Stuck in my craw

On the south side of our house there is a 7.5 by 18 foot enclosed vegetable garden that the previous owners painstakingly installed. And since we bought the house October 23rd they never had a chance to clear out the dead stalks and leaves from the year before.

All winter I've looked out my south-facing kitchen window and dreamed about seeing tender young shoots springing up instead of the snow-covered dead corn stalks we were too busy to remove in our zeal of moving.

So last night the ear doctor and I went to Home depot, bought our first shovel and got to work on our garden.

20 minutes of clean-up and the plot was looking pretty good.

The ear doctor looked at me like I was crazy when I squealed with joy over the abundance of worms in the earth. He's never gardened before. He doesn't share my love of natures little composters.

We tilled and turned and were practically done refreshing the ground when my shovel hit something hard. I gritted my teeth and got to work because rocks are not allowed in my plots.

But this rock was hard...and big. I spent 15 minutes attempting to pry the thing out of the ground, but every time I tried to lever it up it wouldn't budge. But the strangest part was that this "rock" was unusually flat on top.

I was about to just stop and cover it back up, but the ear doctor said, "you're going to stop? That's not like you."

And he was right.

So we spent an additional 20 minutes scraping and digging until we'd found the entire perimeter of the rock.

And you know what it was? A 12 inch by 18 inch piece of sidewalk.


A huge hunk of sidewalk buried 12 inches under our garden plot. We both stared at it for a few minutes bewildered.


After laughing we decided to just cover it up and leave it alone.


But it's there. And I know it. And the ear doctor is right; it isn't like me to leave it alone once I know its there....