Dark Dirt

I've had it with Dandy Gilver; I'm going noir.  Just kidding.  I mean real dirt - compost, if you must.

Twelve trips to the dump:

which is twelve pick-up truck loads (ninety six barrowfuls, three hundred and eight four shovelfuls (I've turned into Mr Monk))

later and my garden is transformed.  On the surface.  The clay is still there underneath, drying and forming into boulders.

And suddenly everything looks better.

Even nothing looks better.  Here's the half of the pumpkin patch last week with the crumbled chocolate cake topping:

and here's the half I hadn't done yet:

Where would you rather put these little pumpkins, pattypans, crooknecks, courgettes, cantaloupes, watermelons and butternuts?

High hopes this year.  I've grown everything from seed in the same compost it's going to live in, I've put another barrowful of compost on each hill since these pictures were taken, I've got a drip irrigation "system" (scare quotes are because I suspect real irrigation systems don't have any duck tape in them) all ready to start, and I'm only going away for nine weeks in the hottest part of the summer and leaving the whole shebang in the care of an undergardener who thinks plants are more interesting when they've got diseases.  What could possibly go wrong?