Dig, dig, dig

[Dove Brown]

84 Winter 515

Dove had finally found a strip of land between her cottage and the next for a scrap of garden. It got her out of the crowded cottage at least. Out in the open, dappled by sunlight sneaking past the cottage roofs, with her shovel in her hands. At least this time she was digging for new life, rather than digging because of disaster and death. She started at one end of the strip, using her booted foot to shove the shovel into the hard soil, and then levering the soil out of its hole. She turned it over, moved the shovel along a bit, and applied her foot again, as she slowly worked along the strip.

Somewhere not to far away, her namesakes were crooning to each other in anticipation of spring. A flutter of movement caught the corner of her eye, and she looked up and saw a robin perched on the edge of roof and eyeing the turned soil hopefully. Dove turned the latest shovelful over and smiled wryly. "Well, as long as you're after bugs and not my seeds..." she told the robin. The bird cocked its head on one side at the sound of her voice, and then went back to eyeing the soil.

Dove drove the shovel in again, levered and drove, levered and drove until she reached the end of the strip of land. She paused before she went back down the other side of it, and tilted her face up to the winter sun. She could smell the cold dampness of the turned soil, and the dustier scent of the unturned side. Her arms ached a bit with the digging and she stretched out first one arm and then the other to ease the tight muscles. Once her arms had loosened up, she leaned the shovel against the cottage wall and bent forward, reaching for her toes as Nivel had taught her. A bone in her neck popped and her braid fell forward into the dirt.

[Dove Brown]

She straightened slowly, flipped her braid back over her shoulder, and retrieved her shovel. She dug her way steadily down the other side of the strip of land, paused again at the end to shake out her arms and stretch, and then turned to examine what she'd managed. The lines of turned soil meandered down the sides of the plot, sometimes meeting in the middle, sometimes not. It wasn't quite as bad as her first attempt at ploughing, but it was close. She sighed, picked up the shovel and went to dig the areas that she'd missed.

When she finally had everything dug over once, she moved to where she could get a good view and began to finalise where she wanted to plant things. Beans needed support, so they ought to be next to a wall, and the rosehips would grow bushy - she needed to keep them off to one side in a single cluster. Then there were carrots, onions, peas, cabbage, mint, garlic, maybe even ginger. She sketched out the locations in the air, turning her head to check the actual ground as she thought and planned. The peas and onions were early crops, they could be planted fine right now, and the rosehips would be permananent, so they could go in too. She checked out the spacing, then began to make rows of small holes.

She started with the seeds from the rosehips that she'd saved from last winter. A more experienced gardener would have preferred fresh seeds, but Dove was young enough to hope and dream of roses and rosehip tea from these ones. She dropped seeds into each hole and covered them over, patting the soil into place with her hands.

[Dove Brown]

Once the rosehip seeds were covered, she sat back on her heels and dusted off her hands. After a chime or so, she shook herself and told herself firmly to get on, the seeds wouldn't sprout instantly. She climbed to her feet and went to retrieve seeds she'd bought at the market. Once she'd unearthed them from the bottom of the chest, and escaped the chaos indoors - again - she walked over to the area she had mentally marked out, and began making holes in the dirt. She didn't have a proper dibbling stick, so she used her fingers and, where necessary, her beltknife.

She spread her hand across the dirt to get the distance for the peas, making the holes a palm-width apart. She dropped two seeds into each two-inch deep hole and patted the soil down over them. Over the short row, she pushed thin sticks into the ground and tied on threads unraveled from a fraying rag. She drew them down and tied them to the base of neighbouring sticks. She hoped that would be enough for the peas to grow up.

Moving on to the onions, she made even shallower holes, only an inch deep, and dropped seeds into them. She wasn't knowledgeable enough to realise that without the soil being prepared with manure first, any onion crop would be small and thin. She planned instead, to fertilise it later, when she could get hold of it.

Now, she made sure that today's seeds were in and covered, then fetched water, and splashed it lightly across the soil, for the seeds to drink. Time would tell if she'd done enough right for a harvest of food, or whether she was more likely to harvest a knowledge of mistakes instead.

[Okara]

Grades and Awards   Dove Brown Experience Observation 1 Gardening 3 Endurance 2 Planning 1 Lores Planning the Placement of Plants in a Garden Gardening: Breaking Up Soil for Planting Gardening: Planting Rosehips Gardening: Planting Peas Gardening: Planting Onions Gardening: Building a Trellis for Peas Notes This was a quick but well executed thread. I awarded endurance for the lengthy digging session. Please edit your post in your grade request to reflect that it has been graded. PM me with any questions.