9:11 a.m. - 26 April 2002
Gardening again
Okay, a couple of housekeeping details. A) I finally finished the entry from the other day, so check it out. B) I accidentally nuked one of my email folders without reading all the messages, so if you've sent me anything in the past couple of days, please send it again.
Our yard and garden are finally starting to take shape. It took us two weeks, but we built new beds around the existing azalea bushes that line both sides of part of the fence, laid down weed prevention fabric, and filled the beds with pine nuggets. We've also got the vegetable garden tilled, and tomorrow we'll get the beds marked out in it and some veggies planted. We're a little behind, but the weather hasn't been cooperating too much here lately.
Our vegetable plot is 23'x23', which is fairly large for just two people. But we're planning to plant a good bit of corn, so that will take up a lot of the space. Tomatoes, peppers, beans, carrots, onions, squash, zucchini, watermelons, winter squash, herbs, and some sunflowers will fill up the rest of the space. I'm excited about it; we both really missed not having a garden last year, but we moved in to the house too late to really do anything.
I didn't plant any bulbs last fall, partly because I wanted to see if there were any already planted. While there is a huge row of daffodils along the back of the house, no other flowers came up, so this fall I'll probably plant tulips, irises, and maybe some lilies. Lee really likes tulips, so there will more than likely be more of those than anything else.
We keep adding to our "orchard" as well: we've already got two apple trees, a peach tree, and two blueberry bushes planted, and as soon as we find a trellis we like, we've got two grapevines to go in the ground as well (scuppernongs, Lee's favorite). The fruit trees serve two purposes: the fruit, of course, but also to provide a little more privacy. Lee hates that we ended up buying a house in the middle of a subdivision, and he's doing everything he can to screen the house and yard as much as possible. About half of the back yard is fenced, but the fence is only 4' high. There are some impressive pine trees in the back, but the lowest branches are too high to really hide anything effectively other than the sun (shade loving plants in the back only). These are in addition to the ornamentals that we planted and the ones the previous owners planted: maples, a bradford pear, a corkscrew willow, etc.
Lee wants more fruit trees, though, since if you can't eat it, he's not interested. So we'll probably add a few more apple trees, another peach or two, and hopefully some fruiting cherry trees. Most places around here only have flowering cherries, but those won't fly with Lee. I just hope it doesn't rain tomorrow so we can actually get out there and do some work. Those seeds won't last forever.
