Hanging out with Buddha

As much as I truly love snowy winter weather, I would be lying if I didn’t own up to really enjoying springtime as well. Today was one of those really nice, warm, not too muddy, not too breezy March days. I went nuts. Now, sitting here, my back is sore, my shoulders hurt and my face is pink and wind burned. The vegetable gardens look great though.

Tim built all of our gardens on the principle of raised beds. They are fairly small and easy to manage – more for fun than serious production. We filled them with layers of sand, soil and store-bought compost. I added a thick layer of leaves this past fall. My mother taught me to add leaves. As kids, we learned this the hard way – scrunched down as low as we could get in the back seat of the car while she stuffed it to the roof with bags of leaves she picked up from curbs in front of stranger’s houses.

Over the winter, I bought Patricia Lanza’s Lasagna Gardening book. I was already fairly familiar with the idea (my mother is a “lasagna gardener” from way back), but I’m a sucker for marketing, the pictures were pretty and I got a free bug book as a special prize for ordering. It was wintertime and completely irresistible. I didn’t find any real surprises in the methods described, but I had fun with all the planting suggestions and even learned about a few new plants. Green thumbs up!

And so, tanked up on gardening books and seed catalogs and a bad case of spring fever, I went looking for trouble. The raised beds had settled quite a bit since last year, but this time, rather than buying expensive fill, I let my co-workers help me out. I added a thick layer of composted sawdust bedding from the horses and topped that with a thick layer of straw from the sheep stall.


Buddha seemed to approve.

I’m headed for the hot tub.