Chores

This past week, I managed to get the garlic planted and mulched, one day before we received a dusting of snow. I thought I was late, but my not-very-exact notes reveal that last year I planted garlic on November 19. Previously, I planted nine cloves per square foot, but this year I gave them a little more room, in hopes of getting larger bulbs.

Today I spent about two hours outside doing this and that: putting away the lawn furniture, mulching the strawberries and asparagus with straw (note to self: one bale is not quite enough), transferring leaves donated by my neighbor from one side of the yard to the other, cartload by cartload, to build up the garden beds. My method is not very efficient, but all those trips added about 3000 steps to my Fitbit.

Sometimes I imagine my neighbors looking out their windows and wondering why in the world I spend so much time doing yardwork. Except for mowing, THEY certainly don't and don't want to. I could try to come up with some deep philosophical explanation, but the truth is much simpler: I just like it.