Nope…  it ain’t pretty. Lots of mud and dirt.  If you look closely, though, you can see that I’ve been making pathways.

During the seven years we’ve lived here, we’ve grown vegetables in our sideyard in lots of different ways.  Sometimes we have long rows of certain vegetables.  Sometimes we plant in patches.   Our pathways between the sections have been fine in May but impossible to navigate in July.

This year we’re going to sculpt the sideyard into semi-permanent sections so that we can grow crops more intensively and rotate them more sanely.   Our paths will be wide enough for wheelbarrows and big tubs.

Today I shoveled out a pathway into the garden at the lower end of the sideyard.  I moved all of that dirt into a big  (10′ x 3′ )mound in the distance that will become a new semi-permanent planting bed. 

There’s more work to do here, but I’m proud of myself for keeping up a steady pace of shoveling and moving dirt for two hours this afternoon.  Before lunch I worked on reshaping that perennial herb bed on the right.  You can see a cement platform just beyond the fence, and that’s where the chicken coop will go.  Just today David went to get some wood for that project.

The mood here at Curious Farm is a little cranky and overwhelmed.  David has been grumbly and unsatisfied all day.  I was okay most of the day and worked hard, but then I crashed this evening after a frustrating trip to Costco and after Eloise said, “Oh great…  another boring dinner!” (Because, really, after shoveling all that dirt, I wasn’t in the mood to make dinner, but I made it anyway, and I get attitude?)  So now I am cranky, too.

I’m looking forward to it staying light longer in the evening.  I think it would have done all of us some good to get back out there after dinner.