{"id":2604,"date":"2011-05-10T06:56:34","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T10:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=2604"},"modified":"2011-05-10T06:56:34","modified_gmt":"2011-05-10T10:56:34","slug":"making-my-bed-but-not-lying-in-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=2604","title":{"rendered":"Making My Bed (but not lying in it)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span>I needed more garden space.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 Of course, I always say that.<\/span><\/p>\n

My favorite exercise is turning over sod, then beating the soil out of the grass and weeds to make a new garden plot.\u00a0 I could be Johnny Flower-Bed, walking the country side making new gardens.\u00a0 The task satisfies, tires, fulfills.\u00a0 I’ve established quite a few garden beds in my time, almost all by hand.\u00a0 This weekend, I expanded the L shaped Lorelei in front of the house\u00a0 about a foot or so out along the length of the L,\u00a0 and three feet along the base.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Good-bye, grass!<\/p><\/div>\n

At first, digging under perfectly green, nice grass that never did anything to hurt you is a shock.\u00a0 It feels a little wasteful and destructive.\u00a0 Last year, I expanded the herb garden to the right of the front door.\u00a0 Here’s what I wrote at the time about my wife’s reaction to it:\u00a0
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I think she was shocked by my demolition of a portion of the front yard.\u00a0 A word to the wise: clear neighborhood renewal plans with the residents.\u00a0 After an impromptu Town Hall meeting with interested parties I veered the border back and ended up with a graceful curve, pretty, but not as much new space as I was aiming for.\u00a0\u00a0 I had transferred my whole herb operation to outside our apartment, (the better to easily snip fresh for cooking) and wanted room for it all.\u00a0 Actually, the space ended up being just about the right size.<\/span>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

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The finished product, already hosting pansies I moved to make way for mums.<\/p><\/div>\n

Grass can look good, but a bigger herb bed means more to use for cooking and eating, plus room for flowers tucked here and there.\u00a0 You can add thyme or basil to the soup, but not blades of grass from the front yard.\u00a0 And flowers make a much prettier centerpiece than sod.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason I expanded the Lorelei this weekend is to make room for beans and cucumbers.\u00a0 I’m planting beans here because bean beetles are a serious problem at Smith, and Jones is too small to make planting them worth a hill of … well, you know what I mean.\u00a0\u00a0 And cucumbers are vegetables that one day are cute youngsters full of promise, then before you know it they’re middle-aged geezers, overripe and seedy.\u00a0 I want to be able to pick them exactly when they’re just right.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ready for the hard part: separating grass from soil<\/p><\/div>\n

There’s a way to dig very deeply and bury the sod, grass down, under about a foot of garden.\u00a0 It involves digging a narrow trench, then digging a second next to it and turning that sod upside-down into the first.\u00a0 The decomposing grass will add fertility to the soil.\u00a0 I just removed the grass, tough work that would help anyone express some unresolved anger.\u00a0 You plunge your hand into the pile of overturned sod, pull out a big hunk of grass, then Whap! Whap! Whap! it on a brick or the garden fork until most of the soil is off, again and again until you’re left with a crumbly, soft mound of soil.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The finished product<\/p><\/div>\n

I enriched the new beds with rotted leaf mulch and horse manure.\u00a0 I didn’t want to wait for grass, a foot down, to decompose.\u00a0 Then the final part of the job, I lined up bricks to make a neat edge.\u00a0 Neat!<\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, I support digging under lawns for other reasons besides my love of gardens.\u00a0 Grass, though beautiful when well-tended, is a demanding plant that needs lots of fertilizer and water.\u00a0 Waterways suffer (the Chesapeake Bay in my own neighborhood) from the run-off of nitrogen-based fertilizers applied to acres and acres of lawns and golf courses.\u00a0 Too much of that overwhelms the water’s systems and causes serious problems.\u00a0 Also, water is a precious resource for our use, yes, but also to conserve.\u00a0 And finally, many older gas lawn mowers pollute, spewing noxious gases into the air.<\/span><\/p>\n

The bottom line:\u00a0 I wanted to plant more things so I enlarged my bed.\u00a0 A back-breaking (oh, was I sore on Monday!) but completely satisfying task.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I needed more garden space.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 Of course, I always say that. My favorite exercise is turning over sod, then beating the soil out of the grass and weeds to make a new garden plot.\u00a0 I could be Johnny Flower-Bed, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[69],"tags":[399,400,352],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2604"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2604"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3030,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2604\/revisions\/3030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}