by Keith Needham

Created on: May 15, 2009   Last Updated: October 26, 2009

My great, true, personal gardening story did not seem all that great and wonderful at the time. It was, in fact, a bit humiliating and embarrassing. My wife and I had just moved to the huge, thriving metropolis of New Raymer, Colorado: population, 70; average age of people before we moved in, 75. We moved in with our family of ragamuffin children: we were 8 in all; and because of our youth, we decreased the average age of the "city" to a mere 57.

Our very first summer, we decided to plant a garden. Now you have to understand, this was dry-land farming. There was no irrigation; and the water which was piped to our house was quite wierd! It was excessively soft, and it tasted horrible! As soon as we noised our gardening designs around town, the people said we were crazy. "There are too many minerals here." "The soil is not suitable for gardens." "The alcali in the soil keeps everything but the hardiest of rodents away." But we were determined - or at least my wife was (and I was determined to help her!) - and so we began our attempt of putting the crop into the ground. Little did I know that the hardness of the soil was going to become illustrative of the hardness and the piggishness of what has come to be known as my head.

I say attempt, because it took forever to be successful - that is, in getting the seed into the ground. I have never seen such hard soil! You couldn't till it (well, you could, if you were willing to till an inch at a time!). I went to borrow an elderly gentleman's rotor-tiller - and he laughed at me when I asked him. He shook his head as I proceded to insist that I thought that we could make a garden a success. After all, the grass grew on it! I had to mow the lawn most every day! But he continued to smile, and then, at last, finally gave in.

I took it home and began, and the thing just ran away, scooting over the ground. I tried to hold it back, to force it to do its thing, and begin to turn up the ground. But, ha! It was not to be. I watered and watered and watered the patch. "The water will soften it up," I said. I will saturate it with water. And so I watered it over and over again - even over a period of days. I was finally successful in scratching most of it an inch, and in a couple of places, I think I actually got down perhaps six inches or more. In one place, the tiller actually started to sink in. It was great! For five whole feet, I had the tiller burried, and it continued to burrow away. Then,

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