Forget the Energizer Bunny

Some things keep going and going....like our rototiller. I heard the familiar sound of the Briggs & Straton 5hp engine on the old red rototiller that was given to me by my dear friend Joyce Lathan back in Ojai. When I lived on Rice Road, each year I would borrow her old rototiller to work my garden prior to planting. When she retired and left Ojai for Yuma she gave it to me. It worked like a champ for years until one day the engine froze. Before I could scrap it, Ralph and I happened upon an auction of old equipment at the city equipment yard. There were two edgers with the exact engine. I won the bid of $5 for both. The rototiller complete with another engine went back to work, this time at our place in the orchard on Fairview Road. When we moved across the country to Pennsylvania, the rototiller came with us. Each year it has continued to spring to life, its tines chewing into the dirt, mixing rich compost into the shale to produce yet another plentiful garden. Ralph is readying one of the gardens for a fall planting of hardy greens. With proper mulching and floating row covers, we should be eating fresh salad greens until the end of the year.