Saturday, September 06, 2008

Man Magnet! Or, the Troy Bilt Barter System


It is so nice to have a man around the house. Or, two... or, three... or four! Let's file this under the "Where were you when I needed you?" column...

I tried hard to sucker somebody into putting my new rototiller together when it first arrived.

No takers ~ so, I ended up doing it myself. It was easy, though I nursed a little grudge the whole time I worked on it.

Then I fired it up and began to tackle The Big Weedy Disaster (aka half acre of sage brush that is soon to become a wildflower garden.)

A quick 15 minutes later, my work was done!

Mostly because my backyard looked like a very familiar sitcom:

They were literally standing in line waiting for their turn to till my soil.

And, it's been that way ever since. Tall, short, fat, thin, slightly balding or pretty hot... the noise of my Troy Bilt tiller is the call of the wild to neighbors of the male persuasion.

I get all excited when the phone rings thinking somebody wants to invite me to dinner. But, mostly they're just wondering if they can borrow the Bronco.

The moral of this story? If you want more help in the garden, invest in a big, noisy machine. I sit on the deck and sip iced tea while they do battle with my hard packed soil.

Tilling a new garden may feel a little daunting but I've found it to be a good way to eliminate years of future headaches.

We tilled this section twice. First to loosen the hard-pack. The second time we tilled in compost so it could begin the magical process of evolving into good garden soil.

"You did a pretty good job of putting this together!" so says my condescending neighbor. (Yeah, well, thanks for nothin'.)

* Wild Mallow (orange,) Sego Lilies (white,) Geraniums (pink,) Cactus (fuschia,) and Bluebells.

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