Category Archives: home improvements

Not Gardening in Eden

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Yesterday morning my daily Bible reading was Genesis, the creation story. It’s a very beautiful and mysterious story: the water was already there, it had to be gathered, there needed to be separations of many things. It never fails to move me and ignite my curiosity.

Especially yesterday, because after the Earth is full of plants and other things, dominion over them is given to the humans. I was thinking happy thoughts about the long line of connectedness with me putting in a garden, working with seeds and dirt, reaching back to God giving humans the first garden. That whole blowing it thing and the expulsion could wait. Give me my moment.

That moment was coming. Our friend Philip arrived to help, and he weeded one bed while I put up supports for peas in another. Then I went and got a truckload of dirt and compost to amend some soil; it took us 21 wheelbarrow loads to get it in the right places. By 2 pm, that 8 am “what a glorious thing to participate in” was more like “when is this going to be over.”

I doubt muscles in the Garden of Eden screamed “what the hell Lady” at Eve in the afternoon. I doubt their chickens decided eating new seed was better than eating grubs–which we were feeding them every time we found one. I know for a fact that Adam never had a blister on his baby toe from dirt getting inside his shoe and rubbing–they weren’t wearing shoes.

According to the story, at that time getting good food from the plants didn’t involve having to grow them yourself. Taking a line from Genesis, I snipped a bunch of fresh hosta shoots for dinner. Free food we didn’t grow, tasty for the taking. Philip, his partner Geoffrey, Jack and I sat down to last year’s carrots canned overwinter, the hosta shoots, and some nice Scottish Sausage patties Jack put together for us.

Go by mad world. Gardening may not be Eden, and my muscles may have the vocabulary of sailors this morning given the obscenities they are offering up with each move, but it was still fun.

Gang yir ain Gait

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Jack just makes it in time this week – –

The heading translates from old Scots as ‘ Go your own way’ or even ‘do it your way’.

So a gait or gate might be an actual physical barrier but often just a path or street or alley leading somewhere. In my hometown of Dunfermline there’s a street just outside the Norman Abbey called the ‘Kirkgate’ and at the Southern entrance to the town is another one called Nethergate.

Shifting to our backyard but still with a Scottish connection – –

Many of the crofts in the highlands have two areas of ground attached to the house – the ‘in-by’ and the ‘oot-by’. In other words the nearest patch (usually for growing vegetables), and the outer patch where a cow or a pig would be raised.

Our back yard is divided into an in-by and an oot-by. We grow tomatoes in raised beds in the inner part and our chickens live in the outer part where we also grow vegetables (no cows or pigs!). So we have a fence with a gate and that wooden gate was getting pretty old and saggy.

I started by putting two 4×4 posts in and hinging the old gate to one of them, but it still sagged and twisted. So it was time for a new gate to the oot-by! We debated and searched the local hardware stores but everything was very heavy and very costly. Then Wendy suggested using lightweight PVC pipe with plastic netting stretched over.

So that’s what we did. Wendy crocheted the netting onto the pipe frame using special string and we hinged it to the post with gardening twine stapled in place. So far it isn’t sagging but we now have to think how it will be more permanently hinged and how we’ll latch it.

‘We did it our way’ or ‘gaed oor ain gait’ – – –