The title of this post, by the way, was supposed to read as though someone was blowing the charge call. Don't know if that worked or not. Anyway...
As you may know, depending on whether or not you've been religiously following Westmore's progress, we picked up half a cubic yard of soil from Weitzel's last weekend and spread it in part of the garden to use as a gauge for how much soil we'd need total. And so we could plant peas and onions (see: Peas and Onions and Cats, Oh My!)
So yesterday, 4 more cubic yards of soil were delivered to Westmore's back driveway. For those of you who don't know, 4 cubic yards is a LOT. My job today was to get the soil from the driveway into the garden beds. By myself. Using only a shovel and a wheelbarrow. Hooooooo boy.
Well, I got to Westmore around 8:30 this morning, and gaped at the daunting pile of soil that faced me. It was so daunting, in fact, that I turned around and left. Just kidding. I didn't work on the soil right away, though. First, I transplanted five baby raspberry plants in among the raspberries that are already at Westmore. It wasn't hard work, but it did take some time. They needed to go in the soil right away, according to our helpful friend Sue, from whom we had gotten the babies. Thus, that was priority #1 for the day. I got them tucked in and well-watered before turning to the soil.
I had learned from unloading the first half of a cubic yard of soil last weekend that good soil is pretty dang heavy. Today, it didn't help that the entire pile was at ground level (as opposed to being in the bed of a pickup, as it was last week), so it was extra work to lift each shovelful up and into the wheelbarrow. Of course, I did it anyway. Chris showed up a couple of hours in and helped a lot with moving the soil around. Many wheelbarrowfuls later, the garden beds were complete, and the soil pile was almost gone. Anne Marie and Ben will be using the leftover soil to make an herb garden tomorrow in the front yard.
In other news, the broccoli that I seeded last week sprouted yesterday! The little seedlings are so cute and delicate. I feel like a proud momma! I can't wait for the eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers that I also seeded last week to sprout - that'll be a few more days though, at least. The onions that we planted last Saturday are looking good; some of them got displaced when they got caught in the deer netting, but I took a look at the bases of their little bulbs, and most of them had roots starting! This is an excellent sign. The peas that I planted next to the onions aren't up yet, but they should be soon. I suspect they're not really enthusiastic about germinating, because the cats have been disturbing that bed. To remedy this issue, we bought some deer netting to stretch over the bed and plastic tubing to support the netting. At first, Katara and Oatmeal, the younger cats, were simply more attracted to the netting as a jungle gym (see: Sad Seedlings and Cat Hammocks). Yesterday, I added another hoop to support the net better and keep the kitties off the bed, and so far that seems to be doing the trick.
Also yesterday, Sue-of-the-Raspberries offered to give us some transplants to replace the ones we lost to the cold weather last weekend. I had contacted Drew to see if he had any more extras to give us, but he'd already given them away to someone else. I got to Sue's house yesterday to find that Drew had given his remaining extra seedlings to her! She offered me whatever I wanted of what was left, so I took twelve eggplant seedlings, six broccoli seedlings, and twelve hot pepper seedlings. They're all in the coldframe and they look great so far - if their good health continues, we'll have plenty of babies to stick in the soil when the time comes. Sue also offered us some strawberries, so hopefully we can go get those soon and plant them in the near future. More updates to come soon. As always, thanks for reading!
WOG out.
