Reflections on the Seventh Week of Spring - Weeding to Relax?

      Spence threw himself into gardening this week.

      I helped.

      With a satisfied grin, he harvested wild garlic, radishes, kale, and oodles of asparagus. All of them became ingredients in stir fry concoctions he made himself. I indulged in plain asparagus as a side to meals from breakfast potatoes to homemade pizza.

      Every morning Spence checked weather on his computer. When would the lows stay in the fifties so he could take the tomato and pepper seedlings outside to the porch for hardening off? Not this week–which made him nervous.

In the great room both our cats took turns sitting by the bottom of the four plant shelves holding seedling trays. Emma sniffed and gazed over the plants to the birds on the deck. George nibbled.

      Spence yelled, “GEOOORRRGE.”

      George turned his what's-the-matter-with-you-now-old-man eyes toward Spence then sauntered away. But he returned, yanked a tomato seedling out with his teeth, and pawed the liberated plant as if it were a mouse he'd caught.

      Spence also made daily garden checks. Onions and garlic grew taller. Blueberry and strawberry flowers opened. Six packs of cauliflower, cabbage, and bok choy sprouted in small cold frames because there was no more room for seedlings in the house. On Wednesday's check he declared the soil dry enough to till.

      He revved his tractor and tilled a potato patch.

      Spence doesn't eat potatoes, and piles of spring leftovers just shrivel up after growing long hairy eyes. So why did he buy twenty pounds each of Yukon gold, Kennebec white, and red Pontiac?

      “Because I like planting potatoes,” he said.

      Friday, after hammering posts and tying string to mark three rows, each one hundred twenty feet in length, I got down on my knees. He dug holes. I dropped seed potatoes. For an old man with a torn rotator cuff muscle, he still dug faster than I could pull weeds, remove rocks, and set potatoes. He tossed rocks out of the garden too. They whizzed past me and ricocheted off the plastic collecting bucket next to the potato row. Would fastening my knee pads around my head with their Velcro straps act as a helmet? Caked soil in the groves of the plastic shields discouraged me from trying.

      I didn't help with Spence's second project–planting Improved Maestro and Early Frosty peas in a large raised bed.

      Actually, he started that project months ago when tree service men had cut down two white pine trees at our Cleveland house. One of the trees was over a hundred feet tall. Spence asked the men to saw the trunks into five foot sections and pile them in the back yard.

      With the help of Bob, our contractor who did heavy-lifting repair jobs, Spence loaded a few logs at a time in his Chevy pickup and hauled them to Wells Wood. Without lifting help here, he slid, spun, and rolled the logs out of the truck bed and onto the tractor bucket. He drove them to the garden and placed them for raised bed walls. He lined the bed with cardboard and an old bedspread then started the hard part–filling the raised bed with soil.

Because Spence didn't want weed seeds in the soil, he bought forty pound bags of top soil at Home Depot. He lifted twenty-five bags into the pickup. Back at Wells Wood, he ripped open each bag, poured the soil into the tractor bucket, and drove four bags-worth at a time to the raised pea bed. That first thousand pounds filled half the bed. He bought, lifted, ripped, poured, and dumped twenty-five more bags.

      After raking the pea bed soil this Wednesday, he constructed three weird looking goal post contraptions with PVC pipes, his version of tinker toys for men. Each of his creations had three legs and a top crossbar with arms angling towards the ground. He tied string on the legs to mark his three rows and to give pea plants something to grab. Once the peas germinate, he'll attach chicken wire to arms and let it drape down the sides to deter rabbits and groundhogs.

      While he lifted and tinkered, I weeded the onion patch. Soil damp soaked through my jeans, pantyhose, and underwear. Blood sucking gnats buzzed my ears and swarmed my face. I waved them away and tried to imagine why my friend Marlee had said weeding was relaxing. Hurling weeds across garden rows to the grass field gave the task some athletic release, and I enjoyed the bird show adjacent to the garden. Chickadee, wood thrush, and sparrow sang a chorus. Robins pulled worms and butted chests. Cardinals added a political flavor calling Bernie, Bernie, Bernie.

      Weeding to relax? No. But with a Mom Dot clean onion row behind me, I walked out of the garden with a satisfied grin.