Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Looking forward

I'm sitting next to an open window listening to the birds sing and the wind blow gently through the trees. I love spring. The past few days have been all about preparing our garden beds. I've neglected my indoor activities; I have unfolded laundry and there are things that are not put away where they belong, but that's OK, being outside with my hands in the earth is well worth the extra work I'll have indoors for the next couple of days.



We decided this year to completely re-do our raised beds. We kept 3, completely got rid of 2 and are adding 2 more, I had to dig up my tansy bed and move it to make room. Its a good thing tansy is an herb you can't kill. Our goal this year is to be able to grow and can or freeze as many vegetables as we can. I will be growing extra tomatoes for our "Clan" family as tomatoes seem to love my soil (I actually have tomatoes growing wild in most of my beds), but beyond that I don't think we have anything thing else we "have" to grow..so much of this will be experimentation on what grows best where, what boosts the soils fertility best and what things are the easiest to grow and store.






One thing we plan on doing is setting up a bed (the one in the picture that is only 1/2 done) and using it for our compost this year, then next year picking a new bed to use as our compost and we'll keep rotating them if it works out well.


We took out our pool. We figured that it was a waste of time, energy and water especially since we only live a few miles from a beach. The sand pad the pool sat on will become a sitting area and will be surrounded by herbs and flowers..I've always wanted an English garden, I'm hoping I can transform this into what I've always envisioned complete with flag stone and wrought iron furniture, and some sort of shade.

We will also be putting up a garden shed. This shed will not only be for storage of garden items, but will act as a fence or wall to help with the privacy issues with our neighbors. I really want this area to be a place I enjoy spending time in, a place that I can sit and listen to the birds and the squirrels and not our neighbors running their ATVs up and down their driveway. "chirp chirp chirp" V.S. "VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM"...hm...i think I'll take the "chirp chirp chirp".
There are so many ideas and plans, I hope the weather stays nice for the days we have to work on it and that the crops we plan on growing actually grow. The land up the hill is such a work in progress, but after cutting down some trees, trimming up some branches and trying to take back some land from the forest, you can actually start to see the spaces available and the potential that is there. I'm looking forward to seeing it complete. I'm especially looking forward to digging out a pond area and cutting back all the small trees around it and having a water area where you can't hear the cars all you can hear is the water from the stream and sounds from the forest. I see it as being a sanctuary, a place to go and be still. There is an old old old Maple there that I would like to keep...I think its as old as the house we live in (circa. 1840's) but since I'm not a tree expert don't hold me to that :-P its huge and to touch it and sit under it is such a blissful experience (well..blissful minus the mosquitoes). Like I said..so much potential...I'm looking forward this summer...forward to potentials, forward to goals, forward to dreams...and I'm going to try and make the best of all of them.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

what an awesome yard you have!


(I lost my favs and so lost all the homeschool blogs I used to read, so I am searching for new homeschool blogs to read. swing by my bog for a little visit if you have time)