Toiling toward treats

A veggie patch is an enigmatic and emotional thing, to be sure. You feel passion for it when you begin, frustration toward it as it struggles to grow, hatred for it as pulling weeds and methodical watering become your obsession, and finally joy as you harvest something from your own backyard.

Lemme tell ya.. I'm deeply in the frustration mode.

As lush as my yard may appear to passersby, it is very hard to get a lot of things to grow in dusty Australian soil. It requires feats of engineering and somehow training water-loving plants to live without. Ah well, such is life. But boy did we put our effort in this past weekend. Close to ten hours of work combined on the two days. We took last night off, understandably. But I'm very proud of what we both accomplished.

Ryan welded together the tomato scaffold I dreamed up and, with his guidance, I installed our homemade drip-irrigation system. Other tasks for him included hacking, chopping, and clearing a ton of bramble and bougainvillea, burning brushwood, and mowing out the spot where we're putting the chicken run. My other tasks were building/prepping the Three Sisters mound (Native American garden type that co-plants corn, climbing beans, and squash/pumpkin), prepping the broc and cauli patch, and feeding the tomatoes and peppers. Ugh! The two of us planted our new herb garden too!

The bane of my existence, right now, is our lettuce. I just can't get it to sprout! Spinach does beautifully for us, but this is the second time lettuce has failed.. once as seedlings, now as seed.