It All Started Out So Well

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I really wanted that last drink of coffee. Some days are like that. They seem to be starting off well, but then go down hill in a hurry.

A few weeks back, or a couple, anyway, I was having a good day. I had just restarted my compost, building up layers over two feet high and ready for more "green" material (that's fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds and/or grass clippings). Since the neighbor's chickens like scattering my compost, I placed a scrap of plywood across the open front.

Kathy does the leaf raking around here and she had three trash cans of leaves and two big, somewhat compacted piles ready to be hauled to the shredder. I fired up the shredder and made short work of the three barrels and one trailer load and had enough shredded product to fill the wheelbarrow three times. One load went in the garden, around a few tomato plants as mulch. Good stuff. I loaded another wheelbarrow load, probably destined for the compost.

We mow our pasture-size lawn in windrows so that we can harvest a good portion of the grass clippings for mulch and compost. Kathy had done half of the mowing the day before, so I finished most of that up and collected two big wheelbarrow loads of green gold. The grass is full of nitrogen, so I use oned in the walkways between rows (next years planting beds) and the other on the compost.

Before I went back to the mowing, I loaded the trailer with the second pile of leaves and hauled them to the compost pile, then reloaded.

I unhitched the trailer by the shredder and went to do the rest of the mowing. After one pass, I noticed my ear protector earmuffs had fallen off of the height lever. Rather than turn off the mower and climb down, I tried to reach down and pick up the muffs. As I reached further and further, I heard something pop. I had re-injured my detached rib.

The pain is constant, but diminishing over time. Every cough, sneeze or attempt to do something results in a sharp pain (just to remind me life is hell).

The wheelbarrow still sits loaded with shredded leaves and the trailer is still loaded with un-shredded. Weeds and grass have started growing in between onion rows. Stinkbugs are after my tomatoes and squash bugs have infested my cucumbers.

As much as I would like to be out there fighting nature to produce food, I just can't do much. With the added heat alert situation, I manage to water in the greenhouse and harvest the tomatoes and that's me for the day.

My rib is getting better, day by day, but until it is fully healed I can't get out there and dig potatoes, or pull weeds, or pick bugs off my tomato plants.

And that one day started out so well.

Stephen P.


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