A day of gardening leaves head spinning

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This, dear reader, is a nearly accurate account of what I did last Sunday.

Nearly accurate, you query?

I wasn’t exactly running about with pen and pad in hand tracking my movements. Therefore, I may have mixed up which event occurred when, as in I might have snipped before I squashed or vice versa.

Rest assured that it will scarcely matter in the long run.

The end

It was just me, the loppers and a swarm of mosquitoes.

The moon was rising over the birches across the field, and there was I, tired and achy with a bug net on my head and two gardening aprons tied around my waist to hold sundry tools.

I was pruning deadwood off the forsythias.

I also was talking to the forsythias, mostly a “whoops” here and a “sorry” there as I trimmed a branch that might have had more life than I thought. But the whole thing was such a tangled mass that I couldn’t always tell which branch led to which tip.

A lot like life. Or at least my day.

The beginning

It all started with the whacking of weeds with the trimmer, and I wondered if I could find the loppers to prune the forsythia while I was admiring the fine bloom on the yellow flag iris. I couldn’t find the loppers, of course, so I hauled out the wheelbarrow to change soil in three whiskey barrels so the last of the annuals could be planted.

On my way to the third barrel, I stopped to check on the melons and cukes.

Curses!

The cucumber beetles had emerged from nowhere before I could get the row covers over the plants, which I blame squarely on the rain. I squashed as many beetles as I could find before I fumed my way to the last barrel.

Which was a watery soup.

I pulled some weeds instead, then wandered off to snip the tops off the garlic. I wandered back and heaved the barrel onto its side to drain.

I had but one thought: The cucumber beetles had to be stopped.

Off to the barn I went to find my sprayer and the bottle of hot pepper wax solution.

Armed, I made my way back to the vegetable garden, priming the sprayer’s pump as I went.

Some beetles fled, but most just dropped. Those I squashed.

While the spray dried, I set up wire hoops and then gently chased off one of the baby squirrels so I could retrieve my box of row covers from the shed.

The wind had picked up, so my sister – who had had the loppers all along – helped stretch the covers over the mixed melon row, the cucumber row and the squash row.

I decided I ought to plant the gladiolus bulbs while I was there, and I put in a few of the onion sets just because.

That done, I went back to the now well-drained barrel, took out the old soil, added new and set the plants.

While I had been snipping the snips of the garlic tops about the fruit bed behind the barrel, I had noticed that the asparagus tops and the walking onions had tipped. I found some bamboo stakes, went to the barn to find the twine and then tied up the works so they wouldn’t interfere with my strawberries or the new lingonberry trio.

I returned to the barn to get the new whiskey barrel and then headed for the two rotted cedar barrels holding my chives. After digging out the chive clumps and removing the old barrels, I wrestled the new barrel into position.

It was then I heard the call, but I couldn’t let opportunity pass me by, so I took the wheelbarrow with me to dump it before stopping to get new bags of soil and compost before responding to such a plebeian matter.

The middle

(a plebeian matter)

I ate dinner.

The beginning of the end

In went the new soil, along with the chive clumps.

That job done meant I could dig the hole for the sour cherry tree. After tangling with some roots, it settled nicely into its new home.

Next in was the hazelnut, a process that gave me pause when I spotted the spot for the lush clethra. I plopped that into the ground as well.

I picked up around my shed and decided it was time to position my new rain barrel under the shed eaves. I pulled out the instruction packet only to discover that I needed a hose before I could set it up.

Curses!

Instead, I planted some bareroot iris and a few day lilies.

Once those were in, I retrieved my year-old basil plant and second-year amaryllis. Out came the basil to live the rest of its days in singular splendor. Behind it I sunk the potted pair of amaryllis into the raised bed.

As I headed for the barn with the wheelbarrow and my tools, I stopped to move the few remaining perennials out of the walking path until I could get them into the ground.

I finally reached the barn, only to spot the loppers waiting patiently for their go at the forsythia.

Well, no time like the present.

The moral of the story

When I returned the loppers to the barn a while later, I wondered if I ought to go pound in a few stakes for the tomatoes while there was still light.

Nah.

You can’t do it all in one day.

Janine Pineo’s e-mail address is jpineo@bangordailynews.net.