Oh, my poor aching body!  I’ve been working on my insane gardening project and it’s nearly killed me.  I started innocently enough the other day by jauntily walking down the path to the garden.  I picked up a shovel and placed the tip on the ground, then attempted to push it into the ground with my foot.  The shovel skewed this way and that, and the end went in about an inch.  I realized that I was trying to dig through dirt the consistency of cement.

The ‘dirt’ is actually sand filled with various sizes of rocks, some the size of my head.  Where the six dump trucks of so-called soil went that were delivered I have no idea.  It appears to have mated with the existing gravel, spawning a field of hell for the would-be gardener.  I can’t believe the early settlers had to work through this.

On Wednesday it took me about four hours, but I managed to remove all of the gravel from one of the beds.  I had sweat dripping off the end of my nose as I carted the wheelbarrows full of gravel to the side and dumped them.  Once the bed was emptied to a depth of about one foot, I had to go up and down, up and down the steep path to get the decent soil.  When I had the bed filled with that, I got out my bedding plants and started the fun part.  Oh man, when those tomatoes are ripe….

So now I have a greenhouse, and three beds filled with tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cabbage, lettuce and cucumbers.  Three beds left to go, and then next year we can start on some landscaping.  Don Burnett suggested some dwarf trees, so I’ll enjoy looking into that.  For sure, I’m thinking an apricot tree would be wonderful to have.

One would imagine that physical labour would burn off an awful lot of calories.  And I suppose it would, if one didn’t have the appetite of a large draft horse.  Plus, doing that kind of work makes it all seem perfectly legitimate.  Yesterday I was lined up at the till at Lakeview Market, when lo and behold a box of cordial cherries caught my eye.  Usually only available at Christmas, yet here they were.  I took that as a sign, and last night easily ate the whole box.

So this morning’s agenda includes fitness, then some marketing, and as a reward, a very large lunch.  I’ve been forcing myself out to winery gift stores, and am waiting for a couple of them to get back to me.  The fact that some stores don’t even bother to reply irks the living daylights out of me, but what can I do?  I can only wait until I get discovered and my limited product is in wild demand.  I can feel that this moment is just around the corner.