The Garden in My Life

Living on a lake lot with many lovely shade-producing trees made it hard to find a spot to plant a sun-loving garden.  Luckily, since we are on a private lane in a neighborhood where concern for the rules has long since vanished, the garden was easy to add in the front yard!

Not so easy was how to place it to avoid the gas and phone lines coming right through the center of the yard. Enter my friend, the Landscape Architect who developed a beautiful front yard plan, complete with raised bed garden. The garden wall is about 3 feet tall and curves in a semi-circular fashion.  Two ground level perennial flower beds, placed a few feet away, complete the concept of a mouth with two eyes. In fact, many visitors comment that they see a smiling face in our front yard!

Now gardening has typically been my husband's hobby. At our last house, he did all the work and I just helped harvest and eat. Even when we added the garden at this location, he did the lion's share of work.

However, since I retired and he is still slugging it out at a very demanding job, the garden has beckoned and convinced me to dig in the dirt. There's something about digging and planting and pulling weeds that is relaxing. Every time I walk past to get the mail or take out the garbage, I find myself stopping to admire the fruits of our labor... and to pluck some weeds.

This week was exciting as I picked the first zucchini, cherry tomato and snow peas!  And since a deer accidentally picked a beet as she was chomping on the greens, I brought that inside as well.

Seriously, it is amazing how exciting it is to have helped mother nature produce these beauties!

So what all do we plant? Well, there's really not that much room and essentially it's all about the tomatoes. We adore fresh, home-grown, vine-ripened tomatoes and it is impossible to buy them at the store. Honestly, finding juicy, sweet tomatoes can even be dicey at the farmer's market. 

We garden organically as well so we are never concerned about chemicals when eating our own goods. Since an entire garden of tomatoes would be way too much for us to keep up with, we only put in about a dozen plants. 

Zucchini and green beans are pretty much mainstays in our garden and this year I added the peas and beets - which I L-O-V-E! Unfortunately so do the deer. This year they've munched on the beet greens and pea flowers with delighted vigor and we have had to take measures to change their habits.

Look for our deer deterrent strategies in a future blog post!

What do you grow in your garden?

Happy growing,

Miriam