Jon still has a boot on his foot and can’t walk around too much or get it wet, but it feels like things are much closer to normal again. Yesterday he was outside getting his new raised bed planter ready for the spring. Something he couldn’t have done even a few days ago.
I got a bunch of branches and dumped them in Jon’s new planter (now he has two raised bed gardens). They all needed to be cut down to fit in the bottom to be used as fill and that was Jon’s job. We filled up about a third of the bottom of the planter with flower pots turned upside down and branches. It’s kind of like putting pebbles in the bottom of a flower pot for drainage.
Jon went to the hardware store and got 10 bags of potting soil while I filled up the wheelbarrow with donkey manure. Then Jon emptied the bags of soil into the planter while I shoved in the manure.
Today the dirt settled after a day of rain and we added four more bags of soil. Next, we’ll cover the planter with cardboard with bricks to hold it down, to keep weeds from growing next spring. Much the same way I mulch my vegetable garden each fall.
In my mind, I heard Joni Mitchell signing about how we have to “get ourselves back to the garden.” The perfect metaphor for Jon’s recovery I thought.
