I’VE BEEN OUT STANDING in my field, trying to get ahead on garden chores before eyelid surgery. The list of things I can’t do in the days and weeks following surgery encompass everything on the list to be done, so I’m racing the clock.

Pat Hight tilled the garden area, so the first chore was raking up everything into raised beds. Then I realized I’d made some of the beds too narrow, so I re-raked to turn 6 of the beds into 4 wider ones. The next tier of 6 I left alone. They’ll be wide enough to hold peppers and eggplants, with some onions along the edges. Next, I used some salvage lumber to build the first of two boxed beds that, side by side, will be the basis of a hoop house to overwinter greens and other hardy winter veggies.

First, though, it will grow a crop of carrots, beets, parsnips and radishes, so the soil had to be dug out, sifted to remove about a bushel of rocks, and amended with coarse potting soil (actually just rotted wood), peat and sand. Once I recover, three more inches of soil has to be mixed in before it can be seeded.

I also assembled and erected an old child’s swing set on which I’ll grow beans for drying, and marked out some places where the garden’s edges need expanding or evening out. I also laid down cardboard and hay to mark the edges of the beds for raspberries and blackberries. After all, if you’re gonna have a garden, why not have all the garden you can? More to come, but after surgery.