REAL men round up- gardening with the menfolk

It’s been great meeting all the men, and their cheerful willingness to be exploited. All that fresh food must have gone to their heads.

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The week did NOT start auspiciously. I (Xan) was having trouble firing up the lawn mower (a 30 year old dinosaur of a gas mower, way out of proportion to the amount of grass). Out comes Wei– “is the spark plug hooked up?” Well how helpful! YES the damned spark plug is hooked up. mutter mutter How about you just come over and DO this for me (mutter mutter).

He did offer to help, and in the inexplicable logic of women I wouldn’t let him, because of the “way you asked.” Everybody wins! I’m still struggling with the mower and he gets to go back in the house. Why do we do this to ourselves? He did however, construct a nice little fountain with our old ceramic fish, and fixed the downspout so that I don’t have to haul water INTO the rain barrel anymore (I may have mentioned how pathetic I am at DIY.)

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Usually my Hubby, Cody, leaves the digging part of gardening to me. He allows me the freedom to choose which crops we’ll plant for the year, how to design the gardens, and what project and critter dreams we’ll chase for each season. Not always willingly, mind you.

Like when I brought home turkeys and guineas (SURPISE!) without much forthought about where they’d reside. This small bit of acting on impulse (oh, they were so cute!! And the thought of our own heritage turkey for Thanksgiving dinner was overwhelming) caused poor Hubby to spend all of his spring weekends working on building poultry tractors for all of our new birds.

Not half-heartedly either. He’s done an amazing job and put many of his skills to use. He spent many weeks just researching and deciding how to build the tractors before we even bought the first piece of wood. Just like when he built the water barrel system.

I’m the dreamer and he’s the builder of those dreams. I’m the whimsy and he’s the planner. Yes. I’m very lucky indeed because I couldn’t do any of it without his help.

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What do your fellow travelers do in your garden?