It started out jokingly

Much of what I share on social media is meant to be at least partially joking, but sometimes things later turn out differently. Like this week.

I decided that this past Wednesday was the perfect time to mow my lawns and do all the edges, too. It had been delayed (yet again) by rain, but the cool/cold temperatures had slowed the growth, so it wasn’t extraordinarily long. That doesn’t mean it was easy to do.

The edges are always a challenge because the line trimmer is awkward to use. It’s not particularly heavy, but the weight is carried by my forearms, which also control the movement. As a result, my arms get tired fairly quickly, and that’s true regardless of how dense the growth along the edges is, or whatever the weather’s been doing.

Mowing, on the other hand, is much harder when there’s been rain, especially when the grass is long, because moisture stays close to the ground for a long time. That makes the lawn much denser than it is when dry, and that can stall the mower if I’m not careful. This week, I often had to use force to push the mower through particularly dense patches—being careful not to stall the mower—and that, too, required a lot of strength centred on my forearms.

When I was done, I was physically tired in general, and my forearms in particular. I posted the joking status at the top of this post on my personal Facebook, and that was that. Until it wasn’t.

While I was mowing out front, I checked my letterbox and found a letter from Hamilton City Council. I put it in my back pocket, intending to put it inside once I was down out front. It stayed in my back pocket until I was completely finished. By then, it was a bit moist.

As I was sitting in my chair to relax and recover, I opened the letter: Another letter instructing me to look after the raingarden in my front lawn. I was not amused, but I also didn’t really care because I’ll get to it when I get to it.

The new letter was a little bit clearer than the one I received back in 2022, but still didn’t tell what what, specifically was wrong, still just like the 2022 letter, it said there were “issues” and they were “incorrect plant selection” and “not enough plants”. There were a few changes this year, though.

First, while last year’s frankly oddly amateur-looking letter (it looked like something printed from a webpage) was signed by a “stormwater compliance specialist”, this year’s was signed by the “Compliance Manager” for the “Three Waters Team”. This made me chuckle because the Hamilton City Council, like several others, opposed the previous Labour Government’s Three Waters reforms, which were meant to ensure that water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure and treatment were all adequately funded and met national standards. It became a campaign issue in last year's election and the current “Coalition of Chaos” three-headed coalition government repealed the law and basically told councils they’re on their own to fund it all (in my opinion; the Chaos leaders would no doubt dispute my honestly and sincerely held view).

This year’s letter also dropped the veiled threat that pissed me off in 2022 (“As this is a pilot programme, we will not be taking any action”). Instead, this year's letter merely said, “We ask that you keep this stormwater device regularly maintained so that it can continue to function well.” I think that them dropping veiled threats is why this year’s letter didn’t annoy me like the last one did.

Another difference this year is that the brochure was professionally printed on slick paper stock—a proper brochure—while what I got last year was just printed out on an office printer, which made the photos of the approved plants very difficult to see. I haven’t bothered to check if the text is the same, though, and only skimmed this year’s version without really paying attention. I still think I managed to work out what the plants are.

The larger issue is that what I always refer to as “The Damn Raingarden” annoys me just as much now as it did in 2022, and for all the reasons I said at the time (see the post linked above). This time, I thought I’d be clearer about the physical reasons I hate it so much, apart from the fact it’s, as I said in 2022, “ugly AF—it looks like a cattle trough (and it’s in a bizarre spot).”

The bottom of The Damn Raingarden is roughly 40 centimetres (just under 10 inches) from the top edge of the round concrete trough-like thing that contains the raingarden itself. My property slopes from the house down to the footpath, and that means that the bottom of the raingarden is farther away from ground level on the house side than on the street side.

Specifically, the edge nearest the house is nearly at ground level, so I need to sit on the ground and reach down 40 centimetres so pull weeds. That may not sound like much, but because the land is sloping away from the house, I also have to keep myself steady so I don’t topple into the raingarden. On the street side, the top of the rim is 25cm (15.75 inches) above the ground, so I’m sitting lower and don’t have to reach in as far, and the land has started to level off at the point so it’s easier to stay put.

All the other issues remain the same: I need to special order the plants (though winter isn’t the ideal time to do so), and I cannot find their required “hardwood mulch” anywhere in New Zealand. I’d planned on ordering the plants earlier and simply forgot. To deal with that, I’ll set a reminder on my phone to remind me when it’s time to plant. However, I decided some time ago that I’ll use ordinary bark mulch (which I’m almost certain the builder did, too). If Council insists on me using hardwood mulch, they can give it to me and I’ll use it. Otherwise, and since it’s at my expense, it’ll be ordinary bark mulch. Still, I’m not a total contrarian: I’ll “remove excess mulch” before adding new.

There’s actually another reason I’m so nonchalant about “compliance”: I’ve seen how few raingardens in front of other houses in this development are “compliant”, and some of them are far worse than mine. I will get to the one in front of my house, but it'll be on my schedule and at my convenience.

As if receiving a new letter of annoyance wasn’t enough, I apparently overdid it on Wednesday. I needed all day Thursday to recover, and, in fact, I’m not feeling 100% today, either. Oh well, at least the lawns and edges are done. With more rain on the way (again), it’s good to get that out of the way. I ought to be less annoyed with rainy days, too.

Better luck this time

There are a lot things I’ve learned about over the Internet, usable things and things that aren’t. This is one of those rare times it seems to be both.

Back in December, I made cream of celery soup for the first time, and I enjoyed it so much that I called it ”A kitchen triumph”. It’s the next thing I did that’s an example of information I learned on the Internet that was both usable and not usable.

Over the years, I’d seen many memes about how people can take the end of a bunch of celery and grow a plant from it, and this was often included in lists of plants that were the easiest to grow from kitchen cuttings. The photo at the bottom of this post was taken nine days after I made the soup, and, it turned out, that was the high point: Growth stopped after that, and it eventually started rotting.

When that happened, I thought I’d misunderstood the post I read on the Internet, because I planted the cutting in dirt. I decided I shouldn’t have done that, as I put the by rotting thing into the food scraps bin that Hamilton collects to take to a commercial composting facility.

A couple weeks ago, on March 14, I made cream of celery soup again. It wasn’t as good as the first time, mainly because the celery was dark green, and not as sweet as the first time. I also felt this celery was closer to being past its best, so when I took the end and placed it in water, like I did back in December, I wasn’t expecting much. I took the photo at the top of this post today, 13 days after I first put it in water. By that point, the first attempt was already failing.

Since I’d never done this before December, I didn’t know what to expect. The first thing I noticed is that stalks in the centre started to grow, alone with some leaves. The same thing happened this time, too, but it’s still growing and getting bushier.

The site where I learned about this said that doing this doesn’t usually produce celery stalks, and that it was better to think of it more like a herb plant, where leaves can be harvested to use as an ingredient. I never got that far in December—maybe I will this time?

At any rate, it’s just a bit of fun seeing what happens. I’m going to plant out my Vegepod with some herbs and winter crops to see what happens—that, too, is something I’ve never tired before. So far, I’ve had better luck sprouting the celery end this time than back in December. Hope4fully, the good luck will continue with my winter “crops”, too.

Tomato work

Vegetable gardening is a lot of work, with uncertain rewards. Depending on weather, among other variables, it may or may nor be worth the effort—specially financially. This year I decided to plant tomatoes again, and it was a perfect illustration of all that.

The year began with disappointment, when I discovered that blossom end rot had appeared on my tomatoes, the same thing that doomed my tomatoes in 2021. In 2021, I picked them mostly green and managed to get some usable ones, but so few that it just didn’t seem worth doing again. Lockdown in 2022 made it impossible to plant on time, anyway.

Planting tomatoes again this year, then, was a bit of a leap of faith, and while the blossom end rot seemed to suggest doing so was a mistake, it turned out that it only affected the first fruit. I suspect it may have been because I didn’t water enough at the beginning.

The next challenge came from the skies: All the storms we had in January and February. There was no damage to my property (or the tomatoes) from the storms, but each time I knew there could be other damage, and I knew I needed to act, and first did so after the Auckland Anniversary Weekend storms. Doing so created a new experience—and more.

I was facing a reality I know very well: Whenever there’s heavy rain, tomatoes may split (my mother told me that when I was a kid). It’s caused by the sudden glut of moisture, and the cells of a tomato’s skin can’t divide fast enough, so the tomato’s skin splits. When the split is horizontal, the tomato is usually fine, but when it’s vertical, it’s more serious, in part because it’s usually wide and deep, and insects, dirt, etc, can get into it and cause rot. After the first cyclone (Hale), one of my tomatoes split vertically, and by the time I noticed, it had mould in the crack.

My solution to the cracking crisis was to pick all the tomatoes that were even partly ripe. I did that to prevent them splitting (something that’s most likely the riper a tomato is).

It started to sprinkle again as I finished picking (including some that already had horizontal cracks—the photo up top shows that harvest and what the cracks look like). The cracks probably happened because of the constantly changing soil moisture, with periods with lots of rain and some that were hot and dry; there’s no way to know for sure.

I decided to first use up all the tomatoes with a split. Rather than cooking them into sauce though my usual method (more about that later), I’d slow roast them and then make them into tomato pureé. Technically, this was a tomato sauce that was crushed and sieved, and not a passata, which is made from uncooked tomatoes. I chose to do this because it generally intensifies the flavour of the tomatoes, and I knew that many of the tomatoes weren’t fully ripe.

So, I sliced the tomatoes in half and cut out the core and any parts that weren’t fully ripe (I’d already found that they were quite tough). I laid them out in one layer in a baking pan, brushed olive oil on them and ground some salt (which helps draw out excess water). I roasted them at around 110C (around 230F) for about two hours. Here’s the before and after roasting:

Next, since I don’t have a food mill, I pressed the cooked tomatoes through a strainer (the screen mesh variety). The mesh kept the skip and seeds and let the “good bits” through. When I was done, I put cling film over the bowl and put it in the fridge overnight—only because by then it was too late in the evening to use it.

I’d used passata a few times, but most of them are imported from Italy, and cost around 65¢ per 100g, though one made in Australia is only 54¢ per 100g. The bigger problem is that each bottle is 700g, which could easily be enough for two cooking adventures, however, once opened the bottle should be used pretty quickly. I generally only make tomato sauce one a week.

Awhile back, switched to tins of crushed & sieved tomatoes made in New Zealand. The tins hold 400 grams and cost only 50¢ per 100g. I think that this product must be cooked to remove water, since that’s common with tinned tomato purée. Real cooks and chefs would turn their noses up at using such a purée instead of passata, but I’m just a home cook on a budget, and it works well for my needs.

In the end, that tray of tomatoes probably produced around 600g of purée, and for less than I’d pay for the 400g tins (though I can’t be bothered to work out the precise cost, I’m nevertheless certain it was less than 50¢ per 100g). When I was ready to make my sauce, I took some more tomatoes, cut them up and softened them in the pot with the onion and garlic, before I added the purée and let everything cook.

Ordinarily, if I had ripe tomatoes in good condition (where I didn’t have lots of bits to cut out), I’d take a tomato, put in a pan of boiling water for a few seconds, take it out with a slotted spoon and drop it immediately in a bowl of ice water. This causes the skin to split (on purpose, so it’s easier to remove), then I chop up the tomatoes and start my sauce.

Without fresh tomatoes, I ordinarily use a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tin of the crushed & sieved tomato purée, and if I happen to have a ripe tomato or two, I’ll cut it up—skin and all—and put it in the pot. Kinda lazy, and probably not what I’d do if I was going to serve it to a guest, but when it’s just me? Speed and ease are valuable things.

I did a couple more harvests (after storms…), though I cooked them in a pot instead or slow roasting them because it didn't seem to make any difference. I got three meals out of doing all that pureeing, plus three lots (the equivalent of 3 cans) of purée are in the freezer.

There are probably still a few tomatoes left to harvest this season, weather, bugs, birds, etc., permitting. Even so, based on what I did harvest, I’d say I got around $8 worth of purée, plus maybe that much again in tomatoes I cut up for sauce or to have in salads or sandwiches. Let’s be (absurdly) generous and say that it was four time that—$32—but even then it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to cover my costs. The plants were probably only around $5, but there were bags of soil designed for tomatoes, bagged compost, a new tomato cage, some fertiliser—all of which added up to more than that overly generous $32. However, prices for food items have soared since I planted the tomatoes, so maybe I at least broke even? I probably would’ve if I’d been able to have more tomatoes fresh—but, then, I seldom buy fresh tomatoes, so is that really relevant?

It’s not all about costs, of course: It’s a lot of ongoing work to grow tomatoes, and I’m not sure the relatively low financial return justifies the amount of work, especially when I seldom buy fresh tomatoes. If there was some way I could better control the weather—like by growing tomatoes in a greenhouse—it might work better (less prone to splitting from too much rain, for example). But that’s not a viable option right now.

Next year, I think I may focus on stuff I actually buy and use, like salad stuff, and maybe things I can freeze, like peas and green beans—assuming I can be bothered at all. If I grow tomatoes, they’d be from harvested seeds and I’d have far fewer plants to look after. Right now, though, I’m not really thinking concretely about what I will (or may) do next Spring, though I’ll think about it before winter, probably. Part of the problem this year—in addition to horrible weather—was that I didn’t really plan. But how easy is it to plan when extreme weather may still be likely?

The bottom line—in this case, pretty literally—is that, no, growing tomatoes was not financially viable (in fact, it cost me money to grow them). My next step is to research to see what, if anything, is sensible to grow.

It turns out, though, that I found out that marigolds grow well at my house.

Tomatoes and me

For the past few years, tomatoes and I have had a fraught relationship. I’ve grown them many different summers, usually with great success, but here in Hamilton, well, it’s been a challenge. However, maybe, quite possibly, the tomato tide may be turning.

Yesterday afternoon, I inspected my tomatoes extensively for the first time since the stormy weather ended. It appears that (so far…) there's no more blossom end rot. This time, it really was only the "first fruit" that was affected. Hopefully. Of course, this saga may change again.

Last Tuesday, I shared photos to show what this “blossom end rot” affliction looks like. I said in that post that I’d harvested two tomatoes that weren’t ripe, but had the affliction, and added, “I’m trying an experiment: Will [the two tomatoes] ripen up a bit more, or will the rot take the whole thing before then? I don’t know, but I want to find out.”

The results are in: They ripened just fine (photo up top). The rot didn’t spread, and so last night I cut out the affected part, then chopped up the good part and cooked them as part of a tomato sauce I made for a pasta meal. The tomato was just fine except for the small bit at the bottom.

In that same post, I said that “I also picked a bunch of green tomatoes, ones that so far show no sign of rot, to see if they’ll ripen normally, or if the rot will appear.” So far, no rot (which is what I expected), and two of the tomatoes have now started to ripen. The largest one has imperfect skin, probably from being picked too early, so if it completely ripens, it, too, will become part of a cooked tomato dish of some sort.

My lessons so far are, yes, the green tomatoes do seem to ripen without developing the rot, and also that the rot affliction itself may have passed. I need to make sure I give the plants plenty of water (when it’s not raining all day…), but it seems that the crop will be good after all. Maybe.

It’s good enough news that I’m now seriously thinking about how I might change things for next year, which is quite a big turnaround for me. I’ll also plan how I use my Vegepod more deliberately: It’s doing very, very well, but I have too much of some things and not enough of others. Live and learn.

I only revived growing tomatoes in 2017, after a break of many, many years. In 2017, I planted some tomato plants I raised from seeds I took from some supermarket-bought tomatoes, and they were very productive. Nigel had been largely indifferent to me planting tomatoes—until they started to deliver.

The next season, he was much more interested, and we planted store-bought plants. That crop was the most productive of them all, producing tomatoes into winter. Nigel was thrilled, and even shared a photo of the winter haul on his own Facebook page. I have no doubt that if he had lived, he’d have been even more involved in gardening the following season; he died around a month before it would’ve been time to plant for the 2019/20 season. I planted nothing, of course, and shifted to Hamilton in January, 2020, around the time the tomatoes would’ve started producing.

Clearly, for me something as simple as gardening can carry a lot of extra weight. Even so, the whole reason I began this again was that I like growing my own food, and that’s still what matters to me. I definitely wouldn't say that gardening is a passion, but like so many other things, I think it's interesting and fun, though not something I feel driven to do.

My hopes for this year’s tomato crop have revived. Maybe my future in growing them has, too.

Tomato data

Last week, I talked about my first disappointment of the year, the fact blossom end rot had returned to my tomato crop. I thought maybe I should show more clearly what I’m talking about.

The photo up top is of two tomatoes I picked Sunday. They’re not quite ripe, obviously, but if you turn them over (photo below), the rot is obvious.

The unaffected part of the tomato is perfectly safe (and normal), even if it doesn't look like it, but the tomato also isn’t completely ripe, so it’s not at its best. Because of that, I’m trying an experiment: Will they ripen up a bit more, or will the rot take the whole thing before then? I don’t know, but I want to find out.

I also picked a bunch of green tomatoes, ones that so far show no sign of rot, to see if they’ll ripen normally, or if the rot will appear. I can’t remember for sure, but I think that two years ago the green ones eventually ripened without rotting. Now I’ll know for sure.

These small experiments will help me make an informed decision over what I do (or don’t do) next year. Will I try again, or will I just give up entirely? This will help me decide what to do.

Damn raingarden

The dual photos above and below are “before and after” photos of today’s project: Phase One of dealing with the damn raingarden in front of my house. Phase Two will involve some replanting and other maintenance work. I hate everything about this, not the least that I have absolutely no choice, nor a say.

The raingarden is something that Hamilton City Council requires for new housing areas in the city, and my house is in such an area. They’re intended to catch stormwater runoff from houses, giving it a chance to be absorbed in the ground through the raingarden or, if rains are extra heavy, to at least help hold it back before it gets to the stormwater system, and then heads toward the sea.

To be clear, I think the idea is great, and it will help reduce the amount of storm water that enters the stormwater network and, hopefully, the water that does will be (at least somewhat) cleaner than it otherwise might be. The issue for me is the burden it puts on homeowners: Hamilton is essentially outsourcing part of its stormwater management to homeowners who have to maintain their raingarden to Council’s specifications, and without any sort of support or compensation.

Here are my specific objections. First, I pay the same rates (similar to property taxes in the US, though different) as would be paid on a property similar to mine, but in a part of the city without raingardens. At the same time, I’m entirely responsible for maintaining the damn thing. That means I need to get down on the ground and pull the weeds—frequently. I’m supposed to put in fresh hardwood mulch every year, and “remove excess mulch every few years”. I’m supposed to trim/thin the plants, and replace them from to time—and I’m not allowed to change the species of plants nor to mix species (apparently only five plant species, all natives, are allowed, even if they’re ugly). All of that is on me, at my expense.

Like I said, raingardens are a great idea—on Council land and maintained by Council. It’s not fair for them to place the burden of maintaining the things onto someone who happens to live in only a certain part of the city, and also requiring them to donate their money and time and labour to the city; it should be up to me to volunteer my labour or to whom I donate my money.

At the moment, I can get down on the ground (getting back up again can be a challenge…), and I have to get down on the ground because the bottom of the thing is probably around 20 or 30cm from the ground level (my front lawn is a slight slope). If I still live in this house in my old age, I’ll have to hire someone to maintain it for me—at my expense, of course.

The damn raingarden, right in front of my house, is also ugly AF—it looks like a cattle trough (and it’s in a bizarre spot). The builder did the most absolutely basic, cheapest, bare minimum required, while better builders make them at least reasonably okay looking. But, then, the name-brand home building companies are big for good reasons, and attention to detail is one of the reasons. The ugliness isn’t Council’s fault, obviously, but maybe they should impose some sort of minimum design standards so they don’t look so gawdawful.

On the day I was going to have my pseudo-Thanksgiving dinner, I got a letter from a “stormwater compliance specialist” at Hamilton City Council. The letter informed me that my raingarden had been inspected by Council and there were “issues”, specifically, “incorrect plant selection” and “not enough plants”. No specific information was given to tell me what, precisely, they meant. Poor communication seems to be one of Hamilton City Council’s most notable attributes.

The very next paragraph began, “As this is a pilot programme, we will not be taking any action.” That sounded like a veiled threat to me, and referring to an enclosed poorly-written brochure wasn’t much help—but it was the first time in the nearly three years since I signed the contract that anyone has given me any information on what I’m supposed to do with the damn raingarden. So… that’s, progress?

Here’s the thing. As I’ve made clear, much as I think they’re a good idea (on Council land), I hate, loathe, and despise the raingarden on my property. However, I also do my damnedest to comply with laws and regulations, no matter how pathetic, stupid, unfair, or infuriating I think they are. In this case, my antipathy meant I wasn’t in any hurry to comply until that letter arrived.

Instead, I was more focused on the back part of my property, which was arguably even more neglected than the damn raingarden. And then the rains descended, and I wasn’t able to do anything outside—but the weeds sure got a lot done. The damn raingarden has long been plagued by convolvulus, a viney, fast-growing plant (the species includes morning glories and sweet potatoes)—and all the rain helped it grow even faster, quickly covering the entire thing. As soon as the weather broke, I planned to deal to the damn raingarden, and today the stars aligned.

I removed the weeds, including the runners that had wrapped themselves round and round the inside of the base. I filled a black rubbish bag with everything I removed, and that concluded Phase One (that bag is sort of a pre-composting; when it starts to break down I’ll put the contents—by then much smaller—in my actual compost bin).

Phase Two will involve re-planting, replacing dead plants. The builder planted three plants, which spread out over time—and then two died (maybe during the drought-like summer conditions?). I thought I’d have to dig them out, but today I tried pulling some out, and it turned they were easy to remove. Before I do that, I though, want to find the plants (the dead plants’ shade should discourage weeds in the meantime). I also have to find “hardwood mulch” (all of what I’ve seen in home centres is pine, though I suppose I may have just missed it). This all became a thing a little over a week ago when that letter arrived, and it was the very last thing I needed at the time. As I said in my post about Thanksgiving:

I had a demand made of me that was, at that moment, the “last straw”. I’ve been trying so damn hard to make progress around the house, outside in particular, and it’s been extremely difficult for a lot of reasons. Today I felt as if it was all pointless, that I was shoved back a hundred miles from the start line. Crushed, I was also livid, and I found myself swearing profusely if, say, an inanimate object fell over in the middle of me doing something.

I felt like all my hard work had been pointless because it suddenly wasn’t good enough. With that demand from Council, on top of other household work I’ve not gotten to, and the things the builder did wrong that I now have to deal with, all of that, in that moment I deeply regretted buying this house, and even moving to Hamilton (that was the part that passed the quickest, I might add: I was really just angry with Hamilton City Council).

However, as I also said in that post, “I talked myself off the ledge, and I was aware that Nigel could always do that—but even more aware that none of this stuff would be happening if Nigel was still here.” And that’s the short version of why I was so upset because of that letter. Still, I pushed past it, and today I began to do the work that Council requires—though even without that I would’ve got to it sooner rather than later.

I’ll have more to say about this when I get to Phase Two, and maybe my perspectives will have changed. But I’ll still hate that damn raingarden.

This photo is from the opposite side the photo up top was taken from, basically uphill from that one and looking down toward the street. The plants in the right foreground are dead.

Update – January 11, 2023: A week or so after I published this post, I found a company I can order the plants from, though I didn't because of the holidays. This was a good thing, because I remembered that this is the wrong time of the year for me to plant (I need to wait until it's close to autumn). This will give me some time to see if I can source them locally. I still haven't been able to find "hardwood mulch" anywhere in New Zealand. All of which means that "Phase Two" probably won't be until late February or early March.

An unexpectedly easy job

It’s not easy for me to get projects finished (obviously), but sometimes it’s completely understandable. This past Sunday, I finally accomplished something that’s been on my to-do list for about a year, and it was one of those projects that I couldn’t easily do by myself. Or, so I thought

The VegePod raised garden bed I bought two years ago had been stuck in the ground for about a year, and it looked awful: It happened because the wheels were on the ground, not on a hard surface as it’s supposed to be, and the weight of the thing caused it to sink into the dirt, where it got stuck (it was too heavy for me to pull it out). Weeds then grew underneath, and later, when the cover got askew from strong winds, weeds grew inside it, too. Because I couldn’t move the VegePod, I couldn’t mow underneath it as I did that first summer. I also couldn’t get the weedeater underneath it, though I tried as best I could.

This all happened mainly because I didn’t use it all last year because lockdowns were at the wrong time, and that prevented me from buying plants. I actually tried starting some seeds, but we had a spring storm with strong winds that blew the cover off—and all the pots with seeds onto the ground, dumping out the contents before they even had a chance to germinate. I gave up.

I knew I wanted to use it this year, but I also knew I wouldn’t be able to plant it out until I moved it. I made an elaborate plan for how I could do that by myself: I’d put a large plastic sheet on the ground, dig out all the dirt (to make it lighter and possible for me to move it), and then, I’d move the VegePod (assuming my plan worked and I could get it unstuck…), and I’d put put all the dirt back in it.

My first task was to remove all the weeds inside under the cover. Then, my next task was to start my elaborate plan—but I’d gotten a late start and I was a bit worried about how long it would take, and how physically exhausting it might be. So, I thought I may as well try moving it first.

I rocked it back and forth, lifted each corner in turn (trying not to overuse my back muscles), and I got the thing free! I pulled it over to my patio (which is cement), rolled it where it’s going to go, locked the wheels, and then went back to clear the weeds that had been under it.

After that year or so of undisturbed growth, some of the weeds had big woody clumps at their base. I pulled everything I could by hand, then used the garden fork to leverage the root clumps out of the ground (I’m composting all of that, of course). I’ll mow the lawns later in the week, then sow some grass seed at that spot.

Now that it’s moved, I can plant the raised bed—although it already has some thyme growing, I noticed. As it happens, the Labour Day holiday weekend, which is this coming weekend, is traditionally when people plant their gardens for summer (although it’s actually any time before the end of October that people shoot for; the holiday weekend just gives them an extra day to work on their gardens).

In my case, I also have to clean up my patio itself and remove the weeds growing around it, but those jobs are much easier. Planting out my gardens—including the hedges I never managed to get planted (except for one) will be a big job, but even it will be easier than trying to move that earth-locked VegePod.

This project took time to figure out because—not for the first time—I really didn’t have anyone I could ask to help me (I rarely ask for help on projects, anyway, so that I’m more likely to get help when I absolutely can’t do something myself, but this particular time there was no one available). It was also delayed because I needed to figure out where to put it. I knew it had to be on a hard surface, and I thought about putting down some pavers—but where? In the end, I decided to put it at one end of my patio, which is 8 metres wide by 2.6 metres deep (from the house to the edge). I don’t actually use the patio, so giving up one end for gardening won’t inconvenience me. Still, I can always move it somewhere else later on if I want to.

The important thing to me right now is that the worst of my outside jobs is done—finally!!!—and that makes me very happy. Now, on to the next one(s).

The photos up top are the VegePod before I started the project, and below is the spot before I cleared the weeds and after. The single photo shows the the VegePod after I took the cover off, showing the weeds growing in it as well as under it.