Spring is in the air…
The weather has been pretty good the last couple of days. Today, I walked down to the mailbox and then decided to take some pictures of the yard. This one is just down from our side yard and after the fruit trees. As you can see we’ve got a lot of clean up to do.
I’m always surprised when the perennials come up. There’s a hyacinth struggling out of the leaf cover under the azalea. The peonies are starting to shoot up out of the ground. The strawberry plants we put in last year look like they’ve survived. My husband’s rose bush is getting new leaves, as are the two hydrangeas just off our front steps.
For many that may be just spring as usual but we live in the woods. We have a small plot that gets sun — the side yard garden area is about 20 by 50 feet and gets between 4-7 hours of sunlight and about 1/4 of that is our herb garden. Every where else gets partial to full shade. We’ve been here three years going on four and each year we try new plants in a test area to see if it will grow. Most is a bust. The Endless Summer hydrangeas did survive so now we have three of them. We tried another type. It lives, but never blooms.
Since we have 5 acres tucked behind a lot of about 20 acres and next to another lot of 5 acres and bounded by a farm it is land with lots of trees and thus some pretty acid soil. Last year we moved some of the plants to containers and actually got some tomatoes, peppers, and a few cucumbers. We hope to do more containers or home-made earth-type boxes and see how that goes.
The house came with a fruit orchard: apple, pears, peaches, plums, and cherries. We’ve lost a few of the really young trees, all apples. The rest seem to do fine. They bloom, they actually get fruit, but so far in three seasons we’ve managed: 1 peach and 2 cherries. We bought a plastic owl with a head that turns in the breeze — no luck. The squirrels and deer just laugh at us. Last year a squirrel sat on the fence post eating an apple and when we yelled at him, he looked up at us like we were some sort of exhibit and shambled off with his apple tucked under his arm to eat in peace somewhere out of sight. And we won’t even discuss the bird.
This year we’ve got plans for shiny ribbon and cayenne pepper, container planting, and lots of hope and wishes along with the water and tender loving care.