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Today
Today was a good day, I got dirty.
For my birthday (a couple of weeks ago) Maia bought me four half barrels (they used to contain red wine). [side note, when she took me to dinner that evening a somewhat disheveled woman asked if we were selling them... I looked over and said, "She wants to buy my birthday present!" If we hadn't pored over the stack of them, to find the best of the lot, I might have said, sure, added five bucks, and gone back to buy six, to replace those four).
Three of them are in Morro Bay, with luck not drying out too much. When we return I will soak them, and then, come the fall, transplant three grapes into them, and begin to train them, bending the sapling, so the tree will grow (crooked, and interesting, these are meant to become eight/ten hand bonsai).
The fourth spent the past week soaking, I am going to plant an herb garden in it. Basil, thyme, oregano, shallots, chives, and lavender.
So today I made the dirt. About half soil and the other half pure compost (well, mostly compost, that pile [I didn't make it] never really was managed right, and so it has a lot of still coherent wood chips in it).
Then I added the water. All the organic stuff meant that I'd only managed to get it wet about four inches down. Never mind that it had bubbled like a pot ready for pasta, it was still not ready for plants (for those of you who don't garden that plane would make it damn near impossible for the roots to get down as deeply as I want them to).
So I added more water and dug in... I was elbows deep in rich black mud, the texture and color of devil's food cake batter.
Tomorrow I have to break it up (since I've ended up with a more compact, and so less aerated, mass) and start to add the plants.
Tonight I went and threw pots, three successes, one failure (it was a good shape, but I cut too shallowly, and so pierced the bottom when I tried to lift it from the wheel).
Mud... gotta love it.
For my birthday (a couple of weeks ago) Maia bought me four half barrels (they used to contain red wine). [side note, when she took me to dinner that evening a somewhat disheveled woman asked if we were selling them... I looked over and said, "She wants to buy my birthday present!" If we hadn't pored over the stack of them, to find the best of the lot, I might have said, sure, added five bucks, and gone back to buy six, to replace those four).
Three of them are in Morro Bay, with luck not drying out too much. When we return I will soak them, and then, come the fall, transplant three grapes into them, and begin to train them, bending the sapling, so the tree will grow (crooked, and interesting, these are meant to become eight/ten hand bonsai).
The fourth spent the past week soaking, I am going to plant an herb garden in it. Basil, thyme, oregano, shallots, chives, and lavender.
So today I made the dirt. About half soil and the other half pure compost (well, mostly compost, that pile [I didn't make it] never really was managed right, and so it has a lot of still coherent wood chips in it).
Then I added the water. All the organic stuff meant that I'd only managed to get it wet about four inches down. Never mind that it had bubbled like a pot ready for pasta, it was still not ready for plants (for those of you who don't garden that plane would make it damn near impossible for the roots to get down as deeply as I want them to).
So I added more water and dug in... I was elbows deep in rich black mud, the texture and color of devil's food cake batter.
Tomorrow I have to break it up (since I've ended up with a more compact, and so less aerated, mass) and start to add the plants.
Tonight I went and threw pots, three successes, one failure (it was a good shape, but I cut too shallowly, and so pierced the bottom when I tried to lift it from the wheel).
Mud... gotta love it.
no subject
Sneaky with the birthday on your user info are you? We wouldn't happen to share birthdays do we? (the 12th)
no subject
But, LJ, when looking at communities which require being adult won't settle for just a year (stupid, really, as I could claim any age I like, esp. in a free account), and so I was required to post a month and day.
I lied.
But, no, I, with the Army, and the flag, was born on the 14th intant (which is an old-fashioned way of saying this month).