We have three gardens at the house. Our front garden, the patio, and the jungle wayyy in the back. I’ve been tackling them all little by little, and today I thought I’d put some time into the front. One of the reasons being trick or treaters MAY stop by our house next week and IF they do I don’t want to be the house with the ugly mud pit out front (even if that’s lowkey a Halloween vibe, scatter some tilted tombstones around and call it done). There’s not much I can do in a week but I thought at least I could smooth out the dirt nicely enough to assure our neighbors that we are in the process of recovery.

Years ago when I lived in Pittsburgh we had a similar square of yard behind the house that was almost as overgrown. I cleared it out by hand and leveled the ground easily. The plot I have now is not as willing to bend to my garden fork… I think it actually has bent the fork (sorry Andrew). When Andrew bought the house he said it was an absolute disaster filled with giant overgrown weeds (see above) and garbage and wood planks. The ivy had grown up the side of the house and invaded through the cracks in the window. Thankfully, he took care of all the big problems before I got there (thanks Andrew). So it was my job to pick out the smaller weeds still growing in mounds and pull up some dead roots. Oh my god I thought they would be easier than they were. It was like a carpet of tiny roots under the soil. There were little patches of invasive grasses that were holding steady in the ground and I had to cut circles around each one before I could pull them up. There were trunks from old trees that, luckily, were rotten enough to pull up on my own, but they had spread so far that it was a spaghetti tangle of roots to follow and remove. After a few back breaking days and a couple garden bins full of waste, I cleared out almost all of them. Enough that I could start the process of “tilling”.

The last time I had tilled a garden by hand with a garden fork I was 20 and in the best shape of my life. 28 year old Katy was not built for this. But the garden fork is free and a little more gentle on the soil, which is teeming with healthy worms. I don’t even know if it’s technically tilling, but I just give the soil a little aeration and am able to even out the loosened earth without disturbing it too much. Still though, with all those tiny roots it’s a big job. I’m pretty sure most of them are dead at this point and just holding the ground together so I wasn’t bothered about removing every last piece. Just break it up and smooth it out and move onto the next row. About halfway through I had to take a break, my back doesn’t love gardening the way I do. But it’s the perfect time to watch an episode or two of modern family, eat a little lunch, and start typing this fascinating post about me digging in the dirt.

Annnnnd I was done. Whew. It’s not perfect but it’s good enough for what I need it to be. I ended up having to saw off some big roots in the ground that i couldn’t pull out and that knocked the last burst of energy out of me. I think it looks pretty great from where we started. There’s definitely a line where the soil goes from a perfect loam to more of a clay, but I can be a little strategic when I get to the planting stage. Unfortunately, along the house there was a gravel path and a lot of the stones have slid into the dirt. It would be close to impossible to get them all out and separated. So maybe they will give us a little extra drainage in the clay. All in all the soil seems wonderful and I’m really happy with how tidy it looks now after just a few days of work, and all with hand tools. Not sure what the next step will be in this garden but it’s a little cleaner to look at for now! And I can lay on a heating pad and manifest my ability to walk tomorrow.

Katy