It was a tough go, one shovel broke but that didn't stop me. The pickax struck, it slammed into corded roots of bamboo, it lifted old pieces of post-cement. The sweat ran down my body as I slammed into the earth again and again. It is now two-thirds finished. The worse of it. I can see a garden taking shape. Green slips of leaves where sticks of bamboo once flourished. The water fountain was ordered for the center of the grape harbor and the grapes should arrive at any time. Juan the carpenter will be here in a day or two to finish the harbor and then the wood gate at the side of the house.
Peppers and tomatoes, sunflowers and squash, cucumber, beans, eggplant, it will all have a place in the expanded garden. At least that's the plan. The hope I hang on to as my hands swell with splinters and my back aches from sore muscles not used in some time.
The weather has turned to Spring. Cool in the morning with dew heavy on the ground. The day warms and dries it all, basks the green grass and snapdragons. It's getting warm, the heater is turned down more than up and each morning, I test to see if it's pleasant enough to have coffee with the paper in the patio. Not yet, but soon and yet not soon enough.
I warned you -- bamboo is the devil's own plant, and it will come back to haunt you. Find some pandas and let them loose on it.
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