The Worlds Most Expensive Vegetables - Part 4

It was a busy three-day weekend and I've got the sunburn and the toned muscles to show for it.

On Friday I drove out to my dad's to borrow his truck and trailer so that I could drive way out east of New Haven to buy a go-cart and then all the way across town to buy a riding lawnmower from the parents of a daughters friend. The kids had a blast on the go-cart for an hour before the chain broke. While the lawnmower started just fine when I first saw it, the battery is now dead and refuses to take even a trickle charge. So yeah, just two days later and neither expensive (for me) purchase runs. Add 'em to my "To-Do" list!

But what about that garden? Because it was getting a bit late in April and my dad's mud had yet to turn into black gold I ended up buying $47 of peat moss and dirt to fill up six tenths of the second raised bed, seen under construction to the left. I let the kids help me hand mix the soft soil, resulting in all of us having dirty peat-moss faces of which I failed to capture, especially Jubilee's unibrow. Oh yeah, the battery in the camera died last week (another $42) and the Power Wheels vehicle also suffered a battery death some time over the winter, cost as yet unknown. Did we move to some kind of battery Bermuda Triangle?

In any case, eventually the carrot seeds got planted, or scattered. White ones, yellow ones, red ones, orange ones but no purple ones... I plum forgot about purple. In the pot there are these stubby parisian carrots and the "step down" bed has red and yellow beets. It's going to be a colorful fall!

That was Friday (I think). Before I could do much Saturday I had to make a sandbox out of landscape timbers that the previous owner left behind. Four by Four feet seems huge when figuring out how many bags of sand it will take but once the kids get in it doesn't seem so large, not that the kids are complaining. Maybe I'll expand it one day... my brain is already working on how. I started construction with those big nails made just for these but I gotta tell ya, I'm not much for upper body strength. After whomping four of those spikes into place I just didn't have it in me to finish and switched to three inch screws.

When I picked up the pickup from my dad he gave me some chives and something he calls lazy onions because you plant them once and they just spread. They're some asian thing that's like an underground leek. Because of his generous gift I spent the next two hours driving around in his truck choking on onion fumes.

And of course when I got his truck I forgot to retrieve plants from the old house. Yes, I'm that kind of person. Not many, just a few raspberry plants and a walking stick bush that I've tended to for years, waiting for it to take off in it's former semi-shady location, hence it's lopsided condition as year after year it arduously reached out for sunlight. It turns out that the new owners of the house just bulldozed where I had the raspberry plants so I should have taken them all and I full expect they will rip out every plant where the walking stick bush was as well. But since I forgot to put them in the truck I had to shoehorn them into my car. There was barely enough room for me but at least now I've got my beloved walking stick back and it will surely grow like gangbusters in it's new home.

What else? Well, I planted some cauliflower, seen here as circles of dirt. I also bought six cabbage plants and put those in. No pictures so you'll have to trust me on this.

The peas are just starting to poke through and the onions are showing off. I wish everything grew as easily and as quickly as onions.

And finally... Make Your Own Sod!

There are a number of dead spots in the yard so I'm taking the grass from the garden and plopping it down, adding water, and giving it a "here's hoping" try. Worse case scenario is that I'll have even more dead spots in the yard. Best case scenario is that these sod clumps will magically turn into leprechaun gold.

The running total so far is $192 and I ain't got a single bean to show for it.

Lesson learned this week: Sunscreen is good if you're pale from the winter and plan to spend two days outside. If you forget, take vitamins C and E.