A Humble Start

About ten years ago, not long after we moved to this house, we cleared a small plot for some fall vegetable planting. It wasn’t big - not much larger than a sheet of plywood - and partway up the slope that we’d soon start calling “Misery Hill”.

When this house (and the one next door) were built, the developers had to cut terraces into the natural slope, before spreading what I can only assume was a bare minimum of soil fill over the top in order to grow lawn. At first glance, this seemed like a great spot - it was relatively flat, sunny, and near enough to the back of the house (and, the kitchen) that we could keep an eye on it. However, once we started pulling up the grass and digging, we soon found out how difficult it was going to be to start gardening on this property.

Unfortunately, there were more rocks than soil in most of the places we tried to dig - so we needed to get quite a bit of topsoil and compost to backfill the area with. On the other hand, conditions like this meant that we’d never need to venture very far if we needed rocks for walls, stepping stones, backfill, lining pathways, etc.

The following spring, we migrated the main vegetable garden to the top of the hill where there were slightly better soil conditions (just clay, roots, and much smaller rocks). But, this was a start - and was a good preview for what was going to come next.