Some Assembly Required

Last summer we gave gardening a try, it was not the first time but it was a more serious effort than we've made in the last several years.  We did not have a rototiller at the time so we rented one.  That was an experience and a half but not one we really wanted to repeat.  So this year we bought one.  We did some research, drew upon our experience with garden tillers, and bought one.  We did some research online and made a couple of trips to some stores here in the area to see what they had and then, because nobody had one in their store like what we wanted, we went back online and bought one.  I was hoping it would come boxed so it would fit in our car and, sure enough, it did.  That meant some assembly was required.  How bad can that be?  I've assembled stuff before, it wouldn't be that bad, right?  So I opened the box and pulled out all the parts.

Yeah, that was something.  All these parts.  Fortunately, some of the major parts were already assembled, like the engine.  That was a good thing.  But what was not assembled was pretty complicated looking.  And there were also several pages of instructions.  That was a very good thing.

Alas, there are instructions, there are bad instructions, there are really bad instructions, and there are instructions that are kinda good.  Really good instructions are rare, especially with something this complex.  These fell into the "kinda good" category, the English and grammar was good, but they still did not have the detail they needed. There were several times that I felt like they had left a step or two out.  And even though there was a parts list, all the parts were all metric and it was, in some respects, pretty foreign to me.  But, like all good puzzles, it had a picture of the finished product on the box. So I got to it.  

After a short time, Brombeere came out and was very helpful.  It went much quicker after that.  

We worked together a while and pretty soon it was lunch time so we went in for lunch.  Then Brombeere had to go so I had to finish on my own; that can be a little scary.  But we were close to done and it went well; soon enough it was done.

And, surprise, surprise, it actually resembled the illustration on the box!  That was encouraging!  So I added all the fluids and fired it up, and it actually started!  I was a little concerned about that but it was good.  So I made some adjustments to the engine settings, pushed it around back, made a few final adjustments to the engine, and got started.

It didn't take me very long at all to decide we'd made a good choice in getting a tiller that was different from the one we rented last year.  It went much better and was much easier to handle.  It was still a bit of work to till the ground and get it to dig and turn the ground like I wanted, but it went much better.  

I didn't do the whole garden space, I only did the one side.  Brombeere had talked about things she wanted to plant and where, so I did enough to do that.  The weather was deteriorating and rain was threatening so I didn't feel like I had a whole lot of time anyway.  But I did enough that I figured that Brombeere would be able to get started, not quite half of our garden space.

The rest will come later.  We do, after all, now have a tiller ready and available whenever we need it.  That's a nice thing.  So we'll be able to put the rest of the garden in once Brombeere decides what she wants to plant and how she wants to arrange it.  It's a work in progress.