Handles! Who knew?

Today there was a steady rain, but I had a cubic yard of garden soil scheduled to be delivered, and the weather waits for no one. The truck dumped the dirt on a tarp on the boulevard, and it was up to me to move it into the raised beds in the back garden. My hubby is recovering from a recent hernia surgery, and my son, who has been sick in bed with bronchitis all week, had to drag himself to work. So...me.

We have a wheelbarrow, but it's unwieldy trying to get it through the gate, around the corner, over the step, down the path, and between the raised beds, and then you have to shovel it out, essentially having to handle the dirt twice. The raised beds are too tall to let you simply tip the wheelbarrow to empty it. My preferred method is to use a bucket instead, which lets you easily dump it precisely where you want it, and you only have to shovel each shovelful once. 

Except all my buckets somehow ended up at the old church we're renovating. 

I had a big black flower pot that I sometimes use as a catch-all when I'm weeding, so I decided to use that. Since it had no handles, I used the hug-and-lug method, which would have been fine, but with the rain, it was a muddy mess, and as the soil got wetter, of course, it got heavier. Carrying a big pot of dirt means having to arch your back and makes seeing your feet difficult. Add to that a leaky boot, dripping hair in my eyes, and loose gravel under foot, and it was a bit hazardous.

After a while, my husband went to Canadian Tire and got me a big metal bucket with a handle, and it made a world of difference. Suddenly I could balance and walk without having to sway my back, which helped enormously. Bless whoever invented handles! I am convinced more and more that it pays to have the right tool for the job. Three hours later, I was completely soaked and muddy, but the dirt was all in place, the shovel, bucket, and tarp were hosed off, I was showered, and every bit of fabric was in the washing machine.

I will no doubt feel wrecked tomorrow, but I finally feel like spring has really arrived. The annual ritual of moving (heaven and) earth is complete. Now if it would just warm up enough to plant things!

A Seat at the Table

It's 3 a.m. and I just woke up from an awful dream. I was attending some sort of fancy function to honour a poet I'd never heard of. We all sat in a large auditorium and listened to a nice program. I was sitting next to a nice older gentleman in an amber-coloured coat, and we hit it off, chatting like old friends. After the speeches, we were all to go downstairs to the hotel restaurant for dinner. The gentleman I'd been sitting by went and joined a table of his friends, and I -- the shy introvert -- didn't feel I could presume to join their table. I didn't really know the man, after all, and had never met his friends. But there didn't appear to be places at any of the other tables. A handful of us lingered in a huddle near the door, unable to find a chair. 

Dinner was rolled out, an army of servers brought beautiful, Michelin-star type of food to everyone else, but we at the edges could only watch them eat. We weren't even given chairs or a glass of water. We tried flagging down waiters to let them know we hadn't been served, and they all said they would be right back, but they never did return. A few of the unseated wandered off and left. Dinner was cleared away and dessert brought out. Then that was cleared away, everyone left the room, and two of us were left, another woman and I, who had been ignored the entire time. 

Finally, feeling stupid and forgotten, I left. In the lobby, I met the gentleman again whom I'd been sitting by at the function. He asked how I'd enjoyed the evening, and I told him my experience. How, for an introvert like me, it had not been a happy experience. He felt terrible that I hadn't been served and offered to take me to dinner. But I wasn't going to sit and eat while he, who had just been fed, watched, so I declined. He offered to walk me to my car. I told him I'd come on the bus. I told him he shouldn't feel responsible for me since we'd only just met, and it wasn't his fault I got shoddy service at a restaurant. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I wasn't scarred for life. (Though I might not come to a function like this again.) So he went away, and I went and found a food court, had a fast-food burrito and a bottle of water, and then bussed home.

So...At first I lay there in the dark wondering what the dream meant. Was I feeling forgotten or lonely somehow? I'm staying up at the old church we use as a cottage, alone, for several weeks. But no...the dream had shaken me, nearly to tears, and I felt it deserved a deeper interpretation than that. 

Those of us who are privileged, who have a chair, who are represented, need to look around the room and see who is missing. To seek them out and invite them to have a seat at the table.

Not making the writing goals... A Bible verse for the occasion

 

“Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!” Job 19:23

Haiku for the season

Rain beats the windows

in 2/4 time. The wind sings

off-key just like me.

Long-Distance Gardening

It's that time of year when I need to get my garden starts going, but I also need to be up at the church renovating. I've left Son #3 in charge of watering the seedlings and manning the fort in my absence, and Son #2 and his partner have agreed to mind the garden while I am travelling this summer. I've told them if they'll keep an eye on things, they can have whatever ripens in the garden while I'm gone. Cooperatively, we might be able to pull this off. The garden feels more important than ever right now, with food costs and shortages being what they are.

Meanwhile, a neighbour has offered to show me where to find wild ramps, so we'll go out foraging sometime this spring. What treasure!

It has to be said...

I usually try not to get into political discussions on this blog. But I'm watching the news, and my jaw is hitting the floor. The nukes are lining up in Eastern Europe, climate change is now climate chaos, bird flu is wiping out the poultry industry, banks are collapsing, people can't afford groceries, trains are derailing, North Korea and China are flexing muscles, Israel is in turmoil, Paris is erupting, thousands of jobs are being lost, famine is looming, children are being shot up in their school rooms, thousands of migrants and refugees are on the move, and politicians in the U.S. are ... passing laws about what third-person pronouns we're allowed to use. Really? So much to choose from, and this is what they focus on?

I feel like I'm stuck in some absurdist theatre.

Revving up for the season

We're getting buds, and I expect they'll flower in the next couple of weeks. I'm so eager to get out into the garden! I admit it, I've pre-ordered my garden soil about 7 weeks in advance. I'll be topping up one older bed to plant some new asparagus crowns. I've direct-sown some lettuce, kale, onions, beets, spinach, carrots, and rapini. I have to go out of town for a couple of weeks, so I'll be getting a late start with the seedlings, but I have everything ready to go when I get back. I've raked up pine needles to add to the potato bed, and I've taken the mulch off of some of the other beds. I think for a couple of the beds, maybe for the squash and tomatoes, I'll keep the leaf mulch on and plant through it, and see how the "no till" method works.

Thinking about putting in some grapes up at the church we use as a cottage. Might plant haskap berries up there too. They can manage on their own, since I'm not there very much, and can be establishing themselves so they're ready when we move up there full time. I'm also toying with the idea of borrowing some of the neighbour's space to grow pie pumpkins, which won't fit in my own garden.

I've been watching Homestead Rescue. I've been reading Caleb Warnock's book on self-sufficiency. I've been pondering the seed catalogues and combing through my old gardening notes. I've updated my garden log. I've sorted through my seeds and categorized them by when to plant. I've bought a new pitchfork. Now if it would just warm up!