveling I do, I'm not sure my arms would have any strength to them! Tired, achy feelings are awesome!

I'm all wound up now! Can't wait to play outside some more tomorrow! Although, it is maybe going to rain or snow. That won't stop me!

J.
ready to dig

Has this man never heard of a tiller, or a small tractor? Shovels are for amateurs! hehe. And he calls it "work," heck digging around the garden is FUN for an IT geek like me! Who rarely sees the light of day at my "real job." Now THAT is work! Thank goodness they let me out from under the stairs at lunchtime! LOL
(seriously though, my office IS under a stair-well, with no windows - blech)

I can't wait to get outside and digging the dirt by the time the weekend rolls around - sooner if possible.

I stand corrected... I agree Skybird, no "strangers" here :-)

Tillers . . . tractors . . ! I thought the shovel was controversy enuf!

Personally, just looking at a shovel causes pain. I'm a spading fork man, myself. Maybe I'd be a broad fork man but I'm probably too unbalanced.

I've got use for the shovels. One location is the perennial battlesite with the spruce. There's no choice. I have to get those roots out of the bed and if I don't cut them off there -- they'd be in the next bed over. . . and then the next, and the next . . .

Steve

Andy and Tree People are still around, J, see him about annually, their big thing now is reusing all the water falling on the parcel, pretty impressive. I spoke in Ventura last Oct and he brought the house down & had some ladies reach for the hankie.

Know some good folks at FuF as well, one gone now to other things, they are much larger than you remember.

:o)

Now surely there is some puttering I can do to protest these people and their wicked laziness!

Dan

I'm thinking that in the near future we'll have gardening robots and we'll just sit back in the shade enjoying a cool drink ;-)

If that doesn't work out I suppose there's always the shovels, pitchfork and hoe.

I have noticed though that perennials are much less work than annuals. Raspberries, strawberries, apples, sage, oregano and asparagus are very little work once established.

I've rounded the bend and seen the light at the end of the tunnel on redoing my garden into raised beds. 7 of them, 4 foot wide by 40 foot long by 15-18 inches higher, which means 7 inches out of the pathways, which is saying that I remove all what passes for top soil out here.

Till out the pathway, take a stool, sit down and shovel the loose dirt up on either side. Move stool up a few feet. Sit back down, shovel the loose dirt up on either side, and move stool up a few feet. Then go back and till the path again, and sit and shovel for another hour or so.

Point of all this being that you can shovel sitting down.

When this thing is done, I don't plan on tilling much of anything for a few years. I am going to dump compost and grass clippings on top of those raised beds, and let the worms do all the work.

15-18 inches higher !!

Wow, David! This must mean that you have boards surrounding your beds. Otherwise, that soil will slough off and you will be back with your shovel.

That's the situation I face. Well, I'm not trying for 15+ inches higher - only about 6 inches higher than the paths. This more-or-less began as double digging many years ago. Except, I only had 8 inches of topsoil to work with back then and wasn't going to dig into the subsoil.

Some of the oldest beds, essentially, amount to what Doug Green is talking about. I use a lot of peat moss for over-wintering the dahlia roots each year. Most of that peat goes in the compost bin in the dahlia garden.

After laying in there with the compostables, all that gets shoveled (there's that word again) out on top the beds before the dahlias are planted with a post hole digger (another shovel, ouch!).

After nearly 20 years of that behavior, there's been a lot of peat worked into the soil of those beds.

S'

Oh gads this is going to sound so Baaaaad, I am a lazy gardener these days,The more I read the more I am liking this straw bale gardening for my veges.I used to do an acre and a half of veges in soil using the Ruth Stout concepts.I also had 4 acres in flower beds and lawn... Now days I have a fairly large vege garden in straw bale, the greenhouse in containers, no digging tilling or anything else,no lawn at all so good bye to the lawn mower,, all flower beds and water garden..I do mulch in the spring and separate plants,,, but ummm other then a bit if weeding and dead heading about an hour or two a month ,, it is all about the enjoyment...
Hugs,Laughter,Light,Love
Mary

Steve, 15-18" *sounds* like a lot, but thats loose soil and it will settle. I'm hoping for a roughly 45º angle of the sides of the final beds, and that will be protected by woven weed barrier. We'll see what happens, its a largely clay soil and if I don't over-water it, it should stay reasonably stable.

I honestly wouldn't have bothered, but my last two seasons have been far less than successful than I'm used to - something changed under ground, a shift in the way the sub-terrainian water flows, I never used to have to water past July. Last summer I had to water almost constantly, and then when I pulled up the plants, the roots were all in the top inch or so, ignoring all the organic stuff below.

Mary, thats a lot of garden!!

Speaking of work, I knew the winds would be up and I secured everything doubly yesterday, as we've had sustained winds over 20kts here since lunch yesterday and overnight we had two hours of sustained over 40 gusting mid-50s:

04:55 : S 29 G 36
03:55 : S 29 G 41
02:55 : S 33 G 40
01:55 : S 25 G 37
00:55 : S 32 G 43
23:55 : S 41 G 55
22:55 : S 40 G 56
21:55 : S 24 G 40
20:55 : S 29 G 37
19:55 : S 24 G 41
18:55 : SE 25 G 33

sigh...

Some of the clips on one of my hoops popped off and sailed 12-15 feet away, one is in neighbor's yard.

Dan

I am a lazy gardener, I admit it.

I love to garden but I don't love the back breaking building of a new garden.

I LOVE when it's done and I can do what I consider the fun gardening...adding compost, planting seeds and transplants with mulch and then tending to them all season. That's stress free gardening to me!

David52's quote:
"When this thing is done, I don't plan on tilling much of anything for a few years. I am going to dump compost and grass clippings on top of those raised beds, and let the worms do all the work."

That's what I'm talking about!

IÂm getting the WIND up here too this time, Dan! It got BAD around midnite last nite and has kept up ever since! I keep looking at the neighborÂs BIG, OLD cottonwoods that overhang my back fence, and waiting for one of those huge limbs to break off and land on my house! A huge limb did break off the OLD cottonwood at the last place I lived. It missed the house, but my (little) dog had just walked out of the back slider to pee when it came crashing down, and she ran straight back in! I donÂt think she went out to pee again for a week after that happened! ;-) The neighborÂs trees make me nervous here every time it gets windy! Last time I was renting! This time I own it!

I spent the weekend playingÂI mean workingÂin the yard. It wasnÂt shoveling, but this time it really was work! I cut more of the lower limbs off of one of the junipers in my back yard, and another whole "layer" of limbs off of the BIG pine in the front yard. I need to keep it cut high enough that the grass will keep growing under itÂthe snow always pulls the ends of the branches down further, and IÂm now cutting limbs high enough up that I have to be most of the way up to the top of a step ladder to do it! Big job for a little (olde) person! Did most of it on SundayÂand IÂm still sore! Had to do it now because it was "bulk trash pickup" time, and I didnÂt want to have to try to cut all the limbs up small enough to put them in the dumpster later! Nice to have it done tho!

Still have a bunch of digging out perennials type "playing" to do, that IÂd actually enjoy if it werenÂt for that cottonwood root maze thatÂs everywhere in my yard! Wish I had a transporter to transport the rootsÂand the treesÂinto deep space!

Skybird

Especially when the garden is fairly new. I love it though and will garden as long as I am able. My mother who will be 79 soon, said that she still gets excited and runs (slowly) to see how much its grown every day.

Gardening is work? I didn't know that. Of course, when I was younger my favorite toy was a shovel and I just wanted to dig holes all day. Even today I'll go and just dig a hole for fun, but I usually can find a reason to dig a hole when the mood strikes.