Definitely Not Ready for the Home Gardening Network

Sometimes, I fancy myself a gardener. I love planting flowers in the garden, seeing how they brighten up the planters and the view.

Sometimes, I realize that I really don't know what on earth I'm doing.

Yesterday afternoon, M had turned over the little patch of earth right in front of our house, making it ready for me to put in the petunias and diathus that I'd picked up at the store. Now you'll need to know that our earth is pretty much 100% clay - NOT well-draining, hard as a rock when dry.

I must amend this soil. I will add some of the Soil Buster that we've got in the shed and that will help make it better draining.

So, I mixed in what I thought was an appropriate amount and started turning the mix with the shovel. This led to the inevitable clouds of dust in the air.

Too dusty. Let's add some water so that I don't inhale all this stuff.

Luckily, I had P to help me out. He held the hose and I mixed. He added water and more water and more water. And the water was not draining. So I turned off the flow and kept on mixing. And pretty soon, I had a nice slurry that was the consistency and color of...CONCRETE!!!!

Yipes! What was I doing? Constructing the next Hollywood Walk of Fame? All it needed was some smoothing over and it would be ready for my foot and handprints.

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPPP!

Husband to the rescue. First, the "I-can't-believe-what-you-just-did" look, then the grin, then he got out a little board and actually smoothed it over, saying, "This should be cured by tomorrow morning." Very funny.

And then he actually helped and poured in half a giant bag of garden soil, handed me the shovel with some words of encouragement and headed back inside. I tried to blend it all together and then dug some holes for the plants. P stuffed them in, I covered them up and watered them and crossed my fingers.

They're either going to grow or not. If they don't, I'll assume that they're all wearing concrete boots. For now, they still look quite pretty.