A garden. A plot. A hope for fresh vegetables.

It took me just under five hours of steady digging, picking and raking

today to open up this 80-sq-ft (nine-sq-m) plot (the dark area). I

got the plot by lottery in the university I retired from a few months

ago; we retirees are as eligible as anyone else.



I discovered that previous users of this plot never dug down any

further than about seven inches (17 or 18 cm) -- I found a layer of

hard pan and gracial-till rocks that clearly had never been touched

before. I dug down a further four or five inches (ten - twelve cm). I

took out about six times as many stones as you see there in the

corner. A dozen of the stones were the size of my head.



By the lottery rules, I should be able to keep it for three years.

But for the present, I have to think about what I'll plant. I haven't

had a proper vegetable garden since I was a kid more than fifty years

ago.