Experience Keeps a Dear School

One of my high school English teachers was fond of Benjamin Franklin's pithy statement, "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other."

I can't say I like that statement. It comes unbidden to mind any time experience is teaching me a lesson.

Phil had a good day today. He received delivery of nine hay bales, and moved them into the barn. We appreciate having the storage space and the ability to move them easily. We are happy that we don't need our friend to deliver two bales every couple of days: a big load gives us flexibility, and fewer harrowing moments, should our friend be out of town or extremely busy.

Phil also finished tilling the peach orchard.

He broadcast the rye and hairy vetch by hand, then dragged the field and used a roller to pack the seed down.

Since the guinea and remaining white leghorn came over immediately and started gorging on our seed, I hope the roller helped hide those little sprouts. It infuriated me to see the leghorn who hides her eggs, and the male guinea who never lays eggs eating our green manure seeds. The blasted freeloaders! (I wasn't in a very good mood.)

So Phil felt a great relief to have that task done. We've had the seed since the end of August.

I headed out to help broadcast, but once I began, I started to feel weighted down with all the previous green manure failures. (If I try to count them, I can only think of three right off, but emotionally, I was just done.) And here we are, in our fourth year, broadcasting a green manure probably two months late.

About this time, my traitorous mind began reminding me about experience's dear school that fool attend.

I headed down to start transplanting some of the hundreds of plants in tree pots.

I have a spot for the osage oranges I started from seed, so I grabbed the bulb crate where they're stored to begin transplanting.

It didn't budge.

About this time, I suddenly remembered that above ground growth is a reflection of the roots. Huh. If my osage oranges were three to four feet tall in pots about a foot or so, I probably had taproots growing out the bottom.

What was that about experience keeps a dear school? Why are these things only obvious after the fact?!

After hacking with shovel and chopping with pruning shears, as well as tugging and grunting, I finally established that, yes, my osage oranges were firmly embedded.

So I shifted to extracting my stinging nettles. These had, if anything, grown even more embedded in the underlying soil. I went to plant the three, and two of them required me to cut the plastic off. I could hardly see any soil, just a mass of white roots. Poor babies.

I didn't know what "transplant when well established" meant. I overshot by probably a couple of months.

I still haven't resigned myself to mistakes and errors.