Wednesday, March 12, 2008

cancellation

st. louis children's had a cancellation. they moved our appointment to tomorrow. we are leaving today for the "big city"--as tristan would say. if gardening weren't looming we'd have left early this morning and every attempt to go to the zoo would have been made. the zoo will have to wait until another time. we'll probably afford it better later anyway.


before we leave we must finish planting onions and some beets. i tilled part of the garden last night after work. unbelievably i ran into another huge "rock of gibraltar." i have a heavy steel rod that i use for these type of rock extractions--it weighs thirty pounds. when i struck the offending rock it didn't budge. the ground shook. i thought "crap i have finally hit ledge rock." after several spiraling probes if finally shot past it. i pried against the soil and the rock held steady. "crap i have really finally hit ledge rock." after working around it with many deep probing lunges i leveraged between two huge rocks and a point of leverage. the monster rock finally gave up the ghost. it took all of my effort to roll it from it's crater. over three hundred pounds of conglomerate flint rock. with great effort i rolled it to the edge of the garden--that is where it will live for now. i extracted it's much smaller friend and proceeded to deal with the wheel barrow sized hole they left. compost and top soil were shoveled and raked until normalcy finally returned to the garden plane.

the job of placing soaker hoses started. our collection of tattered soaker hoses makes this job difficult at best. we laid them so a quadruple double row of onions could make a single garden row.

reaching to weed the center of the row will be a bit tricky with a big pregnant belly but our garden space is at a premium. we'll finish planting the rest of the onions this morning. the moon signs are right for root crops. we'll plant some beets to finish out the rest of vacant space in this next row.

once again tristan was really helpful picking rocks from the garden after i tilled it. of course he and kassi played plenty. they invented a garden communication device from one of the old hoses. they were saying the cutest stuff to each other over the garden-O-phone. toly wasn't particularly tolerant of gardening but he'll get used to it--especially when he starts to feel better.


here is our surviving swiss chard sewn in the late fall. we have had several salads from here. just to the left is arugula also good salad fodder.

9 comments:

Omelay said...

i lied about the moon phase. after checking we have passed the best time to plant root crops. although we couldn't have gotten "in" any earlier.

tansy said...

i was wondering about the moon phase! you made me glance at the calendar. :)

what did you cover the chard with to protect it?

Anonymous said...

For what it's worth, the zoo in STL is free admission, though there is all of the junk that they hawk at you there.

Gina said...

You have been so productive despite the stress you are all under. Best wishes for you trip back to SL. I hope you find answers soon!

Wendy said...

I'm jealous of your garden! We still have snow on the ground - there's no gardening around here until the end of May, usually, and I always miss the boat in getting any peas planted, because it goes from COLD to too hot for peas very quickly.

I hope this trip proves less stressful and more informative.

Kramer said...

Spring is almost here. Our onions are doing great and our beets are coming up pretty good. I am terrible about moon phases and such. I really need to educate myself more on that aspect of gardening. Please keep us posted on the Dr's visits and such.

Ron said...

That sounds like one big rock. I have yet to stick my fork in all of my garden soil... hope I don't run into too many of those. :)

Ron

Danielle said...

Your chard wintered better than mine, though it's starting to show life again...slowly.

I'll keep you in my thoughts. Hope all goes well with Toly.

Anonymous said...

Karl,

I hope everything gets figured out with your son real soon. I have an odd question for you, you have posted beofre you sometimes work with an amish family, and we are trying to find out how to find an amish community near us to get some help with our old post and beam barn, the previous owners ripped out the old supports, and we want to restore it, rather than fix it with concrete and metal brackets. How does one contact the Amish? I know I sound ignorant, but we are in a bind here, and any help would be appriciated!

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