Putting Newspaper in the Garden: The Agony

So a few days ago it was finally warm and dry enough to till the garden. So Scott got the tiller out and gave it a tune up and then it wouldn't start. So he spent most of the day fighting with it and fabricating parts and swearing and doing arcane things to the engine. Finally he gave up and dosed the thing in carburetor cleaner and then for some reason it started right up. As long as nobody touched the choke.

Well, since victory was his he went and tilled the garden. Which meant that the next morning I was up and about and determined to get the newspaper cover down as soon as possible before the weeds had a chance to recover. Otherwise the garden turns back into a meadow and gives us the finger.

And nobody wants that.

So I gathered all the tools I would need, and of course a fuck ton of newspaper, and put down exactly four sheets. I know it was four sheets because on the fifth sheet my back went GERNT. Or something of the sort.

Then I had an adventure standing back up. And by 'adventure' I mean 'I had thrown my back out somewhat.' And by 'somewhat' and I mean 'thank the dear sweet lord baby Jesus I can stand up.' So I drug myself into the house and told Scott he was on his own now.

So the rest of the day I tried to help out. Although it was the kind of help that does not involve bending down, or kneeling or being that helpful. It was mostly a dull ache, up until I moved the wrong way and then my back would be all, OMG WTF FUCK FUCK FUCK ARRRGGGHHHHH FUCK WHAT DID YOU DO? ADFKSDHSHKHDSFHFDSH! And I would be all like, I DON'T KNOW I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY!

So that was fun.

Then I tried to fix it by getting drunk, but that super didn't work at work at all ever because I realized that falling face first into bed means that once the alcohol wears off there will be white hot pokers in your spine for ever and ever. Then the next morning I learned that sleeping on your stomach is the worst position ever for back pain. And by morning I mean 1am because there ain't no sleeping after that shit.

Luckily after a few days of not going to work or making money or getting shit done I feel a lot better. Yesterday was the first day that I could walk around and feed the pets and so forth without involuntarily yelling a whole bunch of random words like HUAAGH and AUUUGGHH and HOOOOAAAAYY.

Which is a big improvement really.

Today my back is very stiff but at least I can type things again. Also I am super thankful that I only got stuck on the floor once. Ha ha it's the little things. Also you know what's kinda cold? The floor. Also kinda dirty, but I have been unable to vacuum it due to horrible pain. Except today I probably could of but fuck it I am on vacation.

A pain vacation.

Pros: Great excuse for trying to read the entire internet.

Cons: Excruciating pain.

Eh, all in all I wouldn't recommend it. Just an FYI there.

Edging the Garden.

I called this part of my day edging the garden, mostly because I have no idea what I just did was really called. Also, I have really, really bad sunburn now. Anyway I spent the better part of today lining the edges of the garden with newspaper and swearing.

First off, because I am lazy and waited too long, I had to hoe the goddamned motherfucking grass back from the edges. Along with a bunch of other weeds whose roots appear to shoot straight to the center of the earth. Then I would slap some wet newspaper on that spot, shovel some thing on the top of it to hold it down, and call it done. Until the next section.

Of course that morning I had already been stabbed in the ball of my left thumb by a cherry tree, and had spent most of the previous night being woken up repeatedly by the dog because there was a thunderstorm. This involved him climbing into the bed with me, worming under the covers and then trying to dig through the bed and into the mattress which must have had some form of thunder protection I was not aware of. Of course this was highly distracting. Not only was I trying to sleep, but I knew Scott had an early morning for work. Unfortunately between the thunder and horrible ripping sounds from the center of the bed, I was not getting any sleep.

I ended up holding the dog in my office during the worst of the storm, when he alternated between shaking with fear and pacing around the room like an old British detective. Who was also a dog. Then I got the bright idea to check the weather and found out the storms were going to go on ALL NIGHT. Which is when I tricked Jack into running into his crate and then I shut the door and went to bed. Then I kind of felt like a dick.

So after thumb stabbing no sleep time, I gathered up my tools, a bucket of water and a crap ton of newspaper and hit the garden. Where I promptly got a blister on my right hand. You know, to even out the pain. After having all those thoughts about quitting, and thinking gardening is stupid and that weeds are the demons of the earth and that I wished that I had enough money to make someone else do this, I settled into a nice rhythm.

I would rake a section clear of ground cover, hoe out any weeds* I saw, wet the newspaper and lay it on the ground in a maneuver I dubbed, Garden Paper Mache. Well I was chugging along when I became aware of two things simultaneously. One, since it had rained, there were earthworms everywhere and two, my chickens really wanted to eat them. Except the only areas to get earthworms were in the areas I was raking and digging up. Which meant that for every three sheets I would lay down, the chickens would tear off one. Which meant I would have to shoo them away and fix it.

Which worked about as well as you would think.

The next part was pretty much exactly like one of those video games where you have to race around killing things as they try to get into your base. Except in this case my base was a bunch of newspapers and my enemies were chickens. So basically I played about five levels of tower defense in real life. With chickens.

Now I knew I had to get them out of there, but there was a problem. A problem in that all of the garden gates were damaged in the mega snow storm we had gotten and we have been unable to fix them yet because shit just kept on breaking. So I did the only thing I could do I went on an exploratory mission and brought back every stray roll of fencing wire I could find and then shove it up, under or across the gates.

Problem solved!

Except getting back into the garden was a pain in the ass and then I got lazy with the fence and a chicken got in and then I had to chase her back out and now they all distrust me and I had to jam metal T stakes through the wire to make half a gate because otherwise they would slip in through the bottom and then I would be fucked.

Then I was able to work in peace and I got it done while the chickens watched me from the other side of the fence and said stuff to me in chicken which I didn't really understand but I think was insults of some kind.

Which is, pretty normal around here, actually.

* Did I say any weeds? I meant all the weeds. All the weeds.