Gardening attempts and blackpowder shooting concerns

We moved into our current home almost thirty years ago. At the time, my wife had big plans for establishing a large vegetable garden, a potato patch, and a smaller area to grow rhubarb. I enclosed the potato and rhubarb patches with dead spruce logs to raise the planting ground level up and did the same with the main garden area.

We bought a couple of loads of black dirt to cover the gravel that composed the soil in our “yard,” and I bought a two-foot wide, self-propelled cultivator to break up the ground and mix the sandy gravel and black topsoil together. The cultivator tines worked well for breaking up the ground and mixing the soils when they weren’t being bound up with cottonwood roots.

I put a lot of time into cultivating all three of the garden areas and had the soils broken up and well loosened when I was done. My wife began the planting and things were looking good for a while. We both were still working and free time to weed and hoe the garden was at a premium. As a result, that first year’s crop was less than a bumper.

I think that first year’s failure dampened my wife’s enthusiasm for growing a big garden. That and the fact she now realized how much work and time would have to go into this endeavor to be successful. She enjoyed planting and arranging flowers all around the yard and in various flower boxes and, eventually lost interest in trying to establish a vegetable garden.

The rhubarb patch never did take. The most successful endeavor involved the potato patch. My wife never got a huge crop but seemed to harvest a respectable potato supply almost every year. She really enjoyed collaborating with her assistant in the planting and harvesting. No, it wasn’t me.

Her little black-and-tan dachshund would follow her along each row of potatoes she would plant and would proceed to dig up every seed potato planted. Debby thought that was funny and would let Carmella do her “gardening” for a row or so and then bring her in the house so some constructive gardening could be done.

Little Carmella was at her finest when it was harvesting time. Debby would start digging and show Carmella where to dig too. There were a lot of holes in the potato patch, and not all of them were where potatoes were planted, but the two had a lot of fun digging in the dirt.

Over time, I planted a few berry bushes in one end of the main garden, but they never really did much either. The whole vegetable gardening thing was not successful and was finally abandoned.

Flowers, on the other hand, were a going concern. My wife had lived in Hawaii for a few years and loved the color and fragrance of all the flowers she encountered there. She wanted to decorate the yard with at least the color of a wide assortment of flowers. She did so for most of the time we’ve been in this house.

Over the last few years, age and plant costs have begun to take their toll. My wife has also developed other interests, including a home business, which occupies a lot of her time. She still enjoys the flowers, but not the work of planting and caring for them.

And, in case you’re wondering, my thumb is anything but green. If I touch the plant, there’s a better than even chance it will die shortly. I learned a long time ago to leave the gardening and planting to my wife.

Switching topics, the 2022 Alaska Territorial Shoot is in the books. I didn’t shoot because of my immobility with the healing ankle, but I was able to help a couple of days with Range Safety Officer (RSO) duties, allowing a few of the guys to concentrate on their shooting.

I was disappointed in the turnout of shooters for this statewide event. In years past, we’ve had as many as thirty-five shooters participating, including four or five women. This 2022 shoot had maybe a dozen shooters and no female participants. The other sad situation is that the youngest shooter this year was in his mid-fifties. The rest ranged in age up to near eighty years old.

We need to recruit younger shooters to keep this sport going. I’d hate to think when the last “blackpowder geezer” passes on, the sport in Alaska disappears. Social media is ruining a lot of things!