:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

Today I was introduced to tilling soil for a garden. We have a patch of rich old farm land in our yard that hasn’t been turned for over 20 years if not longer, and today a friend of ours drove her tiller over and showed me how to work the land. Imagine something about two to three times the size of a push mower, heavy as all get out, and steered by two large handles that stick up like antlers and you’ll be on the right track. Fortunately it’s self-propelled, but that also means it can run away from you.

This happened to both of us. Tilling seems to be a delicate balance of not digging in too far, while not pulling it out too much, while also keeping everything steady and on course. When turning around on the grass it’s important to keep the spinning blades off the grass or they’ll send the tiller bucking forward and most likely out of your hands.

It has a mind of its own. Fortunately that mind didn’t figure out a way to kill either of us. In that sense I feel like I really accomplished something today. Not only is our garden ready for planting, we don’t have any dead bodies in the yard.

What can I say? I’m on a roll.

So now I have some phosphate and lime in the car and we have plans to pick up some manure to be mixed in. I think we need to fish out some of the grass clumps at some point as well. That’ll be a rip-roaring good time. However we have our eyes on the prize: planting lettuce, tomatoes, swiss chard, basil, cucumbers, red peppers, and possibly some cantaloupe.

I’m sure I’m going to kill half of the plants, electrocute myself a couple times on the electric fence we need to install, and screw plenty of other things up in the process. But we’re getting there. Maybe I’ll call this the training garden just to temper my expectations.