Turning the Soil

After turning soil in the new garlic plot the next steps are breaking up the heads of seed garlic to pick the best 100 cloves, spreading composted chicken manure over the plot, and running the rototiller until the soil is thoroughly mixed. This year the soil is a bit diverse with composted wood chips, compost from the large garden waste composter, and a variety of soil types from planting a diverse mix of vegetables here. Gardening is always an experiment. We’ll see how garlic in this mixed plot goes.

Garlic marks the last planting of the year. From here, garden work consists of taking down all the fencing and caging and stacking it for next year. I don’t always finish that work, leaving some of it for spring.

My posts about garlic are among the most popular on this blog.

Last night, two of my political friends Laura Bergus and Pauline Taylor won their primary to advance to the City Council ballot in November. Here in Big Grove, the November election is not significant. As I covered previously, there are two incumbents running for two school board seats and that’s it. Our household plans to vote.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst and U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks were both on a trip to the Middle East when Hamas attacked Israel. Miller-Meeks returned early for the House Speaker election today, and Senator Ernst met with Prime Minister Netanyahu on Tuesday. Ernst is co-chair of the Abraham Accords Caucus and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. While she was there, Israel had begun bombing Gaza. The situation in the Middle East is complicated. The Hamas attack on Israel is not and the United States stepped up to help.

I am working my way off Twitter. I uninstalled the application from my mobile device and read it only on my desktop. There continue to be too many newsworthy accounts and too many valued friends and acquaintances there to give it up completely. Eventually, though, I will. Not having the application on my mobile lets me know how much I relied on it. That needs changing.

Rain is forecast around noon today. I hope to have garlic planted before it comes. It has been unseasonably warm, so if I miss the window, there will be another.