Looking Back at Gardens Past

"The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there."~George Bernard Shaw

Though it's still only mid-April, the beautiful weather has Anne and I thinking of our small urban garden and how we might improve on its past performance. This morning we began staking out some new area, extending the garden by about an area of 3' by 5'.

This work is being done quite a bit in advance our purchase of the plantings from the local farmer's market, likely in mid-May. Before continuing with a visual and journaling record of the 2009 edition of our garden, I figured I'd offer a brief look back at how things went in Spring 2008.

This first image is of the garden bed as it appeared just before our initial attempts to turn over of the soil. The day prior, I had removed a small wooden fence which had separated the area from our lawn in the interest of creating more space for the plants. As you can see, Gracie (our dog) also enjoys assisting, too:


This "story" actually began two years ago (I can't even begin to fathom that it's been that long already!). It was in Spring 2006 that my sons and I constructed our composting pit (pictured at the top of this post), the contents of which we had hoped to use in our own gardens. Last Spring saw the fruition of that goal. Last year, filled with another years worth of kitchen waste, grass clippings and jack-o-lanterns, as in the first image, we had plenty to work with.

This year's pit looks even more ready to go... I'm looking forward to posting some more current pictures soon:


Each year, after tilling the soil in an effort to better turn it over, and removing and weeds, Anne and I willy-nilly dropped a good amount of compost into the dirt. Some of it was rather smelly, which I guess is to be expected:


We then spread it out evenly over the entire area, working it into the soil:


Wallah! It took Anne and I about two days to fully prepare everything for greeting the plantings. Given our goal of increasing the variety of vegetables and amount to be harvested, we can only hope for as fine a pre-planting experience, this year as last!

Breathe in, breathe out… YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!