Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow

Slowly. As it turns out. And perhaps bigger than intended while simultaneously more ignorant than intended. For example, did you know cauliflower plants take 3-6 months to produce a head? I did not. I planted 6 of them. Did you know brussel sprout plants actually grow best in cold weather and produce sprouts in late Fall if not Winter? I did not. I planted 6 of them, too.

We’ve been watching this show, Clarkson’s Farm, on Amazon Prime. It is hilarious and educational. Jeremy Clarkson (formerly of Top Gear) owns a farm in rural England and decides he’s going to do the farming himself, instead of hiring it out. It’s about the ridiculous ideas he comes up with, despite the multiple advisors he’s hired telling him they’re terrible and not profitable. Hubs recently pointed out to me, not graciously, that he feels like one of those advisors. This was on the heels of an episode where Charlie, the main advisor, tells Jeremy under no uncertain terms should he buy a bunch of piglets, because they are expensive, require too much land, and will not be profitable. Jeremy nods agreement, emphatically, and Charlie says, “you’ve already ordered them haven’t you?”

Yes. He had. Because they were cute.

They were cute and I was right there with Jeremy. Give me those piglets.

I have a lot of great ideas, Hubs manages to shoot most of them down, or at the very least taper them into something more feasible. The real reason he’s not a fan of my ideas is they end up requiring his involvement, no matter how prepared I think I am.

One such example, from some years ago, was a rock river I designed for our back yard. We were in our previous house and had a bit of a flooding problem. I discovered, through some archeology work, there used to be a path of river rocks along the back fence that funneled water through the yard out into the easement. It had been overgrown with grass and was not functional.

Well. I had a flooding yard, 3 little kids, and a mission. I did extensive research. I needed to dig out the old rock, remove it to…somewhere, dig down 24-36″, lay landscaping material, bring in a couple cubic yards of gravel for drainage, and then cover the gravel with river rock. But I would not use generic rock, only the most beautiful stone would do. Mexican Beach Pebbles. They are a metallic blue, and look like flowing water. Turns out these are hard to source, and not even pebbles. They were 2-4″ in size. They had to be special ordered and delivered from a landscaping company. I would then strategically acquire and place boulders along the rock river, to make it look natural.

Good. Research done. The first step was digging out this old river rock. That turned out to be very difficult. It was heavy, and covered in inches of heavy soil. I made it about 6 feet into a 35 foot long stretch and realized I was beyond my scope.

Hubs had to get involved, with a pickax, to loosen up the rock/soil combo so it could be shoveled into a wheelbarrow. The theory was he would pickax then I would shovel and move soil. Turned out he could shovel and move a lot faster than me. It quickly spiraled, probably in the direction you’re thinking.

Landscape material was acquired, spread out, and cut to size. We don’t need to specify who did that part. (I may have failed to mention during this process we discovered the gate posts were rotten and needed to be replaced. You can see the concrete footer below. That was a Hubs thing too)

Gravel then appeared in the driveway. A significant quantity of gravel. Turns out Hubs was better at shoveling gravel than me, too. He moved that all around and spread it through the trench. (You’ll see in the second picture below, the covered sandbox in the back corner. That plays an important role later down the line.)

We then had the pebbles delivered, they were impossible to shovel, so I had to move them by hand from large bins in the driveway, to the wheelbarrow, then around to the back. This means I touched every single pebble with my bare hands. For the record, I did that part, by myself.

Things were looking good. Now for the boulders. Boulders are hard to find. You can’t just go pick them up from a field. Every time I drove past a construction sight I coveted their boulders. You have to buy boulders. From a landscaping company. Boulders are very heavy. This was not accounted for in my boulder acquisition plan. Therefore, this also required Hubs. Hubs sourced the boulders for me. They were stunners. Sandstone, with beautiful layers and lines. Big enough for kids to climb on.

This river looked pretty good. Let’s jump back to the sandbox. I adamantly did not allow the kids to play or walk in my rock river. Therefore, it needed a bridge to access the sandbox. I don’t make bridges. I can describe, with prolific hand gestures, what I want a bridge to look like. But I cannot draw it, and I cannot build it.

Yep. Hubs again.

Behold! Our rock river. Even a video of its flow, both aesthetic and functional.

What does this have to do with Jeremy Clarkson? Hubs told me not to do the rock river. He said trying to remake it would be way more work than I thought. He said under no uncertain terms should I attempt this, as it would be a project of scope creep and quickly escalate out of my control, not to mention budget.

I agreed. Emphatically.

“You already started digging, didn’t you?”

I had. Indeed.

Okay so here we are February, 2024. I plant 48 tomato seeds in a starter tray. I’m going to grow tomatoes, just tomatoes, this summer. Probably in pots, maybe in a raised bed.

Those of you more experienced at gardening than me might know that 48 tomato plants is a lot. They need a lot of space to grow. Or a lot of pots. Space we have a’plenty, pots we do not.

I decided we needed to put in a garden for my tomatoes. But I would just pick a swathe of land, and dig out some of the dirt, and put them there, it would be fine.

We live on top of a mountain, the soil is all clay. Tomatoes don’t grow well in clay. I would need to truck in loads of compost and dirt for this garden. Clay is very hard to dig up, I could not do it with a shovel. I needed some way to remove the grass, dig up the clay, till it, and mix in good soil.

Hubs was sitting back, watching all this unfold. I suggested he get involved, he abstained. I considered killing off my tomato plants and letting the dream die. I considered throwing them into the woods and letting nature take over.

In the end, I asked our very kind neighbors, who are farmers, for help. They graciously brought over a tractor, and plowed up the grass for me.

It’s probably becoming clear to you at this point that I have no experience in this realm. Because I looked at what they plowed and thought, that’s gonna be tough to plant in. But we’ll see how it goes. When I texted them to say thank you, they kindly informed me they would be back the next day to finish the job. I felt a wave of relief, because I did not know what to do with those clods of clay.

They came back the next day with a tiller, and tilled the soil loose for me. This was enlightening in contrast to the plowing. The land was now workable.

I then arranged for compost delivery and spread all the mud/poo by myself.

I asked another neighbor to borrow a walk-behind tiller. Hubs did offer to do the tilling for me, but only because this machine had a lot of blades and I looked fairly dangerous wielding it.

(Do we have the best neighbors, or what?)

Now, a garden needs a fence. Because deer will come eat all the vegetables. Not just any fence, because bunnies will sneak under it, and eat all the vegetables.

Hubs is still watching everything unfold and giving me that, “what are you going to do now?” look.

I ordered fencing and he agreed to help me. We put that fence up in an hour. Expert fencers. I asked him to pick up a bunch of landscape timbers to put along the bottom of the fence to keep bunnies out. He opted for free logs from a friend. I stapled the fencing to the logs and then went around by hand to clod the clay against the logs so bunnies couldn’t burrow under the fence.

Let’s take a moment and appreciate how much of this project I’m doing. Like, everything.

You might notice there’s no gate. I’m not perfect, people. I can’t think of all the things. Hubs built me a gate of his own volition.

I mounded the soil into rows and planted my vegetables. I watered them, I weeded them, I sprinkled chicken poo on them. They. Are. Growing.

Hubs congratulated me and said, “I’m impressed Inge. I think this is the first hare-brained idea for which you’ve actually done the majority of the work.”

High praise indeed.

Then Charlotte came to visit. This brings me full circle to Jeremy Clarkson and the pigs. Clearly I need to get one.