S tarting a garden takes time. Ours has been five years in the making....though it has been the last few months in which we actually put thoughts to practice. This is why I'm beginning this post with a picture of Hubby tending the grapes a few months ago, as it's taken several weekends since then to create our first vegetable garden on the property.
While he was pruning those grapes, I came up with the idea to tear down the old arbor. I know, who tears down an arbor? But this one was old, and not the good kind of old. It wasn't made well, was infested with carpenter ants, and I knew one day we'd replace it with a new white one.
So down it came.
Several weeks later, we decided that we liked the idea of adhering to the symmetry of the rows of concord grape vines so a garden plot was carved out accordingly. As you can see, Mr. Engineer used numbers and survey string to ensure this was exactly so. Cute.
Then came the delivery of organic compost and rental of the tiller to till the soil....Lucy watched Hubby's back the entire time. as you know, those frisky squirrels can sometimes sneak up on you.
Fast forward a few weekends. Hubby put in a stone pathway....with leftover pavers from our other hardscape projects . Finally, we went to our local nursery and picked out wonderful organic starters.
See the dark blob out to the left of the picture frame?
It's Lucy....soaking up the warm spring sun.
We've designated this area of our property as the food zone. The grapes are here, which are starting to leaf out....and although they were cut down before we bought the place, the old peach orchard used to stand in the field above.
Perhaps we'll replant some kind of fruit trees someday....or maybe blueberries....or keep it open just because a nice open field is always peaceful to look at.
By the end of the day, we planted corn, eight varieties of tomatoes, basil, pickling cucumbers, slicing cucumbers, jalapeno pepper, green beans and a pumpkin plant for our holiday pies. Yet to plant are snap peas, carrots, blackberries and lettuce.
Eventually, we'll build another arbor. We may also build a fence around the garden if we find that the local wildlife are nibbling.
I dream of the day when I wander out to the garden and pluck a fresh warm tomato from its vine.