Minding Gina’s Garden

After getting mine in winter shape. At our place, the wood’s been split and stacked in the shed, the retaining walls put in, and the Lumber Orphanage finished.

Over in West Marin, Gina Smith perfects the garden on her sunny, south-facing, ‘convex’ (as in: no hollows) acreage. She has the help of a couple of curiously industrious unpaid helpers (see below) who quite literally will work for food.

Down below us in the house, a passel of boys have Happy Childhoods (=make lots of noise) while us ol’ mudhens toil away, loving every grubby-fingered minute.
Yesterday, we uprooted a dozen or more giant chard to lay in a new bed of rutabagas (yes, those bulbous things that Eastern europeans subsist on in winter), rocket and kale.

Margit shoved the overfilled wheelbarrow up the hill as I picked up the fallen umbrella-sized leaves, then we’d fling everything over the fence, where three goats stood expectantly.

I wasn’t successful putting the gold-stemmed chard under my sweater to make off with unnoticed, but Gina said it was OK to keep one as a souvenir.