Thursday, May 14, 2015

Garden View

The kitchen is still coming along, but slowly. The upper cabinet doors are off and are being primed and painted, but there's less of an urgency. Our attention has been turned elsewhere.

Spring is full-on and there are things that need our attention outside, plus who can resist a gorgeous, cool, spring day? There's a reason why they call it spring fever. I have to say though, my allergies have been off the chart this year! It's really bad.

The vegetable and herb garden is taking off. My winter sowed tomato seedlings will get planted this weekend and the trellising for the cucumbers and raspberries will be put up. Some things are doing better than expected, some not so, but that is the beauty of gardening; you often don't know what to expect when trying something new.

This is a window garden view from our guest room. I love how much it looks like a formal potager garden. I think subconsciously, that is what I am going for. I make a garden plan each year, but that has about a 60% success rate, as I don't know what plants will do well in what beds the first time around. This garden gets a good 6 hours of sun a day, the back beds a little less. So, I know some things will do better in the back beds and some things do better in the front beds. The smaller boxes contain Russian Fingerling potatoes...another new experiment.


At some point, this maple tree will be taken down. I love it as a specimen tree, but it is too close to the house and its limbs are too brittle. Plus it gives me unwanted shade.

There used to be 3 huge maple trees in this whole garden space; that's where all the mulch came from and why we use raised beds. Although the trees were cut down, mulched, and the stumps ground, there are still thick roots that run underground. I would have loved to plant my raspberries on the left side of the garden, but those thick roots had other plans.

The big pile in the back, right-hand corner is my compost pile. It gets nothing but table scraps, dried leaves, grass clippings, and clean garden waste. I would love to find a good manure source, but I haven't been very proactive. The worms seem happy though, and I get a big joy to turn that pile and see their wriggling about "flexible and pink, like lips" as Margaret Atwood would say.  I had a hard time keeping earth worms in Florida, as the fire ants would eat them. Speaking of fire ants, we do have them up here! They're are not as fierce or prevalent, but they are definitely here. My old nemesis!

At some point, I want to put up a small garden fence around this area to define it more. We don't have issues with garden pests (knock on wood), with the exception of marauding crows. I have fantasies about getting chickens and I know that vegetable gardens and chickens don't mix for most of the time.

I have perennial beds elsewhere on the property that are getting most of my attention now. So between them, this vegetable garden, and the kitchen, I have to pace myself and work on one or all three a little bit each day.

Life could be worse, right? I am grateful for it all.

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