Giving up the garden

If you're waiting with bated breath for part two of my "It's not that easy being green" series, bear with me. It's been busy-ness as usual for me, so I haven't had time to delve into the saga of the wall-hung boiler (which may itself turn into a multi-part series).

Instead, I'll post a quick update about the garden.

As I've written before, the garden seemed like a great idea, but in practice, it's been so-so at best (the photo to the right was actually taken on a good day). Having one of the less than a dozen garden plots (for 34 units), we've considered giving ours up for a while. But every spring we pledge that this will be "the year" for our garden.

A couple weeks ago, we finally gave it up. But it had nothing to do with the work involved.

This year, a fellow gardener had the thought that because our garden plots are situated on industrial-filled land, a soil test might be in order. The results showed the sporadic presence of heavy metals, including lead (we're still waiting on exact lead numbers).

My wife and I have always tried to eat organic (or at least locally grown) produce, especially since our daughter was born almost two years ago. So needless to say, those preliminary soil results led (no pun intended) us to give up.

Not having a garden should mean more family time and - of course - finishing home projects. I only wish we'd gotten the soil test results before I dug two-plus feet down in our plot so we could line it to keep the grass out.

%&*@! garden

Here in Maine, it was in the high 60s and low 70s this weekend, which meant having a picnic near the ocean (Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth), lots of playing outside with our daughter, and the first Dairy Queen run of the year. With Sunday being Easter, we spent a great day (mostly outdoors) with extended family.

What this weekend didn't mean was tackling any DIY - with the exception of pulling some weeds in the garden. For a lot of people, gardening is zen-like in its relaxing qualities. Not so for me.

Even though we live in an old shoe factory (which houses 30-plus other units) and all the land is community property, we do have a garden plot, which is essentially a 10' by 20' box constructed from 2x4s that's filled with topsoil. For the last four summers, we've faithfully grown tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs and even pumpkins - with varying success.

As a garden, ours would make a great lawn. While there are a lot of weeds, the
biggest problem is grass, which grows in our plot like, well, weeds. To give you some idea just how bad it is, the photo to the left isn't from the other day. No, that was our "garden" last August. I'm not proud.

After four years, we want to fix that before we plant this year. Which means I have my work cut out for me.

The next non-rainy Saturday (and/or Sunday), I'll be out there with a shovel, digging out all the topsoil so we can lay a plastic lining. Then I'll be re-filling our box with new soil.

I'm not looking forward to the back-breaking drudgery. But compared to plucking hundreds of blades of grass on a weekly basis, the trade-off is more than worth it.