Redesigning again

Last fall we planted a lot of garlic. I mean, really a lot of garlic. We kept about half of last summer's harvest, picked the best and the biggest cloves and used up about a third of the garden space, including the new areas we opened last summer using hay bales. Given that another third or more is already used for mint, strawberries and raspberries, there was not much room for everything else I plan to plant this year.
We had decided to open up a new garden patch in the centre of the yard, and last fall when we took the roof off the shed, we piled the pressboard panels in the spot we chose, so we could kill off the grass to get things started. Then, last week, Josh and I rolled the enormous hay bale onto the same spot so we would avoid killing grass where we were not planning gardening space. Then we began discussing logistics.

Josh suggested we cut the bale in half, and plant directly on one half, and use the rest to cover the garden and for compost. I thought that half the bale would be way too high for planting tomatoes. Even if Josh planted stakes right through the bale (no mean feat) to support the tomato cages, I would have a hard time reaching all but the bottom level of tomatoes, and need to climb a decomposing pile of slimy hay to reach the rest. No thanks. My neighbour Iulia chimed into our discussion, asking why don't I just plant tomatoes between my garlic plants like she does. Not wanting to get into a discussion about rotating crops, not shading the garlic, my preference for cages over staking (okay, we have different ways of gardening on our side of the fence), I stubbornly continued my discussion with Josh, resulting in a decision to cut the bale in half (otherwise it would be too complicated and unstable), and starting two new patches in the middle of the yard, one for tomatoes planted in a lower stack of unrolled hay, and a second patch of smaller plants planted directly into the other half of the bale left intact.

This week we have been working on redesigning the yard and infrastructure. Olivier had come by just after Josh finished the roof of the shed, and watched me moving the stones around to more useful places. Josh had laid out a flat, stone paved area in the corner between the shed and our house, which he has been using to store junk. I took at day and cleaned up the shed, found places for things that need places, and gave Josh an ultimatum to get rid of the things that really do not belong in the back yard. Olivier suggested I remove some of the paving stones and put a garden space for shade tolerant wildflowers, including trilliums (yay! trilliums!). He knows a place in the east end that has tons of wildflowers and promised to take me there.

So this week the weather forecast was sunny and warm, but not too hot to do heavy work. I am at the tail end of the semester, with lots of correcting, but not so much that I can't take breaks to enjoy the weather and haul rocks. On Sunday, Josh picked up supplies to replace the water manifold which was leaking last year, and lots of royal blue spray paint. By the end of the day, the roof of the shed was no longer special, but a nice neighbourly shade of blue. I also scraped the peeling flakes of pink paint off of the bathtub I am currently using as an onion planter, and sprayed it to match. It blends in with the shed and the herb buckets, and no longer looks like an eyesore. I moved a lot of rocks around, and found some spaces around the garlic to plant carrots.

Monday after work, Josh took out the huge two handled saw (think lumberjack) and invited our friend Misha over to take the haybale in half. While they were sawing, I worked on weeding and continued to move paving stones to create a small garden bed by the shed. The tulips started blooming, and the lungwart as well. While we were working, a fire truck drove by. Then another. Then a third. They parked in front of my house. Josh and Misha continued sawing with much arguing and swearing, and I went around the house to see what was going on. Firemen were walking onto the corner of my property, connecting the fire hose to the hydrant. I am carefully eyeing my tulips and calculating if they are likely to survive. Fortunately, the only thing I plant right around the fire hydrant are the cosmos, which have not sprouted yet, but may respond well to the thorough watering the fire hydrant dripped into the corner of my yard which is the furthest from where I can reach with my hose.

Once I got over my selfish preoccupation with whether my garden will be affected, I checked out where the fire was. A neighbor around the corner, who was a work colleague many years back and still as friend, had a fire in his basement. He and his wife were out when it started, from an old stove stored in the basement (probably electrical), and someone passing by heard the smoke alarm and called 911. I was watching when Mark walked up the street and realized what the fuss was about. Once Josh finished halving the bale, it started raining, so we gave up gardening for the day, and went by Mark's to offer our support once the fire trucks left.

This morning I started my day distributing hay to all the bare patches in the garden, and planted another row of carrots. I called Josh as I finished work, and he said he was just heading up to Walmart to pick up earth and manure to fill in the new beds, and to fortify the rest of the garden. I told him I would meet him there, because I did not sprout any annuals besides sunflowers, and wanted to get some early while the choice was still good. Feeling a bit guilty because I am buying non-organic flowers from Walmart, at least I biked over from work, while Josh got stuck in traffic for the equivalent of 4 blocks from our house (I can't carry 30 bags of earth and manure by bike no matter how I try.) I did not find any pineapple sage (I want some, and owe Julie a new one), and none of the electric blue lobelias that I love, but there were some beautiful begonias and violet coloured lobelias, icelandic poppies (a perennial) and a new bunch of dusty millers (also perennial) to add to my small collection, as well as pansies which are one of Josh's favorites. I am looking at putting some flowers at eye level, and we explored the idea of a window box, but I may buy a couple of stakes with hooks to hang the begonias in the pots they came in rather than planting them into the garden. In the meantime, the whole bunch are decorating my front steps until I have time and decide what to do with them. My neighbour Ovidiu says the temperature, which has been quite warm this week, will be dropping to chillier weather next week, so I am not planted too soon.




When we got home, it occurred to me that I had just carefully layered as much hay as possible in and around all the garlic, and now I had wonderful manure and new earth to put under the hay. That was not well thought out. I will have a lot of work to redo over the weekend.