Bulldozer of My Dreams

Actually, I think it’s this Bobcat.

It’s small but mighty. It was time to pull up the rest of that darn concrete in the center of the garden. Last year, a man named Steve came to me and asked if I had some work for him. I handed him a dig bar and he pried out literally tons of concrete over a few days of work. Steve was real tall. He also liked poetry, a crow flew by one day and he recited a Mary Oliver poem about crows, “From a single grain they have multipled. When you look into the eyes of one, you have seen them all…”

Second best concrete remover is my friend Hilary, who runs Hulk Hauling. He told me years ago: “When you are ready to liberate that good dark earth from the concrete covering it, just let me know. I thought I was ready. All I had to do was watch, but it was still hard. There’s just something about a big machine driving into a garden. Hilary was really careful and no living thing got squashed, it was just somehow…exhausting.

An old man named Doc left a container to load the broken bits of rubble into. I was happy to hear the rubble will get smashed and reused to make more concrete, instead of going to a landfill. It only took a few hours for the concrete to get scraped up then loaded into the container. By the end of the day, Hilary said it was about 10 tons of urbanite hauled away. I know someone will say that you can build stuff with urbanite. To you I say: come get it. There’s still some left!! I had it surrounding some of my veg beds but frankly, I just don’t like concrete rubble. Weeds grow into it. Rats hide in it. It makes the place look a little messy. Still, come get it if you want some–just email me.

Here’s the hole that was left.

I felt like I had given birth. There’s something about destruction, even of an annoying concrete foundation in the garden, that is mentally taxing. Next day I ordered a bunch of compost, dug out all the rubbley bits until I hit that sweet black earth underneath. Last year I tested the soil and it was all fine–rich even.
The pile of compost attracted my neighbor, Chao, who is a monk at the monastary across the street. When he came over and started helping, my daughter, who wasn’t that keen on loading up a wheelbarrow, suddenly wanted to help. Thank god for men of the cloth.

Next up is to get some free woodchips! My friend Willow suggested putting in some apple trees along the pathway. Let me know what’s your favorite apple to grow! I’m thinking Hudson Golden Gems or Newton Pippins.