What Lies Below

Late this afternoon I took it into my head to take advantage of the fine weather and go out and mulch up some of the leaves on the vegetable garden beds.

Didn't take long to run the lawn mower over the ones on the quadrant closest to the house. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, and there might be wind, so it made sense to dig them into the soil right away.

Hmm. I do my math and each of those beds is around 50 square feet. Should have taken me forty-five minutes tops to fork the one over. Instead, thanks to opportunistic maple tree roots and other subterranean obstacles, it took more like two hours. Or more.

I suppose it only stands to reason that my biggest garden prep challenge each spring should be dealing with the tree roots fingering their way into the vegetable beds. After all, that's where the food and water are.

All right, fine, O trees. Do what you will during the summer, but if I find you past the cobblestone path when I'm digging the garden in March or April, you're getting your rooty fingers smacked. Or clipped, actually.

I tend to forget the tree roots. Silly of me; I have to deal with them every year. What I shouldn't have had to expect is this:

No, that's not a sunken tombstone. It's half a concrete paver that matches a lot of other concrete pavers I found in this part of the yard when I was first prepping the vegetable garden five years ago. What I don't understand is why I didn't find it before. Hey, haven't I been forking the soil here over every year?

Or maybe not. Maybe the volunteer lettuce last year and the biannual Brussels sprouts a year or two before that kept the fork out of this part of the garden.

Well, the paver's out now, and that has to be an improvement.

And this bed is forked, and some further leaf mulching was completed on the one opposite it.

It'd be jolly to get all four beds done soon. Maybe this year I'll be in time to plant some peas.