that was the previous week and had i thought i had caught up with everything that needed doing. what the fuck was i even on about? the old bugger usually grows pumpkins on the front patch of garden and when i offered to rotary till out there for him so he could get his pumpkins out his eyes lit up. he bounced out of his seat, grabbed an old pumpkin from the shed, whacked it in half with a machete and scooped its guts out. i don’t think he was expecting to grow pumpkins out there this year but that was why i’d cleared the weeds out and burned them. maybe he thought i was going to grow something else.
that was thursday, i had so much to do i didn’t get the seeds in the ground until saturday. thursday i mowed around the garden. sowed some parsnip and bush beans. then planted the 10 pumpkins i’d been growing on the windowsill. that old pigsty is going to have so many pumpkins rolling out of it. last year i didn’t have the seeds sprouted until mid december and this year they’re already half a foot tall. and it’s just november. the sun’s shining and i’ve got that massive pile of seaweed i buried in there as fertilizer. i’ve also got no idea why this makes me so fucking excited. oh hoo. pumpkins. so many pumpkins. i grew 26 last year. i’m aiming for 50 this year. why 50? that’s not important. i don’t even like pumpkins that much. eating them, anyway. but clearly i think about pumpkins a lot. anyway. with pumpkins you can grow one massive plant, prune all but one pumpkin off and let it grow until it’s huge. my brother thinks i should be that guy, you know, that weird guy always posing and taking awkward pictures with his gigantic pumpkin. and yeah, okay. he’s probably trying to take the piss but i don’t give a flying fuck. pumpkins, baby.
on friday i sowed some garlic and shallots. and sweetcorn. i’m pretty stoked with this patch of corn too, not quite at pumpkin or potato levels of stoked. but still stoked. we’ll see when they sprout. i also rotary tilled. when i finished with the rotary tiller i just flopped backwards and lay down for a bit. closed my eyes. there were angels beckoning and i was going towards the light until i remembered i hadn’t sowed all those potatoes yet so i sat back up. groaning. stumbling. encrusted in dirt like the risen dead. tilling soil that’s just soil is easy. tilling soil that’s more rock than dirt is… so much bouncing. two hours afterwards i still felt like there was an earthquake happening. i had to go home after that. i drank my first beer of the, oh, it’s not even summer yet. oh, well. i got pretty drunk and briefly considered drinking another one and calling it bed time. i should’ve. i would’ve slept through the migraine.
i went back on saturday and sowed all the potatoes. i think if you set all the rows of potatoes end to end it’d almost be as long as a rugby field. almost. maybe. at least half. anyway, it’s a lot of potatoes. i watered everything on sunday morning. now i can say i’m caught up with the gardening but i probably should have left it a few more days after the infusion. my brother and his family were here sunday afternoon, they stayed for dinner. did you know barbequed pumpkin is actually really good?
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