her able hands

Yesterday afternoon, my new neighbor questioned my spacing in my tomato bed. “Aren’t you planting those a little close?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Twenty inches.” He said.

“Well, I’ve planted them 15” for the past few years and canned over one hundred jars of sauce each year, given away bags and bags of tomatoes, and composted more than I care to think about. On top of that I sold about $150 worth of them last season.”

Raised eyebrows. Glaring at my garden bed. “I don’t know. That’s a little too close.”

I smiled as I dug another hole 15” south of the last one and pulled a Bloody Butcher plant from the bucket of water by my side. I didn’t say anything else, not out loud anyway, but in my head I told him to plant his own damned tomatoes and stop acting like just because he’s been on the planet almost twice as long as I have that it means he knows the only way to plant a tomato. “I hope you’ll want some of the harvest, I’m sure I won’t have time for all the canning I usually do.”

“Hmm.” He said, and stood at the fence watching for a few more minutes. I could feel him wanting to scold me, to tell me to listen to age and wisdom, to tell me to yank those tomatoes out right now little missy, and plant them the right way, the way he told me to already. Then he ambled off after his dogs and I planted another twenty sets at a 15” spacing, then mulched them deeply with grass clippings. Here is the offending tomato bed.

This week I’ll build their trellis, and the one for the long row of mixed cucumber plants. I’ll use the tree trimmings and saplings Chris took down yesterday, opening up the small patch of woods a bit to let more light hit the gardens. He felled six large scrub Cherries and accidentally took down the one young Sugar Maple I wanted to keep. Alas. He got a little overzealous with his chainsaw.

We moved the chickens on Saturday, a messy, stinky ordeal that left us all covered in manure. Apparently a chicken tractor isn’t meant to be moved more than a few feet at a time. Loading it into the back of a trailer and hauling it to the city? Ill advised. But it’s done, and the biddies have their new home in the woods, where for two days they have made the happiest chicken sounds I’ve ever heard, pecking and digging around in the deep humus for bugs and worms.

Charles the female rabbit also seems happier. She sits in the open side of her cage staring at the wall of green growing behind her, less anxious, contented. She let Tyler hold her, Lila pet her, and romped around in the grass for the first time in ages. We need to put the legs back on the hutch.

While we were still covered in shit and sweating buckets, our pretty neighbors from the south came through the small strip of woods to introduce themselves. A young couple who met at the university and fell in love. They invited us to their small get-together that night for brew and burgers, but we were too poop-covered for company. Thank goodness we clean up real nice.* We’ll definitely take them up on it another time. They went back to their company and we had a couple of beers on the deck with chicken burgers and a salad, followed by showers and bed. This past week is a blur of lifting, moving, cleaning, climbing stairs, packing, unpacking, climbing stairs, lifting, moving, cooking in a mad starving rush to stave off the sugar crash, lifting, moving climbing stairs, and collapsing in a heap at the end of the day. More of the same this week.

Here are a few more pics from around the property:

The previous owners left such gorgeous garden beds, and these lily’s are spectacular.

The bed of perennials in front of the woods has something new popping into bloom every day, and I need to take time with my Peterson’s Guide to figure out what’s what, and who’s who. I added a few of my own plants, dug up from the old house yesterday. Yellow loosestrife, Echinacea Purpea, Yarrow, Lavender, Thyme, Tansy.

Here’s the entrance to the path Chris cut through the small woods and into my inlaws back yard where we have our vegetable beds. Lila loves to walk along it singing row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream… She calls it her river to grandma’s house.

These are the vegetable beds, with an indignant Lila not wanting to be shushed because Grandma and Grandpa are still sleeping. “No, you shush. I’m TALKING.”

The previous owner left a little surprise, which delights Lila to no end.

Here’s the house, the yellow flowers a little beaten up by the recent heavy rains. By the end of the summer the porch will hopefully have a curtain of Vermont Cranberry Beans.

Do you see what I mean about the driveway? So pretty.

Okay, that’s it for now folks. I’m off to make another run between raindrops for a load of whatever might be waterproof. xo.

* a friend’s mother-in-law said this to me and Chris at said friend’s wedding. Do I look like a schlub most of the time? Methinks perhaps.

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