My garden bed – actually four garden beds put together – was good to me all summer; they gave many other people and me a lot of pleasure. I want to be good to them and, with Maria’s help, put together a detailed plan to nourish them, protect them, and prepare them for Spring.

First, we pulled out the existing plants; Maria took the slow-blooming mums and planted them in her garden. I don’t really like mums and was happy to turn them over.

 

Then we pulled out all of the roots of the summer flowers. The seeds were more profound and more entrenched than I expected. The donkey manure really works.

After that, I raked and moved the soil around to give the beds air.

Then, Maria went out to the pasture with a wheelbarrow and brought out three loads of donkey manure from the bottom of the manure pile (these were one or two years old). Using my hands and trowel, I pushed them into the soil and mixed them up with the ground.

 

Then I raked them even again and turned over the soil. We got a tarp full of freshly fallen maple leaves, which have lots of nutrients (unlike oak leaves, which have none.) Many thanks to my Willa Cather wife, Maria, who is actually sitting down to read a Willa Cather novel. These two will get along.

 

 

After that, we hauled out some Amazon cardboard we’d saved for months for my garden beds and Maria’s gardens. The plan was to do mine first; then, she would do some of hers. Maria has an astonishing amount of energy; I always feel like I’m standing still around her; she zooms back and forth like Wiley E. Coyote.

 

 

We placed the cardboard over the beds to keep weeds from growing and help keep the soil moist, and then we set breaks over the cardboard. It took a couple of hours, but I think it will keep the beds snug, nourished, and moist through the next six months.

This is the second garden I’ve had in my life, and I am very grateful for the experience, which will now be a fixed and regular part of my life. I couldn’t get down on the ground much, and the beds allowed me to plant, water, and keep my flowers healthy. And made it so much easier for me to take my pictures.

 

The beds helped me to advance my photography – some people even compared my photos to George Okkeefe’s excellent work. I’m not in her league, but it was sweet to hear it.  That was a hoot. Many beautiful pictures came out of those beds, thanks to my Leica and Iphone.

 

I was wearing a surgical boot and couldn’t help as much as I wished, but I helped stack the bricks, work on the soil, and mix it with the manure.

The beds are as good a shape as they can be for the upcoming winter, which is still a few weeks away. We had two intricate touches of frost, and I didn’t want to see the beautiful bed get all ugly and sad. They went out in style.

It’s done and ready for the cold.  And I was sore and tired at the end of the day. Many thanks to my garden, have a good sleep.

Maria then brought her intense energy to two of her gardens. We both decided to call it quits and head out to Schuylerville, 20 minutes away, to have an early dinner at Bound By Fate Brewery, which recently announced a special menu with a famous guest Chef, Chef Seng Luangrath of Thip Khoa, Paddack, and Hanuman, Laos.

Chef Seng’s younger sister Pam is a co-founder of the brewery.

The food situation up here gets better by the week.

I had spring rolls – crispy pork with carrot, taro, cabbage, mushroom, and bean thread noodle with sweet & sour sauce, and Crispy Fried Rice – Naem Khao, crispy rice tossed with soy garlic lime sauce, peanuts, cilantro, mint shallots, served with a lettuce wrap.

Maria had Curry Noodles (Mee Kathi), thin egg noodles in a red coconut curry sauce with egg, cabbage, and seasonal herbs.

The food was excellent; we are both eager to return and try some other things on the menu. Like several other new food opportunities here, we can hardly believe we’re eating food like this, crepes, thin wood-fired pizza, and grain salads, all in or around our town and county.

I’m calling it the young people’s food revolution.

We used to go to New York to eat like this; we loved the place’s food and informality. (It was loud), there was a large crowd at the bar.

It is, after all, a brewery. We will be regular customers.

It was a great day. The farm was beautiful; we loved working outside and discovered a great new place to eat. Life is good.

We also stopped on the way for an excellent overdue food shop with more vegetables, fish, and fruit.

Tomorrow, another Dog Support Zoom meeting. m any of Bishop Gibbons’s teachers are sick this week, so we’re not going to the school again until next week.