Gardening: It Has Begun

I get a kick out of the chapter that fell open in the book: "Nature's Troublemakers
and Farm Safety." It's as if Mother Nature knows that Mr. H and I are gonna
try something!

Yes, we needed books to figure out what not to plant next to each other.

Who knows if our garden will survive long enough to bear fruit? It is much easier to grow anything in Wisconsin (except citrus and cactus) than in Arizona. Down in Tucson I had proliferating basil which took a nose dive when it lost a battle with some lizards and a desert hare--probably a jackalope. My tomatoes couldn't even get past the tiny green fruit stage because I was either over or under watering constantly; and, if you don't water plants early enough or late in the evening down there, the sun will singe leaves and essentially scorch the plant into extinction.

Mr. H and I really want a garden so that we (me) can eat our fresh produce--he is scared of vegetables--and do all of that fun self-sustaining type stuff such as canning, that one does when living on a mini farm. Our basement alone is 2000 square feet with huge storage shelves just waiting for some pickle jars and canned tomatoes; I wonder how we will find time, but it's worth the adventure. It is certainly way more fun than trekking into the large discount chain in the city where you have to buy 50 pounds of bananas and 100 pounds of potatoes to get good prices.

Bea was watching Mr. H and I put the first part of our garden in
from her back porch. She's already eaten a couple of my tulips and I figure
she'll try the same with the garden so we need to get fencing up pronto.

If it doesn't pan out, there is a farmers market eight miles from our house every Saturday from now until October that I can purchase everything you can imagine at. It's the Spring Green farmers market and is a very fun place to hang out on a Saturday morning.

So, here we go with our greenish thumbs and all.

This is some sort of action shot--reaching for my dirty gloves.