Because we have a nine-month growing season

K. and I spent the weekend putting in a garden!

We rented the world's worst rototiller:

We picked it up in Oxford early Saturday morning. We then went to Home Depot and spent twenty dollars on 20 forty-pound bags of topsoil and compost, seven dollars at Wal-Mart on seeds, and K. bought himself a pretty dandy and pretty blue wheelbarrow, as he'd been hankering for one.

Then we came home, and I picked up leaves and talked to my sister while K. spent THREE HOURS rototilling the vegetation-packed yard that we'd picked to be our garden.

I cannot emphasize what a superb job he did.

Sunday after church, K. went over to a friend's house and returned laden with free bamboo:

He then spent the afternoon making the fence that my heart had desired for the whopping sum of nothing, as he already had the screws holding the thing together.

There are no pictures of me because I rototilled the plot again, working in the top soil and compost that I dumped on it. Then I raked, leveled, and shoveled, making paths and small raised beds. It sounds easy but it took a long, long, long, arm-quivering time.

But:

We are both very pleased with ourselves and each other. However, lest you think we worked in blissful companionship, let's have a brief transcript of a few conversations:

K. : You want to listen to the same Cd you've been listening to for months?

A.: I hate Prairie Home Companion! We ALWAYS LISTEN TO IT! It's MY TURN!

blissful music-filled interval.

K.: You'd rather listen to nothing than P.H.C.?

A.: How do you not hear "Killing me Softly?"

K.: I can't hear a thing.

A.: FINE. (flounces off, turns music obnxiously loud and tracks dirt into the house.) Better?

Later:

K.: I think we should put the gate next to the hose.

A.: no. It should be next to the kitchen, for easy access.

Argument ensues, which I win, since I am clearly right-- the hose can go under/through the fence easily.

K.: Fine. You win, since I have a boss telling me what to do all the time.

A.: I am not your boss.

K.: Yes, Master.

A.: I AM SO GOING TO BLOG ON YOU.

And so on.