The Big Bed

This weekend was a good example of a little success going to my head...
After obsessively counting the tiny spearheads of corn poking up through the mulch (13) and calculating how many potential cobs that adds up to (39) and meticulously measuring every miniscule increase in the size of my earliest garden additions - herbs, lettuce, peas & tomatoes.
After stalking the spuds' progress and frantically photographing every new development - a single purple peapod, a handful of the first flowers on the tomatoes, a single burgeoning phallic mushroom on the logs.
After all those small successes I decided that I - proven gardener that I am - was ready for 'the big bed'.
It had to be big, Big, BIG because of the growing collection of squash and cucs in my seedling collection that needed rehousing.

Turns out MyMan wasn't thinking as big as me and wasn't too impressed to spend the last weekend of the holidays (and the first half of Bathurst trials) banging together reclaimed paling in 50 degree fly-ridden heat for my garden edging. All of which resulted in both a sledgehammer to the webbing between his thumb and fingers and a bruised elbow from trying to saw next to the owner's caravan up against the workbench.

The tension escalated when he realised I wouldn't want the four 1m x 1m beds he'd envisioned, but instead I was gunning for a 3m x 9m bed that stretched the width of our 'lawn'.
To punish me for my grandiose schemes he left me to fill the beds myself - 11 trailer loads of dirt, 5 sacks of poo and half a tank of water later, me and my wobbly arms were ready to put the babies to bed.
...and that's when the 90km per hour easterly winds blew up.

With a full agenda of cleaning, washing, and three hour roundtrip roadtrip to pick up children from their Dad on my schedule, I wasn't able to postpone the bedding and my poor babies now really understand the meaning of 'hardening off'. What ever survives this week out there is going to be the very definition of 'concrete'.

To recap, I had got up at 6am in 90km per hour winds and piercing (strangley unseasonal) sleet so I'd have the three hours I needed to plant, plan and mulch.
I've overplanted...but then I'm expecting a high casualty rate.
The tap was running constantly so that my peastraw was soggy enough to stay still and it'll be weeks before I find out whether I protected the seedlings or smothered them. The juries out at this stage.

And it'll be another 24 hours before I can head back to the block and survey my work in daylight.
About then I can assess any obvious disasters and, hopefully, gloat over all that delicious green potential nestled down amongst the pea straw in thein big, Big, BIG bed.