Garden Update

Here is a shot of the back yard. In the foreground is the black plastic covered compost pile, which is really cooking now and teeming with mice feasting of my fruit and vegetable scraps. The bed by the blue buckets is now home to 24 little lettuce plants that are slowly growing.

Beyond the lettuce bed can be seen the screen I am using to sift the ubiquitous stones from the soil to produce a suitable medium for the tomatoes and habaneras. I have spread the sifted stones to form a path between the lettuce bed and compost pile.

In the distance can be seen the four round beds in which are planted six watermelon and seven cantaloupe plants that are also growing slowly.

Yesterday, Manuel, and employee of my landlord Sr. Monsreal, cut the back yard with a barely functioning weed eater, though I had already cut the area around the melon beds with my machete. Sr. Monsreal, by the way, is a really wonderful fellow who, when I ask if my gardening project is creating any problems, repeatedly tells me that he wants me to consider "this your home."

Yesterday I also bought eight sacks of soil from the mountains from one of the fellows that periodically drives down the street in his horse drawn cart hollering "tierra, tierra." It is rich, dark, loamy soil which I will use when transplanting the tomatoes and habaneras.

With all of the hacking with my mattock, chopping with my machete, and sifting of the soil I am getting lots of exercise, losing weight, getting quite tan, and have convinced the neighbors that I am indeed El Gringo Loco. I'm feeling quite proud of my work, not to mention that it keeps me out of the bars.