22 April 2016

Taking advantage

I just told Walt that it's amazing. We had three or four dry, fairly warm days. When we saw the forecast last weekend, we told ourselves we'd better get some work done outside. And we did. Now, it's supposed to rain for the next three or four days — not much, but enough to keep us inside. A lesson constantly relearned is that you have to take advantage of every nice day here if you want to accomplish anything.


Walt did the mowing. You can see him pushing the mower around in the photo above (top left corner). The yard looks great. My job was the tilling, and I got it done. I tilled up a patch of tough grass to enlarge the vegetable garden plot. I also ran the tiller over a lot of the area that I had worked on back in March, to uproot weeds and grasses that were starting to take hold.


Above, you can see the tiller and the new greenhouse tent. There are a couple of rogue rhubarb plants growing in it. When we arrived here years ago, we got shovels, picks, and hoes out of the garden shed and tried to dig up this section of yard manually to prepare it for our first vegetable garden. That was the spring of 2004.


We quickly realized that we would never get anything done unless we invested in a rototiller. We drove up to a garden-supplies store in Blois, found a tiller that looked like it would be up to the job, and somehow managed to fit it inside our little Peugeot run-about to get it down here. So it's been going strong for 12 years now.


Those first three photos are ones I took with an Android tablet. Just because. The colors are different. The last photo, just above, is one I took with my new old Lumix camera from a back window of the house yesterday afternoon. Soon the linden tree will be covered in leaves and we won't be able to admire the garden without going out there. Of course, watering and weeding will keep us out there all summer.

13 comments:

  1. Looks like a lot of work! Good for you!

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    1. It's mainly that the tiller is so heavy, and working the hard clay soil here is slow going.

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  2. The tablet's photos are not bad at all, considering!

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    1. It took them with the ASUS 8" tablet that you gave us. Walt will be traveling with it on his Montreal/New York trip.

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  3. Tablet photos are fine as record shots... they've come on so far... and now, with the additional, clip-on lenses, you can do really serious photography with most tablets.
    I am hankering after a little kit that contains a 120 degree wide-angle, and ordinary wide-angle that if turned round, is a short telephoto... and a x8 telephoto... plus a tripod and a bluetooth camera release!!
    That's getting silly, but does sound fun....
    and all the well known telescope manufacturers do push on-adaptors for mobile phones of the most common makes...which is very useful when out birdwatching!!

    And even pictures with a slight blue cast...the only thing that all tablets and mobiphones seem to have... can be automatically corrected in Lightroom...because some very kind "geek" has written the plug-in!! Thank the lords for "geeks" everywhere... they make modern life acceptable!!

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    1. I'm not sure why I neglected to run those tablet photos through a filter in Photoshop to tone down the blue cast and warm the images up a little.

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    2. Very easy answer... the garden is calling!!
      And after this winter... squalling at us like a hungry cat!!!

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  4. You picked a nice spot for the green house. Your tiller is a good size, my dad's was lots bigger and heavier. When my dad was a little child he got paid a nickel for riding the plow horse in the garden rows. He fell asleep once and fell off, but luckily the horse stopped before stepping on him.

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    1. Sometimes I wonder if a larger tiller might actually be easier to work with. The man with the big garden down at the bottom of our road has one that is on tires and must not required so much pushing and pulling. The only accident I've ever had with our tiller is punching myself in the ribs with one of the handlebars, resulting in a big and painful bruise.

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  5. You know what they say: make hay while the sun shines.
    Nice work.

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    1. Faire du foin pendant que le soleil brille !

      Or, « Cueillez dès aujourd'hui les roses de la vie... »

      Or, « Ne remettez jamais à demain ce qu'on peut faire aujourd'hui. »

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