Backyard Adventure

     Our latest and greatest adventure has been planning, prepping and planting the garden.  I've had the spot in the backyard picked out since before we owned the house, those long months in limbo . . . I was plotting.  The first step was to till the soil, now we had an idea (after burying poor PeanutButter) that we would have a lot of rocks to contend with and would need some mechanical assistance.  So after much deliberation, Bruce purchased a Boylens tractor, circa late 1970's, that he found on Craig's List.  It has attachments to mow, roto-till and blow snow.  He adventured a few Sundays ago, in the big red truck, to pick it up and the next day after work he was ready to go!

Notice he's still wearing dress socks from work. "It's working, it's working, wait what's it hitting?"

"Oh it's a rock" Notice the tree in front of Bruce and the beginning of the rock pile.

It took us a week (with the weather and mechanical delays) to till roughly an 8' x 19' plot.

This is the rock pile after one pass with the tiller.

My job while Bruce was operating the machinery was to follow behind him, remove rocks and notice where the "big ones" were so that we could excavate them with the pick. We did two passes with the tiller to even everything out and to get as many of the rocks as possible, looks pretty nice right?

After the tilling was complete I got to work planting, the very next day, which happened to be the hottest day so far! Each row had to be raked into place, more rocks and roots removed, raked again to even out, then planted.  I had started tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and summer squash in the house and they were ready to go!I also planted lettuce, spinach, radishes, carrots, watermelon, cantaloupe, beans, peas, broccoli and cucumbers.

Last weekend we got the fence up to keep the Chipmunks out. More on those guys later. I still have a few tomato and pepper supports to go in, but now that everything has been in the ground for a week it's looking promising, I have shoots popping up everywhere and have already thinned a few rows.

Check out that final rock pile, way more than we expected!

I also love that I can spin around in my desk chair and the garden takes up the entire view out the window!