gardening and worms

i finally got my hands in the dirt........ only to come up with fist fulls of worms....
tons of copulating wormies in my new raised garden beds ( i shoulda taken a pix huh?)
ok, let's start the story,

once upon a time (don't they all start that way?) there was a small garden behind a small cottage in the woods...........lovingly turned and toiled over by the wicked b*tch that lived there ( ask my neighbors...they'll tell you i am a wicked b*tch) one spring, the garden was left fallow, to molder and to weeds as the person who tended the garden hurt her back wrestling sheep.
then low and behold, the DH of the wicked b*tch started to build raised beds for her.....and she happily started to plant seeds..... bush beans and carrots at first
(then discovered the unneutered semi feral tom cat of one the neighbors using her pretty little beds as a toilet..... his death is being plotted)

ok so now, every single time i see those beds i smile......i love them
i seriously love them.

 SERIOUSLY   LOVE

i think they are the best decision we ever made.
now even though i didn't garden last year i never stopped making dirt. if you are a gardener you understand that.
if you aren't a gardener, let me explain the joys of compost
hahahahaha
first off compost is alive........ seriously
it's teaming with all sorts of bugs, bacteria, microbes...... it breaths, it changes
and if it's finished it also has a rich earthy spring smell to it
oh and it's DARK........my dirt is BLACK
you want that in a dirt you know.
worms love my dirt
they love it so much they spend all their time rolling around in it nekid and copulating
it's rather difficult to plant the garden with these nekid copulating worms rolling around in your dirt.
(and my dirt MOVES around if you watch closely)
now in my garden and surrounding areas, what LOOKS like untidy piles of leaves or hay or manure really is my dirt making operations
yup
i just pile it all over
martha stewart just had a stroke
but mother nature loves me..... cause i do it her way
just piles
just keep adding here and adding there..... all over, as i figure whatever i can't use in the garden is going to enrich the mother anyway.... so mother gets her own back in her own way and i get to borrow some for my slightly weedy garden
now compost to a plant is life blood, air, and all goodness rolled into one soft dark patch of dirt.
worm and chicken and duck poop mixes in and grows tall happy rows of green beans so sweet and so healthy that your entire life is uplifted just by looking at them glowing in the garden
HEY mother nature knows her shit.....literally
anyway back to the beds and all

i couldn't find my very mostest favoritest pole bean seeds..... i had a HUGE pack of them...HUGE

(and this wonder of a pole bean is called appropriately enough Meraviglia Venezia!! the wonder of venice!,*the white seeded not the black seeded***not only that but venezia is my maiden name!! how cool is that?- oh and they taste slightly like vanilla) my second favorite is an heirloom called turkey craw or turkey gizzard.........i love them too.

so i planted bush beans 'slendertte' and 'yellow wax' , along with purple haze carrots and lil finger carrots...... today i shall put in radishes, beets, turnips and more bush beans, green ones for the freezer.
now i don't really like bush beans, pole beans have a ton more flavor but bush beans mature all at once which is good for canning or freezing so that will be my can/freeze bed no? also the annual herbs will go with these guys .....and some flowers. i am hoping that this year with the raised beds, that the weeds won't get ahead of me and swallow the border flowers ( and bernie won't walk all over my carefully mounded beds and compact the soil....the man doesn't freeken LEARN)

the next bed needs to be cucumbers.......i NEED my kosher dills.......NEED THEM *heavy on the garlic* i will add the pole beans to that bed i think.......and mix up some other stuff in there as well
some tomatoes on the deck, peppers in the end bed with eggplants
a cold frame that i want to start stuff such as cabbages and leeks etc.....
oh my the anticipation and hope of the early garden
of course this year will be the BEST EVER don't we say that every year?  never mind that these garden beds are WAY expensive, and even with all the dirt i have continued to make over the years we've been here..... we still won't have enough to fill the all the beds i am planning.......
and never mind that i am thinking of hooping most of the beds to temper the uneven climate lately.....
which will add to the overhead....it's going to be the BEST EVER.
no?
all my garden will BULGE with the brightest colors, the BIGGEST most delicious veggies that will convert the most dedicated carnivore...... right?
hahahahahaa
oye
anyway the beds do make things a bit easier to plant, and i imagine to weed also
i am going to eventually make a movable section for adding so i can put in root crops that really need more depth then the 12'' we are making the beds
the cold frames will be deeper as well...... and i think with polycarb panels and auto vents

anyway, yesterday while i was planting i let lilli and phoebe out to hunt bugs and keep me company, phoebe didn't get that one very long centipede that i had hoped she would but they got millepedes and sow bugs and spiders and a ton of other bugs.... some good ones, mostly bad bugs
and they ate copulating worms.....
*have i told you all how unbelievably beautiful a pair of white duckies are when they are right next to each other and scoffing up nasties in the garden? *
now what i didn't tell you is naturally i got eaten alive by mosquitos...... i don't think i got a tick although there are some tiny nymphs out there so i don't know (1/16'' by 3/16'' are about the size of the nymph ticks......so they aren't too easy to find) bernie checks me when he gets home (yeah like 5 hours later)

there......now....
today, i am going to town at noon to meet jen and lesley for coffee.....and bitching.
hahahaha
lesley has man trouble so we will gather and support her by telling her how right she is (she really is) and what a rat the man is......(he sorta is.....)
and we will laugh...... a LOT......LOUDLY
we won't solve her problems but she'll feel better about them for a while after
i also have to go to the po for watercolor paper that was out of stock
i hope my egg tempera book will be there

now bernie got home after 8:30 last night so we had a fast garbage salad and then went to bed
nothing was from my garden except the hard boiled duck eggs... as i really did have to take a year off...and that is hard when you garden (or try to) year round

but soon........
soon

very soon...........

(visions of the perfect garden salad dance in my head)