I dug out my vegetable garden on the weekend.
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And when I say 'vegetable garden' I mean "the space formerly occupied by vegetables".
And when I say 'I', I mean my husband and eldest son did the really heavy stuff with shovels and pitchforks and I came along for the rest.
The (former) vege patch suffered horribly in the drought, and I just couldn't bring myself to keep it going with a hose in hand.
Then the rains came (and our town won the rain table over the first weekend - *modest shrug*). So let's just say that it got pretty wet.
The weeds and grass were the first to respond and strangled any existing life from the few struggling hangers-on, with the exception of my flourishing crop of kale.
(By the way, if you're looking for a backyard crop that resists drought, copes with flooding and thrives on neglect, I can confidently recommend kale. In fact, I can give you some right now if you like? Shame. No one but me seems to really like it.)
So I'm back to square one.
And if there's something I love more than a healthy, productive vege patch, it's an empty one, ready and waiting, plumped up with compost and dressed in mulch.
Like a freshly made bed, it's ready to enfold and nurture whatever seedlings I tuck into it.
After the summer we've had, I'm just glad that the latest crisis - the coronavirus - can't hurt my vegetables. At least, not that I know of.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that backyard vege gardens are part of the solution.
If we get sick, we can live off them and our chicken eggs. Self-sufficiency for the self-quarantined.
Don't know what we'll use for toilet paper though...there doesn't seem to be any in the shops.
So here's hoping that there'll be enough time to grow some veges to eat before the frosts come and smash them all.
At least that's something I can count on every year.