Busting butt

I don’t know how or when “busting butt” came to mean working hard, but it could have been from gardening. My butt muscles are always the ones screaming the next morning. My thighs ache too, but “busting thighs” doesn’t have the same alliterative ring. Let’s face it. I do very little kneeling during the non-gardening months, and the muscles one uses for kneeling seem to be unique to that activity.

Painful as it is, however, it feels good to get the garden in after so many weather delays. We got the potatoes in on May 25. The first sprouts are starting to come up.

The first potato sprout

The second task was putting down the landscape cloth. Hilda and I started with a grid for the tomatoes. After begin flooded out four times in the south garden last summer, we have moved most operations to the former, smaller north garden. When we first moved from north to south, we pieced together the shorter landscape cloths to fit the longer rows. It was a big pain. Finally we bit the bullet last year and ordered more landscape cloth so that all pieces were the right length for the rows. We were so proud! And now we had to cut them down as Terry had put the short pieces in his nursery beds. Of course, the north garden is not half the width of the south; it’s 5/9^th (20’ vs 36’). It would be too easy to just cut each length in half. We had to piece together every other row.

Tomatoes on a grid of landscape cloth

Hilda planted the tomatoes while I did the onions. Planting onion seedlings is an act of faith. You just have to believe that they will grow in spite of the fact that they look like limp, thin threads. They did have roots, at least, which is more than you get when they come in the mail.

Sad, sad little shallots

And then there was the dreaded task of putting down the drip lines. The tomato lines were, as expected, too long. It was much quicker work to set up irrigation for 18 tomatoes rather than 32.

When I started putting down drip lines for the rest of the garden, I found that while the landscape cloth was 16’ too long, the drip lines were 4’ too short. How is this possible? I know it’s the same set up we used last year because that was the first time I installed shut-off valves on each line. I was able to reuse the end plug and cable ties that I use to secure the line.

I invented this system of using two cable ties to hold down the end of the drip line. I reused the cable ties and the plug at the end when I extended the length.

While I was putzing with the irrigation, I spotted a broken arrowhead (the notched base is missing) right on top of the potato row. This is the second arrowhead I’ve found. The first was after we first bought the property. Some people find arrowheads by looking for them. Arrowheads seem to find me. Before white folks installed drain tiles in our field, the hill on which our house stands would have been an island in the middle of a swamp. It does not surprise me that Native Americans would have camped here and left arrowheads behind. As Terry said when I found the first one, this is a sacred place.

An arrowhead with the base broken off

We are also using the raised beds for some of our vegetables. Hilda has done all of that planting.

Planting the raised beds

I hoped to get the beans planted today, but it looks like we’ll be rained out at least for the morning.

One day last week, a doe was behind the apple orchard when I went out to put the chickens to bed. The next day, Terry told me that he spooked a fawn from under the solar panels while he was mowing. He though the fawn was a day or two old. A few days later, I was able to get a bad picture of the two of them on the far side of the field.

A distant picture of a doe with her new fawn

We have some birds with personality disorders. A pair of house finches and a red-bellied woodpecker think that they are orioles. It is also possible that they learned jelly-eating from watching the orioles. In either case, I hope they are not developing nutritional deficiencies by eating junk food.

A pair of house finches eating jelly that is not for them

A red-bellied woodpecker doing the same

I’m pleased with how well the shade garden by the tractor shed is filling in. The shooting stars are blooming next to a prolific display of wild geraniums.

Shooting stars and geraniums

A robin has built a nest under the deck again. I watched her fly repeatedly in the direction of the north garden. I think her nest is built entirely from the straw that we used to cover the garlic for the winter. Terry suggested that the bird was thinking, “This is too easy!” The lines in the photo are from netting that we hang in front of the window to keep the robins from flying at the glass.

A robin on a nest of straw from the garlic bed. 

We should be getting our chicks this week. Hilda is concerned that they did not come this morning. Murray McMurray does not send an email when the chicks are shipped, which seems very last century to me. They should get with the times. The only information we have is that they will be shipped the week of June 3, and that came when our order was received months ago. Maybe tomorrow.