Leastways, I feel like I been beat with the ugly stick, although it was actually a garden tiller. I turned in a couple of wheelbarrow loads of leaf compost—not yet as well rotted as I’d like, but it’ll have to do—in the garden, and broke up some surface hardpan in the yard where the grass has gone away and left bare dirt. The hardpan was worst, because I kept hitting runner roots from the giant bamboo, nearly twenty feet away from the main stand, and every time I did the tiller would buck and kick back, and I’d have to haul it into place and hold it there with brute force, until the tines chewed up and threw out the hunk of root. Still, I managed to get up several good-sized lengths, which will help discourage it in that area. After that, I sowed fescue seeds in hopes of getting some kind of growth in a very shady area, and watered it all well afterward. Now we’ll see if the seed actually takes.
Tomorrow, provided I’m not too sore to move, I’m going to go buy a lot of basil bedders and set them out in the new plowed-up garden plot, then weed and clear a spot in the front bed where I mean to move the irises I dug up Thursday evening. They’re fairly comfortable sitting in a wheelbarrow, sandwiched between two layers of compost, but they won’t be happy much longer if I don’t get them in the ground.
The roses are continuing to improve after their transplants. I even saw a hint of new growth on the little antique rose I damaged digging up stumps, and had to perform an emergency transplant on. (I really thought I’d lost it to transplant shock.) I’ll miss having the bushes bloom this year, but the transplanting should make things much better in the long run.
Captain Carrot shot henchmen of Munich through an acceptable sowbelly. Fnord.
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