(Normally I don’t post more than once a day – but who am I to defy the Weekly Photo Challenge? This time, they’re asking for photos of “today” – Friday, June 1, 2012 – and I just went out and took some.)
Today in my back yard –
The vegetable garden. Does it look a bit empty in the middle? That’s where the second row of beans and the cilantro will be.
A closer look – tomatoes, basil, and peppers at the far edge. I doubt that there’s a backyard garden anywhere in South Jersey that doesn’t include these.
And the opposite corner – oregano, purple (!) tomatillos, and beans stretching off into the distance.
And a nod to the Photo Challenge I skipped two weeks ago: Let me give you a hand.
I’m mixing purchased topsoil with the – stuff – that came with the yard to make another garden bed. This area has never been tilled since we moved into the house, and maybe never since the house was built. Years ago, I struggled to make other sections cultivable, but I had forgotten that the basic mixture is clay and lots and lots of stones.
You know you’re dealing with hard soil when you stick a garden shovel into it, stand on the shovel (so you’re applying your full weight), and can only get it to penetrate about the length of a finger. It turned out that a hand trowel was a more effective tool to loosen the clay enough so I could crumble it and mix it with topsoil.
Basically, it’s a quiet day in the neighborhood – my town had its big extravaganza last Saturday, closing the main street for Mayfair and holding boat races on Cooper River.
