It’s Tiller Time

The best gift I ever got Susan was an electric tiller that she wanted one Christmas several years ago. She’s not used it once, but I’ve used it on several occasions to reinvigorate various stale patches of earth in the back and side yards.

Today was the latest example, with about 20 square feet of dense and dried-out clay in the backyard along the north fence. First I tilled that stuff into submissive nuggets, soaked it, then constructed something of a waterstop on the low end of the slope to prevent any wet stuff from flowing away and feeding the bougainvillea and palm tree.

This morning I tilled the area again which broke up the nuggets ‘n bits and made the patch almost presentably plantable, and then hit the local nursery and got a few bags of nourishing compost, which I poured out and mixed in with the standing soil, again with the tiller.

Lastly, I dropped 13 descendant seeds saved from last year’s sole harvested pumpkin (four of which were already sprouted and the rest in straight seed form, so that at present the patch looks a little something like this (click it for the bigger picture):

Technically I should of had this done about a month earlier, so it’s hard to say if we’ll have anything at all much less anything more than coffee mug-sized pumpkins by Halloween, but who knows. With a little luck maybe this patch will pumpkinize nicely.

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Will

Will Campbell arrived in town via the maternity ward at Good Sam Hospital way back in OneNineSixFour and has never stopped calling Los Angeles home. Presently he lives in Silver Lake with his wife Susan, their cat Rocky, dogs Terra and Hazel, and a red-eared slider turtle named Mater. Blogging since 2001, Will's web endeavors extend back to 1995 with laonstage.com, a comprehensive theater site that was well received but ever-short on capital (or a business model). The pinnacle of his online success (which speaks volumes) arrived in 1997, when much to his surprise, a hobby site he'd built called VisuaL.A. was named "best website" in Los Angeles magazine's annual "Best of L.A." issue. He enjoys experiencing (and writing about) pretty much anything creative, explorational and/or adventurous, loves his ebike, is a better tennis player than he is horr golfer, and a lover of all creatures great and small -- emphasis on "all."