When you live on top of a mountain in northern New York near the Canadian border where there is about 9-10 months of cold weather and about 120 inches of snow a year gardens are a challenge. Matter of fact living is a challenge. Keeping all that in mind when you did anything you did it well the first time and that was Carl’s motto.
So when Carl came home with a five pound bag of sun flower seeds to plant he was going to make it a day project with one of our sons helping him to do the planting.
Now Carl is a very organized kind of guy who rarely does any gardening. He can do just about anything and do it very, very well so it did not disturb me to think about him and Fred planting all these sun flower seeds.
He had it all planned out that when they grew we could gaze out of the big bay windows that lined one wall of our great room and look upon a sea of sun flowers in all their glory. We could cut them and bring them indoors, we could have some for the birds to eat in the fall and we could dry them out and roast them this coming winter.
A five pound bag of sun flower seeds is a lot of sun flower seeds. Where are the rakes and hoes I asked? He said he had a better idea. Where are you going to plant them I asked? He said on the edge of the woods that ran down the side of the mountain towards our guest house. How much sun will they get in that location I asked? Plenty he answered and off the two of them went with nothing but a 6 foot heavy iron pry bar and a five pound bag of sun flower seeds.
I watched from one of the big windows as Carl gestured and told Fred how they were going to do it. I watched as Carl walked along and slammed the 6 foot heavy iron pry bar about 5 inches into the ground, wiggled it out, Fred lean over and put 5 or 6 sun flower seeds into the ground and then take his shoe and scrape the dirt towards the 3 inch hole and stamp on top of it.
This went on for about 3 or 4 hours and lord knows how many holes later they were finished. Both came in for lunch very proud of their day’s work. So for weeks we watched and waited for those sun flower seeds to make their appearance and they never did.
Why? Simply because they were buried, not planted! We have long since moved away from that kind of weather and have lived in climates where we can plant sun flower seeds in a fashion that is correct and we do and each time we do we have a good chuckle, even Carl does when I ask him if he wants to handle the 6 foot heavy iron pry bar!
Author Resource:
For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/ To see Arlene’s Gardens and to read her gardening diaries or click on Arlene’s Books where you can download or buy her gardening & cook books. Arlene says, “All my royalties from the sale of my books go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I thank you for visiting my site.”
Article From Organic Gardening Articles
Submitted on: 2008-03-24 08:46:44
Number Times Read: 80
Word Count: 579
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