I was getting a little silly and hoping that RDC would call me in for dinner by shouting "Oh, C.K. Stanley Yelnats," but he does not live his life quite so much by "The Philadelphia Story" and Holes as I do. What I was doing, not that our lot is big enough to require shouting, was putting all the dirt back in the older vegetable frame. I had first taken it out, shovel and hoe, and then begun to put it back, rake and sieve.
I never put the garden to bed this winter, and by this morning it was all over weeds which have probably sapped its nutrients. I hoed out stuff that I call chicory and spurge but whose actual names I know not. I shoveled and shoveled and finally realized I was in the ground below the frame: more than a foot deep.
A while ago I wanted to build myself a sifter, a sturdy mesh nailed to a reinforced wooden rectangle that would fit over the wheelbarrow: throw gobs of stuff at the wheelbarrow, and catch good stuff. That never materialized, though in my more determined moments I have been known to use such a mesh without benefit of frame (which might be how I go through suede-palmed gloves so fast). This spring I bought myself an English Steel Sieve With 1/2" Expanded Metal Mesh, which is nearly what I wanted but on a smaller scale.
So I sifted the garden. I cleaned the house, or some of it, and by noon I was outside. I worked until dark, accumulating a pile of clumps and pebbles and roots and shrinking the pile of dirt, and getting admirably filthy. I took a few breaks for water and to do backbends (I theorize that turning my back momentarily concave will undo the strain of hours of convexity), but not to eat.
When I ceased for the evening, I shoved my filthy hooves into my bluchers to get inside and to the shower. In the shower stall, I toed off the bluchers and doffed everything else, and sat on the floor, completely done in. A few minutes later RDC asked what part of the chicken I wanted. "Half."
I am going to need to break down all the chunks I piled to one side in order to fill the frame back up, even with the compost-loam I sifted in. The newer frame looms yet untouched, but at least it's smaller.
Sometime soon RDC is going to rent a rototiller to take out the remaining grass on the south side. I suggested doing only half the south "lawn" at a time, because I can conceive of manually tilling half but not whole. Nah, he said, he'd rent a machine to do it all. I think I am going to ask him to do the north side of the path, too. It won't do the cherry sprouts any good, but if he keeps the machine very shallow it shouldn't harm the actual tree roots irreparably, I hope. I'll lay groundcloth and mulch against bindweed this year, and perhaps next year expand the bishop's weed or even the zoysia.