It’s been a good day in River Town

 

PP and I decided the Potato [root vegetable] Bed was ready for planting.

The first step was reading the instructions.  She was disappointed when I told her today’s step involved the cutting into smaller pieces with one or two eyes.  We took a vote and the ayes had it.  But they then had to sit in the sun and dry out for one day, so Pic 1 is: “drying and quartered potatoes”.  

We next dealt with our every 3-4 weeks minimal garbage: all of our scraps go into compostable recycling; most of our packaging is dropped at the local dump once a month for free; I dump my kitchen garbage bag 2-3 times a week into a back deck garbage bin, which is a can with a “Contractor’s Bag” in it; 2-3 times a month, I move a full Bag to the rear of my property, and every 2-3 months, I take a load to the dump for $37.50.

While looking at the back deck, PP and I decided to begin the cleaning process.  Chopping up and stacking the remaining wood was the initial task, See Pic 2: “Next Year’s Starter Stack of Wood”.  Chopping wood with an axe was interesting.  When I had two “good” eyes, I always aimed wrong, guided by my dominant right eye.  Now that my right eye has Macular and is effectively sidelined, I make no more mistakes: neither in picture taking, nor in wielding an axe.  I was like Jack the Flyswatter in the Beanstalk today, almost every blow, a deadly hit.  It gave me a powerful feeling.

That still left us with a sweep-up job for tomorrow, Pic 3, “Empty Winter Wood Pile”.

So, this afternoon PP and I decided that Peter was getting too old to manage a full, sunny front yard, as well as a back yard, which he has recently downgraded to two beds: Salad Bowl bed and Root Crop bed.  So, we have partitioned the front yard area into at least a dozen beds of undetermined purpose or management, as of yet.

We have laid down eight-foot timbers, often with four-foot adjuncts, laying out pathways, and bed boundaries.  The dozen could as easily be two dozen.  The purpose is to be able to focus on single beds.  I certainly would contemplate sub-letting a bed or two to sunny-loving, redwood inhabitants.  They could be the needed labor to get the front yard under control.  See Pic 4: “Garden Beds in Front”.