The garden is in!

Well, the garden is in. At least, the soil is mostly where it belongs and I dug the paths out. Just in time, too-- the sky opened up a few hours after I put my shovel down. The rain is helping to settle the new garden beds into place. They initially looked craggy, and today they're just a little rugged. It's been raining on and off all day today, which put a damper on my plans to get some seeds in. With water below on the paths and water above from the sky, it was too much water for me to persevere beyond adding the amendments and a bit more topsoil. (I shoveled the paths down and the garden beds up to improve drainage for the beds and their soon-to-be plants, but that means that the walking paths are now walking moats.)

I did manage to add the amendments, though, so that's something. I added Calpril lime, feather meal, and bone meal, to be precise. The meals were to boost the nitrogen and phosphorous, respectively. The lime was to boost the pH, and to do all the other lovely things that lime does to your soil. (I found the website of the guy who gave the inspirational lime workshop I attended a couple weeks ago! Check it out; perhaps you, too, will be inspired.) The lime I used is a "pril" or pelletized lime, and it smells wonderful because they stick it together with molasses. Yummy.

Tomorrow's forecast is "chance of showers" rather than today's "showers," so I'm hoping I'll have a few dry hours to get some beds planted.

A couple short pieces of news:

-A have continued to experiment with eating Japanese Knotweed. I am so far still alive, so the internet must have been correct about its edibility. I made a pie with it, which has received mixed reviews. Perhaps I will add some strawberries next time, or at least some grated beets to make it a more appetizing color. Pie fillings are often slimy, but people don't seem excited about them when they're green and slimy.

-I am still taking aerial class, and it's awesome. I can feel myself getting stronger, and we're starting to learn tricks/moves that actually look cool. I have an intense notebook to keep track of what we've learned and what I've been working on; I guess I do miss academia sometimes.

Yards of soil

Friends, today I belatedly announce the arrival of ten square yards of soil in our driveway. Yes, indeed, ten yards of top-quality, deep black, compost-smelling soil found themselves in front of our carport on Monday afternoon.

Many of those yards were destined for our nascent garden. (About five of them, if you want to be exact about it.) Do you have a guess as to who volunteered to transport it to our garden plot? Little ol' me!

Little ol' me made a discovery: soil is heavy. It's heavy in the shovel, it's heavy in the cart, and it's especially heavy in the cart when you're pushing it through mud.

Nearly halfway through the pile!

If you live 'round these parts, you'll know that things have been getting less muddy for the past couple days. We have been blessed with a few days of sunshine, and can reasonably expect two or three more. In fact, we very reasonably can expect our soil to dry out enough to till it and form it into our garden beds! That's why I spent six hours shoveling, carting, dumping, and distributing soil yesterday, and about three more today. Tomorrow will see me rototilling that good stuff in. If I feel up to it after that, I'll start shoveling soil from the walking paths up onto the garden beds to raise them for improved drainage. If not, I'll do it Friday. And Saturday? If the garden beds are done, I'll be planting! Hallelujah, it's finally happening!

I'll also be starting some logs for mushroom cultivation (shiitakes! oysters!) on Saturday with our neighbor, who happens to be one of the best neighbors I've ever had. He's not just super friendly. He also is doing most of the things that I want to do. He has chickens, rabbits, sheep, and pigs. He has a garden. He grows mushrooms. He's probably coming to Burning Man with us. And he owns the house, so he'll be sticking around for a good long while. Hooray!

Here's a cute neighbor story: Awesome Neighbor (known as AN) came over to our house. Looking out our kitchen window, AN spied a particularly nasty exotic invasive weed known as Japanese Knotweed. He expressed his sympathy and wished us the best in our eradication efforts. I hadn't encountered it before, so I looked it up after he left. I confirmed his identification-- yup, definitely Japanese Knotweed. But what's that, Wikipedia? Did you say that it's edible? And that it's a lot like rhubarb and makes a pretty decent jam?

I harvested a laundry basket of Japanese Knotweed, tore the leaves off, peeled the stems, gave them a rinse, chopped them up, and treated them like tasty jam-makings. After more time in the kitchen than I'd like to admit (this was my first solo jam-making), I had seven jelly jars and a couple overflow containers of knotweed-and-orange jam. It's tangy (hopefully in a good way), and it didn't jell quite right (it was my first time!), but it's totally edible. I had it on a PBJ for lunch today. As the best ending of this story, I walked myself over to AN's house, presented him with a jar of knotweed jam, and thanked him for identifying the plant for me in the first place.