I Love Gardening!

Look at what we did yesterday! My Dad called us at 8:00 yesterday morning and said "Wanna work on your garden today?"

"Yes!"

Well, "working on your garden" also means putting a tile line across the driveway, cutting down some dead trees, and also, of course, putting in a vegetable garden.

Imagine me in that ditch also digging. lol. Who needs the gym? We had a couple of problematic wet spots around the driveway, including where we wanted to park (but couldn't) and on a part of the lawn that we frequently drive over to get to the basement to load or unload things. We live on a hill...but there's another even higher spot above us where the school built a baseball field. Every time it rains, the water runs off the field, and down in a little stream through our yard and across the driveway, and through more yard, eroding the soil along the way. In time, we might even find ourselves having a little creek bed with cattails and fish and frogs! Right across the driveway! As whimsical as that sounds, it's not what we wanted...hence the tile line! We'll have a little drain (that my dad made by stacking two old big truck tire rims - reduce, reuse, recycle, right?) that the water should flow into (we still need to get a grate) and then travel through the pipe which extends through the yard a little ways and then dump into my future flower garden where the little grove of locust trees live.

One of my dad's pay loaders helped us tremendously! But my dad didn't let me drive it. :( I suppose it's just as well...I don't think I've driven one since I was a teenager.

And this is my garden! Well...the beginnings of it at least. There was a meadow sort of thing with a bunch of small sapling trees and brush. More meadow and saplings still surround it on the backside, which is nice. A layer of manure from dad's cows lays just on top of the ground. Hopefully this week we'll till it all under and put the posts in for the fence. It's a large garden that I probably won't fill this year, but wanted to leave room to grow. The two trees in front will anchor it to the landscape...it kinda bugs me to see vegetable gardens just floating in the middle of a yard...although that full sun is good for the plants. I don't think my trees will provide much shade over the garden, even as they grow. They're the tall skinny kind with narrow canopies.

My dad cut down a couple of dead trees that were leaning over on the edge of woods, threatening to fall. One of them uprooted last fall during Hurricane Irene and then I planted daffodil bulbs under the roots. My dad had to carefully go around the little plants (with one unopened blossom so far!) as they are my one and only flower on the whole property so far!

My Dad is a miracle worker I always say. It was nice to be outside, doing a bit of hard work with the company of my family and the excitement of wonderful things to come. :) I'll show you more photos of the garden as it progresses.