Snowstorm 1, Compost 0

Snow can really get in the way of gardening plans.

In this case G's mom had chosen her van as her mode of transportation on Friday to help us pick up and schlep substrate: gravel and sand for the downspout planter and compost and top soil for everything else.

On the way down from her home in Jim Thorpe, she had picked up our 100 gallon stock tank to be used as the planter. We had been thinking to use it as a compost container (along with a lot of buckets) on a run to the Recycling Center, but we called that off, looking at all the snow in the back yard and imagining the snowy, muddy mess we'd find at the piles of compost at the Recycling Center. So we headed to the big box hardware store and got gravel, sand, and a bunch of smaller bits and pieces to assemble the planter. We were going to get top soil, but it was shelved in a pallet way high up on the garden center wall, and we wanted to get home.

Saturday morning we came back to pick up the top soil, 25 purple and white flat bags of the stuff. The clerks drove a forklift with an insanely highly extendable fork (maybe they're all like this, but we were impressed) to fetch the pallet, and the wheeled the whole thing out to the van. They pulled away the plastic wrap and reached for the first bag, only to find it frozen to the ones below it.

Luckily the clerks had a good sense of humor and so did we. The shovel served as a satisfactory lever to pry the bags apart, and soon we had them loaded into the van. We still need to get the compost.