The New Garden

It's coming along. I can work for a couple of hours at a time without excessive strain to back and arms. I have a large (but getting smaller) pile of Roger's Magic Dirt and a somewhat smaller pile of what passes for local soil. The latter is the result of many hours of hard work during which the Old Amigo breaks apart the local glacial till using a mattocks, sifts the rocky stuff through a heavy screen (1/2" galvanized mesh) and then carts the rocks off to the rock piles that lie near the wood pile.

I mix the sifted soil at about a 7 or 8 to 1 proportion with Roger's Magic Dirt. The resulting mixture contains some small pebbles and dimly resembles the "sandy loam" that plants love so much. This is my third such project, and this one will make for a nicely terraced extension of usable earth in one of the warmest, most sheltered parts of the yard.

At this point, it's becoming apparent that we'll need another 7 cubic yards of Roger's Magic Dirt to complete the project. Before ordering that, however, I want to use up all that I've already purchased and (if at all possible) construct some kind of ramp that will allow the dump truck to drop the next load *right* where I want it. That will allow me to mix in place (by renting a rototiller for a day) rather than shoveling into a wheelbarrow and carting the soil to its eventual spot.

Once I have the soil components piled near their eventual location, I'll be able to complete the retaining wall. That will produce said terraced extension.

It will also leave behind a final, flat sunny area in which the Venerable Friendly One thinks that raised beds would be ideal. That project will probably have to wait next summer. It will certainly require extensive fencing. Bambi and his buddies have showed up recently with industrial strength harvesting equipment.

One of my friendly neighbors claims that several members of the local deer population have degrees in mining engineering and are able to tunnel beneath fences that are too tall for them to leap. This hypothesis remains to be verified, but I do note that the section of our garden that is currently fenced has yet to be pillaged. This seems to be grounds for optimism.