Day 8: Laying it out Mathematically

View East from SW corner

View West from SE corner

Here we are with much of the digging done. How big is the garden, and am I digging the edges crookedly? Time for a string line (shown in blue). I set one of those free, found posts at the SW corner, figuring this is a permanent boundary since it is about as close to the adjoining woods as I want to go, and pretty close to our property line. That's my cherished posthole digger in the foreground - one of the best tools in existence besides a wheel hoe, a T-post setter, a chipper-shredder and good clippers. (And, I hear, a tool called a grape hoe, which I would be more than happy to get from any company that sells one and wants some free online copy writ about its merits...)
As it happens, this eyeballed space is 30' X 27'.
When I go inside at night after laying this out, I find that I am designing (on paper... the pen is lighter than the shovel) a crop layout for a 30' X 30' space. "What's two extra feet?" I asked my younger daughter, who had come out to do her homework in the spring sun. "That's three extra feet," she said. The kid is brilliant. She wants to major in math with a specialty in statistics and a minor in psychology. You can see why.
    Tomorrow, the string will move East three feet into goutweed sod. Meanwhile, this endeavor needs a name. And a mathematician. Bloom where you are planted.