While it’s a day for tom-foolery, this post is actually an invitation to those of you who have been offering to help with the garden, or for those of you who might have expertise in some area that you may not have realized we needed. We are willing to pay for your skilled help.

Winter would have been an ideal time for sketching ideas onto graph paper, but it wasn’t where my head space has been these last months, and Scott has needed to keep his focus on increasing house accessibility. Now as willows stretch bright yellow arms towards longer sun and osiers flaunt their coral-barked branches – now I feel ready to dig in, but I get overwhelmed quickly and don’t know which direction to turn. Also, in spite of growing arm strength and skill, it’s still very hard to push myself around our grassy 2/3 acre.

Our yard was part of a subdivided farm turned into a neighborhood lot in the early 1960s. When Scott and I bought the place from the original builder-owner in 2011, we could see the outline of where their garden had been, since the grass grew greener in that large rectangle. So, I rented a sod cutter and exposed rich dirt again, carefully trying to avoid chopping a Pulaski through an underground sprinkler pipe, which the yard was already networked with. We have continued to augment with compost and improve the soil there.

As we go about re-designing the yard/garden so that I can navigate it from a wheelchair, there are four main categories of work, as I see it:

1. Garden bed/fence/gate infrastructure
2. Plants
3. Accessible paths
4. Watering system
5. Oh, and does anyone have a pile of decomposing cow poop they need disposed of? (preferably not full of weed seeds not already rampant in my yard)

I am in search of some advice and labor in all areas. But first I seek a creative human with knowledge of both garden and wider yard-scape planning – who might help us brainstorm and draw some plans. Our house sits on a double lot, so we have some space to work with. We’d like to re-create the current garden with 2-foot-high raised beds (hickory? Cedar? 8 foot board lengths? Concrete pavers?) and wide paths so I can keep my hands in the earth and grow some food and flowers. I also dream of an accessible trail system throughout the wider yard and am trying to figure out the most enduring, wheelchair friendly design and material (crushed granite?) for that.

We’ve already turned some areas over to native plants… and some fruit trees/bushes, but we’d like to do this with more parts of the space. This will entail also replacing some sprinkler heads with a more water-conserving drip system, as well as fixing a few breaks in the line caused by last fall’s garage construction work. I know that I know some folks who can help dig ditches and holes (not so different than fireline, ha ha)… but it sure would be great if we could find someone who could help us fix and revise the whole sprinkler system as well.

I would like our yard to positively contribute to a healthy Orchard Homes ecosystem. We don’t use pesticides. We appreciate our bees, butterflies, birds… and would like to invite more. We also like to grow and eat our own food. I am willing to do less of this than I have in the past, because I’m facing this hard reality of less manual labor I can produce, but I am unwilling to let it all go. We are not native plant purists, but wish to be thoughtful about a balance, and wish to not spray gallons of water into the summer air that could be better conserved with some foresight.

If you would like to help, or know someone else who might, could you call or email lori.messenger@hotmail.com? Many thanks ahead of time!

Meanwhile, Virgil’s 17th birthday is tomorrow. As well as the obvious link to his great grandpa Virgil (who whistled while he farmed, literally), and the famous poet – we liked that his name has appropriate seasonal Latin ties: Vernal, or vernālis, meaning “of spring.” It’s hard to know whether a name shapes a person or vice versa, but this guy fits his birth season well – carrying light and music with him into the shower, up into climbing trees, and wherever else he wanders. While typically American’s give their kids birthday presents, the irony of course, is that the young person inhabiting his or her family, is actually the gift. Last summer Virgil got to work an internship focused on weed management and other natural resource issues for Missoula County, and suddenly he got interested in getting his hands in the dirt and eliminating lawn grass, too. So we are a family team in this enterprise, but seek some teachers and extra hands!