I kept looking for this post until I realized it was not in this blog, but in the last blog I had (now locked). But I carried it over so I could show you the garden when I first dug it. That was when we moved here from New York last summer. And I dug that one bigger, and dug another smaller one, raked it all nice, took out the pine needles and dog bones and such. Laid some topsoil on top.

I didn't plant things in time. The sunny season ended. I thought the Winter would protect my nice dirt plots. But I had not gardened in Oregon before. I didn't know bulb plants and clovers and such would grow all year! It doesn't really frost here like in upstate NY. It just rains and rains and rains and rains and rains until your skin turns the color of a soggy dead earthworm and your heart begins to melt out of your sleeves and make puddles on your keyboard.

So the clover took over. (Groan). And what a fine, watercress type mesh of roots they dug into my fresh, fertile bed of soil! So I had to take them down.

I felt bad! I was just teaching my daughter to wave at plants..well I know it sounds silly, but I don't have time to go into it (I have to run away from my post and hide outside in the sun AGAIN!) but it was a way of introducing the idea that they are not our objects, that they live.

And here I was, plant-murdering! My daughter was upset. But I think it was because she has always hated loud machines. I think in her last life, she battled the Robot horde that we are now unleashing upon the world (did you think "last lives" work in a linear fashion?) She always reacts to grindy, enginey sounds. Not well.

But like any stout flower warrior, I forged on. If you really want to grok that texture on my ankles (actually on my stand-in's ankles, I never appear in my own self-portraits), click that image and groove on the superhuge version. I know you will feel drawn to touch the screen, but please resist.

And yes, after I mowed them down, then I tilled it by hand, turned it over, raked it, carried all the slain clover to their...i want to say watery grave, but that's only because i love the sound of the phrase. The Grave of the Clovers was anything but watery. More "sunny" and "crispy."

Now, I must ditch, foolios. Take it easy on yourselves. Get some of that sun, that wind, that beautiful blue sky. It will do you good.