The garden is in.

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Last week I bordered the garden area with root barriers. This week, I laid down a thick layer of newspaper (turned out to need a Sunday NYTimes, plus several old copies of the Tech) to keep grass from growing up into the new garden, and covered it in soil taken from parts of the container garden that had died back for the winter. (No Solanaceae in that bed next year; it would be effectively tomato/eggplant after potatoes in crop rotation terms.) Unlike standard lasagna mulch, I didn't wet the newspaper because it's expected to rain tonight, and I didn't feel like messing around with the cold water. It will probably be spring before I know whether that was a good idea. The top layer is leaf mulch, to protect the soil from erosion during a winter when there will be no roots holding it together. I hope that the material on the steep slope I tried to moderate won't wash away before I can plant something on it.

And now? I've been inside half an hour and I'm still cold. I'm going to enjoy the luxury of a hot shower.