The Garden Chronicles; Act One: The Clean up; Scene One: The Chopping and the Racking Pt. 1

My wife and I decided this week that we wanted to grow a garden in our back yard. This sort of spontaneous craving to grow veggies and flowers came from... wait I already said it was spontaneous, therefore by definition it came from nowhere. One moment, we’re just sitting there, the next we are in full blown planning and making lists mode. The moment the words, "what do you think about making a garden in the back?" and I was making objective points.

1. Check the shed that I never go into for tools that we may already have.
2. Clean up area.

And that was about as far as I got before I realized something. I've never fucking made a garden before! I've done the shitty cleanup work (weeding/racking), but I've never actually gone out and put shit in the ground to bring to life. I looked into my back yard.

At this point the home of our future garden was taken up by approximately 55 square feet of savage ivy, fallen tree limbs, the stubborn remnants of onions; piles upon piles of leaves and pine needles, and a fucking stump. There were no dilutions of grandeur here. This was going to take a few weekends (weather permitting). I used to be a yard slave - my father being the yard slave owner, and I've had my fair share of yard projects to tackle. When I first moved in with my dad in the summer of 2001, at the ripe old age of 13, he told me to look out into what was our back yard. I looked out of the backroom window. The entire fence line that separated us from the house directly behind was a savagely overgrown jungle. I looked at my father and I said, "So, what do you want me to do." - Famous last words.

"I want to be able to see my neighbors looking at me by the end of this month."

"This summer?"

"No this month."

"But, what about those trees?"

"I've got an axe."

Needless to say I knew what was in store for us long before we even went after anything with an axe or rake. I looked to my shed. Dear God I hope there is something useful in here. And there were several useful things in here. There was a garden rake, a lawn rake (yes there is a difference), a garden hose complete with a garden variety spray nozzle, a weed eater that I'm still not sure works, and a hatchet. Okay. I've dealt with less, but I knew I wasn’t going to attack the fallen tree limb with a hatchet so I started making a new list of things I would need to purchase in order to make this a little easier on us and a few things I knew we would need later:

1. An axe (I was raised with an axe and I'm not too keen on using chainsaws…)
2. Chicken wire and metal stakes to keep Ninja out of the garden once it was finished
3. Hoes x 2
4. Miracle Grow fertilizer (as in this is going to take a miracle)
5. Weed killer
6. Garden trash bags

That morning near 11:30 we stopped at Home Depot before going to the grocery store, to pick up the above listed supplies. We walk through the automatic sliding door entrance and we are immediately hit by an old but familiar smell, sawdust. It's a heavy sort of smell that tends to collect in the bottom region of your nostrils. It clings to the hairs and coats your lungs with the thinnest of dusty films. The smell alone makes you want to put on your oldest flannel shirt, chop down the closest tree, and use the wood to build your family’s home. It's the smell of the frontier. It's the essence of America. Okay snapping out of the man dream and getting back to the story. Now where the hells are the gardening tools?

We purchase everything on our list ($198), and made our way to the car. After hitting the Kroger's we get home.

I put everything from the car into the shed, rush to my bedroom, put on my shitty clothes (blue navy SEALS shirt, tattered black Adidas shorts, oldest pair of shoes I could find), and make my way to the back door. I walk into my kitchen to find my wife still putting away the food by herself. "Shit!" I thought, "Am I really that anxious to get outside and work?” Hell, yeah I was. I then hastily get the food in the fridge and cupboards to allow my wife the chance to get her crappy clothes on and then we were out the door.

First things first, the fallen tree limb had to come down. The limb wasn't fallen completely. The end of this limb was stuck about 1 1/2 inches into the ground and the base was nuzzling into the crook of a still living branch in the tree from whence it fell. I tried pushing the cast away from its living counterpart. Not a budge (I'm not that big of a dude, okay). So I decided the best way to get it down would be to chop this dead limb about 2 feet from the end that was stuck in the ground. This end wasn't so thick so a few good chops and it was splintered. The limb teetered and slid from the hands of its holder a couple of feet but did not topple. This time, the end of the branch was not touching the ground. So it was hanging suspended from the still living branch, with the point at which it was hanging, acting as the fulcrum. What did I think the brightest course of action was next? Fuck let's push it.

So I pushed, and it slid, this time unhinging itself and toppling over, much in the way that I wished it would have before. However, once toppled, it rolled up onto the curled portion of the base of the branch that was ripped from the tree. The splintered portion, which was at the opposite end, was at this point directly over my head and poised and ready to come crashing/smashing into my face. I did what I would like to call a gracefully awkward leaping motion - something that involved a leap to the left along with covering my eyes and neck - as this end of the limb came down and sprang back up and to the right. My wife said my face was priceless, which is a delicate way of saying I looked like I had shit myself.

After having narrowly escaped certain death, I proceeded to chop the limb into smaller more manageable pieces. About 20 minutes of axe hacking later and I was halfway done. I then asked my wife if I she would help me carry the bigger half behind the shed (seriously, I'm not that big of a dude).

Then came the racking. My wife did most of it. I will say this folks, my wife had, before this day, never really done yard work - aside from the occasional racking back were she grew up - but I'll be damned if she didn't do most of the clearing out of  the portion that we finished. I wonder if she'll be pissed, because after talking with a couple of co-workers it was brought to my attention that I could have used that weed eater to clear a lot of that mess out. Oh, well. She looked great while she was doing it!

I came behind and bagged all the pullings; the leaves, the pine needles; the onions, the baby trees, and those god damn Ivy vines. 

These, fucking Ivy vines; bastards! That is the only way to describe them. They tangle around everything and choke the soil and the wooden privacy fences and my garden rake prongs. This was probably why I cut the work evening short. I wasn't in yard slaving shape anymore. I couldn't hack it. Don't you worry though because I'll be out there next weekend. And this time I'll bring the weed wacker with me. I'm goin' in guns a blazen!

There is only one thought on my mind as I sit in my computer chair in my office tonight. So, that's where back muscles have been hiding the past five years... They were right beside my axe and my garden rake.

    

The Line of Deforestation