Our saga continues…
Day 2
Is growing a veggie garden worth it? We have two excellent grocery stores within walking distance of our home: Puget Consumers Co-Op (aka PCC) and Metropolitan Market.
And why add the extra step of building a cloche for protecting veggie starts when we could just throw them in the soil and forget about it?
Or pave the entire yard with cement.
Such are my rat-scratching doubts on this overcast Saturday.
I bid Blake Goth adieu and walk over to Marguerite’s house. Marguerite is a neighbor and master gardener who offers gardening consultations.
Marguerite’s prize-winning fowl, Betty, is outside her chicken coop pecking at feed. Marguerite not only raises egg-hatching chickens, she is also a bee keeper and sells honey locally.
“Do we need to bother with a cloche?” I ask her.
“Not necessarily. I do it to keep veggies starts from getting battered by rain, keeping them warm.” She advises me to wait until the weather is warmer to plant things and just to rotate veggies every year.
“I use a sharp, steel hoe”, she says. “It makes all the difference in garden work. I sharpen it with a mill bastard file.”
“A ‘lil bastard?”
Betty, her prize chicken, clucks and admonishes me.
Marguerite laughs. “No. A mill bastard. To file. To sharpen.”
I invite Marguerite over. She surveys our back yard. “Someone’s been busy digging up sod.”
“That would be Blake Goth.”
“Blake Goth?”
Ooops. No one knows my husband’s pseudonym. “Uhhh…I’m keeping a journal. I call us Jane and Blake Goth.”
“I see.” Marguerite squints as if she doesn’t see. She probably thinks I’m crazy.
Before she leaves, Marguerite again advises me to wait until it is warmer to plant what I want and to add chicken manure to the soil.
When I go inside, Blake Goth is in the kitchen unpacking groceries from PCC. I mention my conversation with Marguerite and how we’ll need to buy chicken manure.
BG shakes his head, says Marguerite’s chickens are kinda cute and that you had to hand it to her for raising honey bees. “But I’m sure as hell never wearing a bee suit.”
Did I ever tell him to?
Does he need to cluck at me?
The saga will continue…
Gotta like that Blake. He’s the man!
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I’m confused and think I may have missed something… You’re just now planting and the soil isn’t warm yet? Where the heck do you live? Help me understand…
And, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m thinking that it takes a much longer time to get a bushel of chicken manure than cow or horse manure. How do you even collect it? Clearly I’m not a back to nature type…
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Hahaha. No — this is my 2nd Saga post of a journal I was keeping a few years ago. The journal began in early spring when urban gardeners in West Seattle sometimes grow things in “cloches.” A tad confusing, eh? I should re-think this Saga/old journal thing and stick to present time for my blog posts. There are more pressing things I could write about NOW rather than past stuff. As for chicken manure — my neighbor recommended buying bags of it at nursery for our tiny veggie plot. Stay tuned…not sure if I shall keep on w/the saga. I appreciate your interest though!
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