DIRTY WORK

Lots of people think it would be nice to work in a Garden Centre, surrounded by blooming flowers.  People often ask us if we need any help.  What they don't know that Garden Centre work, like gardening, is heavy, wet, dirty work.  Have you ever hauled around a long length of hose to water plants?  They are heavy.  Have you ever watered hanging baskets higher than your shoulders?  You get pretty wet!  Have you ever transplanted seedlings into pots?  You get very dirty!

We use gloves when we are working that way--cheap, thin, knitted gloves.  They are o.k. for most of the jobs we do.  But they get wet and dirty really quickly, so into the washer with them.  Then hang them out on the clothesline, because they take so long in the dryer.

Be sure you have more on hand by the backdoor, as you need lots of them!

On Tuesday I planted eleven rows of veggies in one of the garden beds: lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, beans, etc.  But I found I'd forgotten to order pea seeds.  I'll have to buy some today in town, because I really love fresh peas from the garden, and I even enjoy sitting in the shade on a hot summer day shelling peas.  I freeze some too, to use over the course of winter, even though it's possible to buy good frozen peas.

Yesterday I planted out a lot of onion seedlings.  They had been seeded into small containers and were ready to be separated.  In fact, the roots were quite tangled, and the little onions had to be carefully teased apart, very much like untangling snarled yarn.

With careful "jiggling" they came apart without tearing off the roots.

We have raised beds in the garden, but they are only about 18" tall.  I can't squat or kneel for as long as needed to plant these, so I went to the storage shed and found a large, fairly strong plastic pail, the sort a tree would come in, to sit on.  That worked quite well.

Some time later the task was finished.  The little onions were in a row around the periphery of the potato bed.

I hadn't worn gloves for this job, so my left hand needed a good scrubbing!

The rest of me needed some cleaning up as well.

The weather changed overnight.  Now it's much cooler and windy, so I'm thankful that the planting is finished for a few days.  Next week I'll plant the corn and the squash, which have also been growing in the greenhouse for a few weeks.