Does this rototiller make my ass look fat?

I hope so, ’cos if it ain’t the rototiller, it must be me. At least I’m not wearing a Tilly hat. In fact, Pat reckons my lovely straw chapeau makes me look like “a little old English lady”. I shall grasp on to the little part and ignore the old.

Yes, it’s true. I have finally rototilled a vegetable plot. When Kelly brings her rototiller round for me to use, she is astonished by the transformation in the garden. Sally is similarly impressed when she walks past as I’m tilling the ground. Music to my ears. I do feel as if I’m actually getting somewhere.

Roses blooming, bees buzzing, butterflies on the blackberry bush. All very much what I want in a garden.

When I finish the rototilling, Pat comes over with a couple of cans of beer to help me celebrate. And to give his opinion on whether I’ve levelled out the decidedly sloped area which is now the vegetable bed. (I fairly quickly give up on the idea of trying to level more area as this seems to be the only part of the garden not peppered with large rocks. As nice as it would be to have more level ground, I really can’t risk breaking Kelly’s rototiller.)

Ask Pat if he happens to have any hydrochloric acid. Not surprisingly this surprises him. He doesn’t, he tells me, have any plans to kill anyone, so he’s out of hydrochloric acid. I’ve asked him because I got my cousin Peter to resend the instructions he’d given me on how to check the quality of the soil: “Mix soil into a stiff paste with water, make it into a pellet and drop this into a glass tube or small bottle. Put a few drops of hydrochloric acid on to the pellet. If there is a reasonable amount of lime in the soil, effervescence will occur though it may not be visible so put your ear to the tube. If you can hear bubbling/hissing there's no need to lime the soil. If not, it needs lime.”

I explain this to Pat, who’s never heard of this test before, but can tell me from experience and living across the road that the soil will need lime. And, because he has lime left over from his own vegetable plot (and because he likes me, he adds), he offers to rake in some lime next week while I’m away and he’s watering the garden. We like Pat.

So today I’m off to Vancouver for a week to undertake another project: Turning the beige apartment in Burnaby into somewhere I wouldn’t mind living and getting Mike moved into it. Of course, the apartment won’t look fabulous until my belongings (for which there is almost no room on Gabriola) arrive from London next month, but just getting it painted some colour other than beige will help enormously. Even though this has nothing to do with Gabriola gardening, updates will follow in due course.

Before I head off to the mainland, it might be a good time to review progress.

I started here.


And now I’m here.


Not bloody bad, really. Pat on the back for me.

Will send Peter (my horticultural guru) an email before I leave, asking for professional advice on what I can still realistically expect to plant and harvest starting in July. Hopefully his list won’t be as overwhelmingly long as Rowan’s, though I fear it probably will be. Still so much to do.

PS Sadly, a quick check in with Peter has dampened my enthusiasm for square foot gardening, which he dismisses as a “gimmick”, so I will proceed the traditional route. Will at least save me money on lumber.

PPS The eagle-eyed and flora savvy may have clocked an error in previous postings.

Even though I knew when I was writing it that it sounded wrong, I have previously referred to the above plant, which grows in deep-rooted and annoying profusion around these parts, as sorrel. Sorrel, is of course, a herb. This stuff is salal. Much prized by florists because the leaves stay green long after the branch is cut off, it is a pain in the ass for everyone else.