The New Patch

This little patch of earth and this little pile of stones,
I can wash the dust from off my face and skin, but this earth is in my bones.

-Ralph McTell from Peppers and Tomatoes 1998

We started this Sunday with a harvest of baby lettuces.

I used this homemade "salad spinner" to wash and "spin" off the water from the leaves.  It's an old onion bag.  I got the idea from one of your posts.  (Sorry...can't remember whom to credit the idea, but it's a good one!)

I hard boiled some eggs and made me a warm breakfast egg and bacon salad.  (Yum.)

SM isn't into salad in the morning (He thinks I'm strange) but I did make him a breakfast bagel with egg and managed to toss a few leaves on it too.  SM had a HUGE salad the night before so he said he'd rather keep breakfast as breakfast.  (Just wait until the summer squash start coming in.  Squash for breakfast lunch and dinner...@:)

SM started a new "landing strip" by double digging beside the other bed.  While SM was doing that, I brought the truck around that had a yard of compost in it and started pitching it into the turned over soil. 

SM wants to rent a "cultivator".  He tells me it's not a rototiller, but he wants to "bust-up" the clods a bit more.

I tell him that's not what the "double dig" method is about but I hate to tell him "No".  I don't want to squish his interest in this garden.  So I'm trying to gently persuade him to stick with the book.  We'll see.

We then switched gears a bit and built the last 2 raised beds.  We ran out of L brackets so didn't finish the second one, but I can start to fill the other with compost.  Once all the beds are made and the compost is in, then we'll need to fence it in to keep out the (bastard) bunnies.

Oh!  I was flipping over some of the cardboard we've had piled out by the garden and found a baby copperhead under one of them. 

Our neighbor (right beside the garden) let her grass get knee high before she hired a service to come out and cut.  I was starting to think that it would be attracting snakes and rats and all sorts of vermin.  Well she got it cut on Thursday and we think this little guy came from her yard.

I know snakes are out there but I haven't seen one in our yard for the 13 years we've lived here.  Makes me nervous with the dogs out nosing around.  SM says snakes don't like busy areas, so hopefully I won't be writing a post about anymore snakes.

(Mental note: Need to burn that wood!  Snakes and black widow spiders are attracted to areas like that....shudder!)