The Other Garden

Christian decided to take me to the other garden to do some work before it got hot. He rode a bike and I rode an electric bike. I had seen an old man riding one in Toulouse, near the cemetery, and it looked very dangerous. He was about to fall over and the bike was taking control. I had some trepidation but got on and enjoyed a very easy bike ride.

We biked past two fields of sunflowers that were still alive and I wanted to take a picture, but had no time to stop and was unable to pull out my camera, without falling over, in time for the picture. I will try again tomorrow. This garden is a hector big and on a hill.

Walkways were made by Christian and his wheelbarrow a while ago and the walkways are still there, but over grown. Since this farm is farther away from the house, the goal is to have trees and other types of vegetation that can survive with little maintenance. Right now there are fig, peach, and apple trees. As well as grape vines and tomatoes. Apparently the beds that WWOOFers had made in the past were not made well enough and they continued to fill with weeds. The beds were not being maintained due to the overgrown weeds and so not they need to be redone. With the past as a lesson, Christian knows how he needs to build the beds and works on this alone. Today that is what he worked on.

I went around and cut all of the high grass near the trees, to keep the insects from being able to jump from high grass to tree. I also cut off all of the feeder sprouts of the trees, as they just take up the trees’ energy and will not produce fruit. After I finished that, I moved on to water a couple of the trees.

Now, I know that watering some trees sounds real easy and boring but let me assure you, it is not easy. I had to fill up a watering can and walk in a path that was overgrown and hard to see, had a ditch on one side, and had thorned bushes and shrubs around it. This does not sound too bad, but it was no bigger than my two feet touching each other, making it difficult. After being scratched up by the thorns and content that I did not sprain an ankle from falling into a ditch, I realized I had not taken care of the grape vine. I climbed to the top and weeded the bed a bit. The soil was so dry that the water just ran down it, so I had to stand there and slowly empty the can.

By now, the sun was over the “hill” and getting warm. As Christian was placing bricks for the walkway and aligning the beds, I was to use a pitch fork and pull up the land, take out the grass, and break up the soil. The problem was that my shoes did not allow me to really get a lot of the soil up and I am weak. After spending about 30 minutes on one section, Christian helped pull up a bunch of the land and I just had to sort it and spread it out.

It was hot before I finished and we decided to head back and finish tomorrow.