Today we started the nasty task that has awaited us all along: we started excavating the part of our round bed that was crushed by construction. Over the winter, a pile of construction debris sat on top of this area. Over the soil now is a spill of sand probably 6 inches deep. The backhoe must have pushed the edging bricks into the ground as well. It’s not an impossibly large area, just 1/4 of our total round bed but it’ll be pretty close to “real” work, not the let’s-pretend-we’re-farmers kind of work we’ve done ’til now. That’s why we’re breaking the task up.
Today we just want to remember where the edges of the garden bed used to be. We measured other parts of the bed and a good estimate seems to be that the distance between the edge of the central sunflower bed and the edge of the exterior bed is about the length of my favorite hoe. Using this guideline, we used the spade to dig a few exploratory holes. Sure enough, we were able to find most of our “missing” bricks and edging material.
That’s about all we did today in our 20 minutes. We collected some of the bricks but other bricks we left sticking half out of the ground. Now we know where the bed is and we can start to dream and imagine what we’ll grow inside.
Addendum: I forgot something else that I did, something that I bet I’ll pay for tomorrow. I “rolled” a stone, roughly 1 foot in diameter, off the bed and I carried another oddly shaped puddle of concrete, both of which had been uncovered during the barn’s construction and both of which had come to rest in our round bed. We still don’t have a really firm idea what we’ll do with those stones but for now, they’re resting near the asparagus in the “orchard.”
Speaking of asparagus: two of our new asparagus plantings have sent up tentative, fragile stems. I am quite happy because frankly the crowns didn’t look TOO prosperous when we planted them.
