0012

How do you eat an elephant? Maybe it's another riddle.

I came out again on Thursday, and have spent the past three days in the third garden area, south of the house. I rise when the sun wakes me, fry up some eggs and potatoes for breakfast, then go out with my spade and a gallon milk jug full of water. I put a tall stake in the ground nearby to hold my jacket and cap as the day warms up.

I start by defining a nice straight line with my spade, then digging along this line. Drive the spade with my left foot, then again to complete a square cut. Turn the 9-inch-square plug over, sod down, dirt side up. Next spot, same thing. Spadeful after spadeful.

Then another line, at a right angle to the first. Then another and another, so that I have an area defined, about 13 or 14 feet square. Then another course of 9-inch square plugs as a slightly smaller pass just inside the first. Then another smaller course and another and another, until I have the entire area dug and turned over. This takes about 4 hours, with an occasional pull on the jug of water, and a leaning on the spade handle, listening to the Phoebe birds, sometimes answering with my own Phoebe-mocking whistle. Then I take a lunch break, and come back out and dig another plot, leaving a little grass between plots that will serve as a path.

I have set myself the goal of digging 3500 square feet of ground for my first year's garden. And my self-imposed method is to do it with as little mechanization as possible. This is a non-consumerist man-and-earth project, not an industrial one. 3500 square feet is, of course, overwhelming, more than I can do. But I can dig a 13- or 14-foot square plot. After a break, I can dig another. After a good night's rest, I can dig another.

Now it's Saturday evening, and I'm about to drive back to town for a Sunday of rest at Lenore's place. The sun is getting low, and I'm looking at seven square plots of freshly dug Earth. About 1300 or 1400 square feet so far, I reckon. This particular area will be my main garden, I've decided, consisting of 16 square plots in a 4 x 4 grid pattern. 7 down, 9 to go. I'm bone weary, but it is good. I can do this.

The answer to the riddle, of course, is: one bite at a time.