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Gopher Gulch: Nice wide paths
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These days my gardens are small spaces surrounded by lots of grass that’s easily mowed, but when the whole place was under cultivation I had some real path issues. I wanted wide, clear paths. They let me cling to the illusion that I was in control, and living on a slope meant that illusion was the best I could hope for. I spent years terracing, moving huge amounts of real estate with a shovel and mulching paths with everything from old newspapers and carpet to sawdust and straw. It wasn’t entirely compulsive behavior. In order to avoid damaging the tilth of the soil we need paths to prevent stomping delicate soil particles into hardpan. During wet seasons, good wide paths provide ventilation that helps plants fight off mildew, blight, and assorted fungi. I wanted paths I could work in. One can become entirely too familiar with a cornstalk while bending over in a narrow path to pick cucumbers. A squash patch can obliterate a narrow path in one hot, exuberant afternoon, and small animals that start down the path through the zucchini may not reappear.
I wanted paths wide enough for a loaded cart and wide enough to crawl
around in comfortably. Every year I turned what seemed like half the
garden into paths, and still got mugged by migrating mint.
Every year I thought, “This year will be different!” as I began to terrace and haul heavy substances up the hill so they could wash down again. I’d sink deep into denial and forget that one definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. I remember with a certain degree of chagrin the year I determined to solve the narrow path problem once and for all. I carefully crafted a wide path running down the center of the garden. A marvel of architectural design, it had a crown so that water would run off. I shoveled the soil onto nearby raised beds. I smoothed, measured, leveled and widened. Then I planted bush beans in the new beds I’d created beside my fine, wide path. With a labor crew consisting of a fat dog, a curious cat and half a dozen ducks, the job took roughly twice as long as it should have, but at last it was done. I smoothed the bean bed, shooed the cat out of it, tossed a ball for the dog, chased ducks away from a salad bed and dragged the tools to the shed. Flushed with the glow of accomplishment and a hot flash, I stopped halfway to the house and looked back down the slope. That darned path was precisely the width of my shoe. But this year is going to be different. It really is. The tide has turned and the place is mostly grass with small, easily managed beds here and there. If you live long enough, the path issue will solve itself. |
