And Out the Other Side

It's done.  The garden is planted for another year and I now feel like I have my life back.  It took about six weeks to get everything in, there was foul weather to contend with, a late frost on what was supposed to be my "safe planting" day (May 24 in case you're wondering) and an incident involving grass clippings, a wheelbarrow and rain.  So here is a sampling of what I planted.

Italian Peppers, Cayenne Peppers and Sweet Peppers

Potatoes.  These are yellow fleshed from PEI, not russets like I wanted, but
I was late  buying them so I'll be happy with what I can get.

Beans.  I'm planning to dry these for baked beans in the winter.

Red Cabbage.  This makes the best coleslaw at Christmas.

Celery.  I don't often buy celery, but I use loads of it when I grow it myself.

Chives.  This goes into just about everything.

Sage.  I've never had sage flower before.

Crab apples.  I might get enough to make a few jars of jelly.

So a word about grass clippings.  My son is 12 now and we figured he was old enough to push the mower around the yard up near the house.  So we put the bag on the mower to catch the grass clippings, told him to keep his feet away from the blades and let him loose.  When the bag was full, I told him to dump it into the wheelbarrow because I wanted the clippings in the garden to use as mulch.  He ended up with four or five bags full of clippings and I didn't get this into the garden right away.  Then it rained.  A lot.  Then it was really sunny for a day or two and I still didn't get the grass into the garden.  By this time the grass/mulch was no longer green - it had turned brown.  Then it rained again.  Then my husband wanted the wheelbarrow so I said I would go deal with the grass.

The first few handfuls weren't too bad.  But as I got below the top layer there was a smell.  Not a nice "fresh cut grass" smell but a "what the hell died in here" smell.  But Chuck needed the wheelbarrow and I needed mulch so I kept going.  The smell got worse.

A word about anaerobic decomposition - You can stop a train with this.  The smell truly defies words.  I was just about gagging on it as I spread the rest of the grass and gave serious thought to burning the leather gloves I was wearing and I'm sure there was much speculation among the neighbours about what exactly I was doing with that shovel.

But you know what - I have no marauding critters in the garden.  I also switched to plain old straw for the remainder of the mulching.