The Hard Part

There is so much stupid going on leading up to the elections and in the world in general I am not even going to comment. What's with the White House coming out against a freeze on foreclosures when it is so obvious that there is serious criminal activity involved in a lot of them? Why is Newt getting serious air time? Why is the Chamber of Commerce being allowed to buy an election? Why is the stock market(rich people) so happy to see unemployment climb? There seem to be a whole lot more questions without good answers than the other way around.
Me? I just going to hunker down and get some good old fashioned work done. The hardest part of a big garden(at least for me) is the fall clean up. All you can do is try to look forward to having it all done and the garden being ready to start in the spring. I've got a quarter of it tilled and planted with the fall stuff and I still have a few more peas and some Swiss Chard to plant but the balance is just dead or dying stuff with plenty of morning glory vines and other weeds all mixed in. The vines make it pretty near impossible to till until they are removed which is nothing but plain hard work. You can till but the constant stopping and clearing of the tiller tines of all the wrapped vines makes it pretty frustrating. A giant dead pine finally fell last week and it is laying across part of the garden and it is going to have to be cut up and hauled away which is going to make for even more work. I only have a small 14 inch chain saw and this tree is going to challenge it severely. Being so large it is going to have to be cut into pretty small chunks so that I can even lift them. Every time I get into this kind of stuff I just try to imagine my ancestors trying to clear the virgin forests in Western Virginia with nothing but axes and a couple of horses. Acres and acres of huge hardwoods that must have taken them days apiece to cut down and then there was the stump to get rid of. Now that's hard work and if they didn't get it done they starved. I should complain.
Anyhow, off to the garden to try and make a dent. I do have some sweet potatoes to get out of the ground but the sampling I've done has shown that the depredation of the deer has really limited the size and number of potatoes. I'll be lucky if I get a bushel out of nearly 100 feet of plants where I should get 3 or 4. When I walked to the garden this morning at first light there were three of the creatures standing there giving me the eye. I guess I should be grateful they don't seem to care too much for broccoli or cabbage as they have just sampled a few leaves. It is probably only because there is still tastier forage and when that goes they'll stoop to the garden. They have eaten all the leaves off the okra and there are now just barren stalks standing which will make for easier clean up.
Like I said at the beginning...it is just getting too strange out there so I'll just focus on the simple stuff for now.
If you happen to be Canadian...Happy Thanksgiving!