Question: How do you get boys to help you do yard work?
Answer: Buy a bunch of dirt.

I've always wanted to grow a garden but my thumb was always the wrong color (unless green thumb means you like to spend money). So I decided to take the plunge this year. It helped that two neighbors and another friend were also going to try their hand at gardening, and also saved us money because we were able to buy dirt and compost in bulk.

Have you ever bought dirt? I called a place that someone had recommended because they sold dirt for cheap (dirt cheap). I was quoted $12 a ton. Have you ever tried to figure out how much a ton of dirt is? It's not as much as you think. The helpful person asked me how much dirt I wanted to purchase, and I gave her the dimensions of my raised bed. She gave me a formula to figure out the amount of dirt I would need, but I asked her if she would just calculate it for me, because my math skills were not up to par (although I did get an A in both geometry and trigonometry, but I think those are classes that I learned what I needed to know, and the promptly forgot it). Since I was ordering topsoil for three gardens that were the same size, and also filling part of the beds with compost, we agreed that I would need 1.5 tons of dirt. That seemed like a lot to me, and I was envisioning this huge mound of dirt on our driveway.

We had the dirt delivered to my house on Friday. A big dump truck arrives, and I call the boys up to the front to see it...and this little pile of dirt falls out. That's it? The boys were not as impressed as I thought they would be. I asked the driver if this was, in fact, a ton and half of dirt, and he looked at his delivery slip and said, "Actually, it's 1.55 tons of dirt!" It did end up to be just the right amount.

Dirt must have some kind of electromagnet pull with human males. In about five seconds, Adam and Zach, plus our two neighbor boys were digging, shoveling, scooping, sliding and playing the dirt. They did manage to fill up our wheel barrows so we could take it to the backyard.

On Saturday, my neighbor and I borrowed another neighbors truck and headed out to Single Tree Stables to pick up compost. We pulled up to the farm and about four or five dogs come out to meet us, one which looks like Droopy Dog and was tall enough to stick his head in the window of our truck. The others were a mix of different breeds who happily followed our truck very closely out to the pasture. The farm hand (is that PC?) filled the the truck up for $25. Back at the house, the boys were my little helpers again. Adam filled up the wheelbarrows...compost is so much easier to shovel than regular dirt! Once the dirt was in the bed, Zach helped me turn it and rake it all out.

I planted tomatoes (and yes, you CAN plant tomatoes this early...there was a debate about it, but we confirmed it to be true), onion and lettuce...and next month I'll plant zucchini.