Wednesday, October 8, 2008

A Long Wait Til Spring

I helped out my sister with some gardening over the weekend. She's planting down the bulbs now and hopes that they'll shoot up in the spring. She was very systematic with planning down what to plant - a very interesting system using alphabets to code every variety of bulbs she's got, from A to Za, Zb, etc.


Above, my sister looking at her mad system



Above, her madness all planned out on paper


We planted one 2-foot wide strip next to her driveway, which took about 3 hours. First, she wrote out each letter in chalk on a landscape fabric, then scored where the letters are so the bulb planter can be inserted to dig up the soil. The bulb planter is a really cool tool - you dig it deep into the soil, lift it up, place the bulb into the soil, press the release handle on the tool to release the soil that was dug up.

Above, putting the bulb planter to work

We worked til night with the help of some lights that looked like they were meant for construction (I felt like a construction worker for a while). Towards the end, we got a special guest appearance from a very hungry squirrel. After circling the potential buffet, it crawled into the drainage pipe and refused to get out. My sister and brother-in-law thought it was looking for a place to die. Apparently, this was not the first time they've seen this happen. I guess that's life in the suburbs!


Above, a squirrel that refused to get out of the drainage pipe

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The planting width is 3 feet!!! And let's clarify that I started two hours before your arrival, so you might have spent three hours, the job took longer than that! I am still aching.

Martha Fung said...

Hey, you should guest blog next time.