I’ve often referred to my vegetable garden as a Victory garden, for no other reason than to give a historical tribute to the WWII public campaign aimed at reducing stress on the national food system and coping with rationing. It’s also somewhat ironic in that we garden for pleasure, for it’s really not feasible now to compete with the prices of farming conglomerate-grown produce. Nor is it a good time investment.
But it’s fun, and the results are tastier. And, I get to revel a bit in historical Americana.
Yet the existing garden was too small. It needed expansion. It needed to push the boundaries between hobby and chore, the way my in-laws still maintain a garden large enough to feed a German-Catholic family. For ’tis the manner in which all those with hobbies internally debate why they must still invest the time and energy into an obsession. But that is not the topic of discussion for this post. The topic, rather, is what we did, not why.
And what we did was borrow the in-laws’ tiller, to destroy one deeply-rooted icon of Americana (the lawn) for another. And we did so in a most American fashion–by burning gasoline.
A little amateur engineering cleverness later and I had a small rabbit-deterrent around the perimeter as well.
Surely the ends were worth the means, for we now have one medium-sized timesink with cucumbers on the way!
And weeding…lots of weeding.
–Simon