At the end of October I dug and dug my vegetable garden plot with the only tools I had—an old army shovel, a plastic trowel and a hand cultivator and my oh so sore back. We had long since given up our lawn tools as we moved from house to apartment and I was reluctant to replace them since we will move again. Besides, the owners of the house had had a vegetable garden on that very spot so there weren’t a lot of weeds. How hard could it be? Yellow clay hard.
I finally gave in and bought a full-sized shovel. It was still hard work but not as
back-breaking. I happily sowed my
cool-weather crop seeds:
kale, spinach and Swiss chard. I was
excited as sprouts broke the surface of the soil. But wait, what do such seedlings look
like? Hmm…the ones in my online image
search kind of looked like what was emerging from my garden…Alas, after a few
weeks, I realized that my seedlings would have been much taller than these
sprawling specimens and weed seeds must have come in the bags of “good top soil”
and blanketed my hard won garden.
Later,
I read that I could plant a little earlier if I warmed my soil by covering it
with black plastic—my soil and the weeds,
which would perhaps be weakened and easier to remove. Apparently,
late October was too late for my seeds to germinate this extra cold winter.
Wonderfully warm and inspiring weather last week provided opportunity
to dig again, to
start fresh. The good news was that my
labor last autumn was not in vain,
because of my hard work, the soil now turns easily. I added some black and brown “gold” (compost
and sphagnum) to amend the soil, turned it under and added a brick path to keep
from compressing the soil. 
It’s ready to
plant at last. But now it’s too late to
plant cool weather crops again. No
problem, I have an heirloom tomato plant and some lettuce plants that can go in
when the rain, rain goes away.