A Girl's Best Friend

With a post title like that, you might think I am talking about a dog.

We do not have a dog. We never have. With both of us working full time, we felt it would not be fair. Also, neither one of us wants to get up extra early to walk a dog. Cats on the other hand are fine with solitude. They decide if they want you around or not anyway.
But I'm not talking about a cat either.

I'm talking about this.

Today the husband helped me get this beauty out of our very organized and neat and tidy shed (note the sarcasm) and put some gas in it, and then I got to work!! I do not have a big vegetable garden by some people's standards, but it is big enough for us. My neighbour gave me some wonderful weed killer to deal with the horrible weeds that set up camp in my yard, therefore, in my vegetable garden. After a week, most of them had curled up and died a horrible death. Please don't hate me, those of you who are organic. I've gone that route for MANY MANY YEARS, digging and digging and digging. I am 48 years old and my back wakes me up on a nightly basis. I do enough digging with my perennial beds and around my shrubs, without having to dig all the weeds out of my vegetable garden.

So I did dig a few things up because they were huge, even though they were dead, and then my best friend and I tilled up the garden going one way. Then I stopped for a bite to eat and we continued tilling going the other way. It looked like this.

This is also the first year that I am putting on granular fertilizer. Honestly, I have never done that! We kept backyard chickens for years and I have always had natural fertilizer for my garden, as well as compost and bagged manure from garden centres. However, I have stopped being a chicken lady and my source of fertilizer is gone. So... I have decided to try this out. My gardening results were disappointing last summer with NO (honestly, NO) tomatoes, poor peas, poor cucumbers, no beets... the only things that did well were green beans, pumpkins, and potatoes.

Then I took my trusty rake and raked the whole thing smooth. With wrangling my rototiller and raking my garden (yup, I am now sitting with a hot "magic bag" against my back as I type this) (Oh, and a glass of red wine!), I would like to introduce you to my second best friends.

For all the years that I have been a gardener, I have used gloves. There are some tasks that go better without gloves, but usually I wear gloves. Those times when I think, "Oh, I'll just grab my trowel and get rid of a few weeds," and an hour later I have blisters, I think, why didn't I just put on my gloves? Because I am one to always try to save money, I usually have those cheapy cotton gloves with grippy bumps on them. I usually go through a thumb in a few short weeks. Then I hold onto them and use them and get filthy, hurty thumbs. Then the mice eat through them in the shed over the winter. (the very organized and neat and tidy shed) So... lately I have been "treating myself" to good gloves. It is worth it. They are all leather, soft leather, and they fit well without seams that rub and cause more blisters. (Funny, some women treat themselves with spas or clothes or shoes... I am pathetic).

Lastly, I am quite pleased with my strawberry plants which I put in last year. I got maybe 4 strawberries. I actually watched a squirrel run across the lawn with one!! But now this year, they have sent off runners and there are lovely white blossoms. (No, they are not in nice, neat rows, just a big clump of them over on one side of the garden). But all I see is lovely sweet potential!!

Check out my rhubarb! (Still have bags of it frozen in my freezer, but who doesn't like rhubard, strawberry pie, or crumble??) (Mind you, I HATE stewed rhubarb, does something wierd to my teeth!!)