$6,000 Mud and Rock Pit
Scene of the Destruction We seem to have come through our late July heat wave, and Steepmeadow's garden is doing pretty well in spite of record high temperatures for a record length of time and the smoke that descended on us from the burning Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The tomatoes are starting to produce. We have a bed full of healthy lettuce, which is a good thing, given this year's as yet uncontained cyclospora explosive diarrhea outbreak . It turns out that, unsurprisingly, the root of the problem is a massive factory agribusiness that uses slave labor, Taylor Farms . We have peppers and eggplant that are just waiting to pop. We have winter squash and pumpkins that are starting to pop up. The yard is producing a bumper crop of creeping Charlie. In mixed news, we had our old, sagging, rotting, not-up-to-code deck removed, and significant expense. It ranks as one of the most miserable, least satisfying expenditures of all time in our money pit home. ...