Straw is the new gold

DH Matt was working on the septic system today...which from my point of view always looks just like a bunch of trenches. I eyed the pile of rock sitting there. He wheeled his loader up...clouds of dust roiled the air, and I hastily made the universal sign for "Stop!". He said that he was extremely pleased with how fast things were going. At this rate he's be ready for straw on Monday. My ears pricked up. "Straw?" I asked, trying to sound casual. "Yes", DH Matt replied, it goes in the trenches over the rock." I thought about what he'd said...straw...not sand, not hay, but straw. "How much straw?", I asked, gazing casually up at the sky. He grinned, "Enough for some for you". "Goody!", I said, "How did you know?" He tapped the side of his head. "It must be the gray matter. You always want straw." I looked down at my desert military boots (a girl's gotta kick it when she gardens) and then at my straw covered slacks. I'd been mulching the garden. "Yes, I guess I do. It's because I spin straw into gold."

I'm a firm believer that time in the garden should be spent harvesting. Or, failing that, planting...or staring off into space listening to the birds and the wind. My mother despised gardening. She reluctantly grew a few tomato and cucumber plants because my father loved them. Marigolds because she liked to put them in vases on the dinner table. And she used child labor to weed. My early memories of gardening are less than pleasant, as my mother was really quite good at making it a despised chore.

I don't weed. Okay, I'll pull a sticker plant now and again, because they make great compost. But, for the most part instead of weeding I "compost in place". To the untrained eye, my garden looks like a field of clover growing some vegetables, or tomatoes poking through mounds of straw. The clover gets covered with straw, manure, and again straw in the fall. The tomatoes when finished are folded down into their bed of straw, manured, and then again straw. The end result is no weeds and beautiful rich soil...gardener's gold.