Tuesday, August 29, 2006

I love to garden! Up til this year I thought I just loved vegetable gardening. Come to find out, I love flowers too! Trees, grass, rocks, bushes; I love them all!! Of course I would have to choose to live on 5 acres in a sand ridden town, where good soil is hard to find. Lol. This year I planted a veggie garden that is roughly 3000 sq ft filled with all sorts of goodies. The thing is, I am allergic to almost every fruit or veggie in the garden. No worries though, I have a large family and they mostly eat the fruits of my labor. sigh. After the garden was underway I was walking through a Walmart garden center and saw the most beautiful tree I have ever seen. It was a Weeping Willow and I had to have it. He was about 9 ft tall and had bare weeping branches already. I planted him about 50 ft in front of the veggie garden and he took immediately. Then I went to www.gurneys.com and found a cherry tree and some whopper strawberry plants, which I also had to have so planted the tree about 100 yards from the garden and the strawberries in their own patch within the garden and they decided to grow too. Then I saw an apple tree, maple tree and grape vine and brought those home as well. The apple tree took to the sandy soil right away while after a few days the maple and grape vine were looking wind ripped and grouchy. I clipped and trimmed and encouraged and caressed them for weeks and am very happy to say, they pulled through with flying colors! I live about 5 miles from a sod farm and they give remnants away if you haul them, so I went and picked some up. I thought my willow could use some friends so I made a sod circle around him. Amazingly the sod took too, and my willow was showing off for weeks. He stood up straighter than he had ever done before. As if he was trying to look as tall as he could to show those little blades of grass how beautiful and strong he was. This of course led to more plans for the property. I thought more sod along the back of the garden would be nice too so I sodded that as well as added a Golden Willow, and a Corkscrew Willow on each side. By then everything looked so nice and the garden had finally started producing fruits and veggies so I needed a place out there to sit and watch my garden and all the trees and grass grow. I went to a thrift store and found a metal and wood glider for $15.00 that just needed the metal repainted, and the wood sanded down and sealed. My husband and I knocked that out in less than a day and put it right in the center of the two trees at the back of the garden and now we have this fantastic view of everything we planted this year. Next year I want a smaller garden that utilizes my space better, any ideas for that? I would love to have advice or tips or even pics of your own garden posted on my blog! I will post some myself within a few days so you can better see what I have written about.
Thanks for looking! Happy gardening all!!!

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