The Garden Is In

Reader Contribution by Angela Pomponio
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If I were poetic I would write an ode to the Pulaski.  It would be an epic tale of love, pain and sentimental fondness.  For those of you who aren’t familiar, a Pulaski is a wild land firefighting tool named for its inventor. One hardwood handle topped by forged power.  The head is on one side an ax, the other a sharp curved horizontal trenching surface.

Our Pulaski comes from my husband’s firefighting days.  Designed to dig fire line, chop down burning trees it is a Godsend if you are blessed with previously unturned clay soil.  We tilled the 0.16 of an acre, adding compost, ten wheelbarrow loads of chicken poop and bedding, and 10 old straw bales.  After two weeks of intermittent rains and a few tractor traverses while building the deer fence our recently fluffed ground was chunky with underlying cement hard clay.

I tend to be the type to push through an unpleasant project, on the premise that it’s better to finish now than have to revisit Hell later.  And so on a rainy Wednesday my four year old and an over-nighting five year old joined me for a day long chopping, trenching, laughing, cursing, sweating, chilling, burying, praying marathon.  After a 5 minute change of clothes and coffee reheat, cocoa for the kiddos, we jumped in the car and picked up 3 more kids.  After an hour of rounding up the kids of my bestie, who at 40 just gave birth to a beautiful fourth angel, I went out in a patch of sunshine to spread 50 pounds of organic fertilizer.  As the rain began again to fall I gave thanks.

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