this is fun, right?

i'd thought i was most of the way pulling gravel and hunks of aggregate out of my garden, and therefore should be able to get down to the business of planting right quick. wrong. the gravel stratum was a few inches thick, which made it slow to clear. i ended up using a hand-held gardening fork i mostly use for ripping out weeds. and a few of the "small rocks stuck around the edges of the hole" turned out to be substantial aggregate blocks. one would make a satisfactory petrified ANSI football for tweaking the clueless.

eventually, there was planting. i'm less than halfway through putting in new bulbs¹ and replanting all the ones i lifted. back at it tomorrow.

however, i was very pleased by the striking contrast between the red clay beneath the gravel stratum and the chestnut brown soil above it. amazing what 13 years of working organic matter into the soil will do. (i'm lazy and just plant deep-rooted annuals. composting is for people with more time.) also, the soil is almost black just below the surface and becomes brown only slowly. go, soil structure, go!

1: a couple of kinds of species tulips -- the regular kind never appealed to me, but these looked interesting -- some dutch irises, and the aforementioned allium.