Upcoming

We have a big front "yard" that is grass-less. It has trees & bushes & we drive thru it, but it is not useful for growing much. Our back yard is smaller, rather cluttered with our junk, & quite shaded by a big pine. We have no grass. Until recently there was a ban on adding grass to yards (previously planted was ok) because of the amount of water required to sustain it. I think now you can get a permit to grow up to 400 sq. yards of grass. But we won't. All in all, our property is really not set up to garden.

Duane built a planter for me, 6 feet by 3 feet. Our ground is very sandy/rocky here & alone i don't think it would sustain most plants. So yesterday we bought a lot of topsoil & dirt to mix, about 50/50 with our own soil. My goal is for that planter to have all strawberries, but i only have 3 plants currently. So it has tomatoes at one end, strawberries at the other, & a pepper plant in the middle. The pepper is just now blooming, & two of the tomatoes are not even that far, so i don't know if we will get much from them.

If the planter works the goal is to build 1-2 more in the next couple of years, to be placed in the front yard & be able to grow fruit & vegetables.

The apples seem to be doing well. A neighbor told us that years ago, when this place was watered regularly, the apples were "normal sized." I've been worried about the peach tree because the peaches don't seem to be growing much. We have been watering regularly & yesterday we got some fertilizer to add. The neighbor had told us it was a peach tree, but he said it rather off-hand. A different neighbor told us it is an apricot, which makes much more sense given the size of the fruit. But the blossoms & leaves look like peach, & the fruit is fuzzier than i think of apricot, so i guess we'll know in a month or so when we (hopefully) will have a harvest.

When we were in town yesterday we also bought a self-polinating cherry tree, & a bartlett pear that we are told will self polinate.

So, upcoming i'm going to be posting pics from around the place.

If i can get some good squirrel pictures i'll post them too.

Also up coming: My parents are coming for a short visit in early September. And Duane & i celebrate 5 years of marriage in early September also.

We also need to make some decisions about getting wood to heat this winter, & a couple of projects on the house before long. I'd like to finish the trim on the house before my parents arrive. I've planned it a couple of times, & each day that i'd planned to paint ended up raining.


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