Finished the first of four gardens amidst a barrage of creative challenges – cold weather, early morning rain, a tiller that wouldn’t fit in the car, and the usual unsolicited advice, in this case from gardeners. Giving advice, I am learning, is addictive.  People can’t help it, and of course, hearing all the reasons why I should wait made me absolutely determined to go ahead. At the hardware store, they advised against still damp soil, something about the “tilth” evaporating in the air. A planter warned that it was too early, somebody else said I needed a complex plan to tell weeds from flowers, the tiller itself was complex, moved in herky-jerky ways. I had to wrestle with it.

Somebody else said the damp soil would clump (is this bad, I thought.” I am not a precision gardener.

A lot of stuff goes in, a lot of stuff comes up.  Some flowers will make it, some won’t, it will be a glorious riot. We’ll figure it out as we go. The minute it stopped raining, the hardware store delivered the tiller and said they would pick it up. After an hour of wrestling with gears, chokes and starter pulls, I figured it out. We started tilling.

The soil seemed to love being tilled, and I have finished the first of four planned gardens. Two in the front, on either side of the porch, one in the back, one along the front fence, where we will plant pleas and morning glories. Maria is a killer with a shovel, I am good now with the tiller, complex like Florence’s old mower. Break for lunch, back out. Lenore and Red are accompanying us.