Kristina's gardening corner

This is the section of the back yard that Kristina will be learning how to garden in this year. Not much to look at yet but give it a couple of months and things should start to get a bit more interesting :) The stepped raised bed to the right is 3'x16'. The bed to the left is about 4' wide. I cleared a lot of plants out of it last fall which is making it look a bit spotty at the moment.

The little tree at the far end is our 6 year old peach tree that fruited for the first time last year. It's in a small 3'x3' bed of it's own. Lucy loves to try and dig under the tree so we dog proofed it. We learned last year that even though we are trying to grow ground cover under the tree the netting needs to stay in place no matter how silly it looks :)

Meet Veronica :)

Our garden as I have mentioned a number of times in previous postings is an experiment. I'm always willing to try something out. If it works, great. If it doesn't we move on to something else.

A couple of years ago I saw a very pretty little flower at Home Depot that I thought would make a great ground cover. Meet Veronica. She started blooming a couple of weeks ago and if last year is anything to go by she will bloom until early fall. She likes her spot under the tree next to our sun room and manages to survive Lucy. Veronica is growing in amongst my tulips and a number of other ground covers. Our Columbine likes her so much it has moved almost two feet (by itself) from it's original location !!!!!

Bits and pieces

We were in Ohio visiting grandma for a few days. Her yard was needing cleaned up from the last storm that went through so Nik and I tackled that. Catalpa trees have very long pods and when they drop it's a mess.

While we were there, I took Kris to a few stores to price bulbs, seeds etc. and we came home with a bag full of items. She appears to have a definite color scheme in mind (red and white). Grandma gave her some seed catalogues to bring home with her.

Our niece is experimenting with hens and brought some eggs to show us. Some are blue, others are kind of pale green, the rest are various shades of brown. Seemingly each hen has their own distinct egg color and the size is dependent upon the age and size of the hen. Learn something new every day :)

I was wandering round our back yard last night and noticed that the Clematis is sprouting. Woohoo. I thought I had killed it off. The kids gave it to me for Mother's Day last year. 

Our telephones are not working. Don't know what the deal is. They were fine when we left.

Just because I love the site

John set up our family blog and disabled a whole bunch of stuff. 

I really like this blog and hope you do too.

http://foodiefarmgirl.blogspot.com/

Wish I had her gumption and work ethic :)

Raised bed and companion gardening

Kristina has some projects that she wants to work on over the summer. We have already started her sewing list and today we started her gardening project. Nik will probably be her assistant :)

We have an experimental raised garden bed in our back yard that we use to try out different flowers, veggies and fruits. Last year I let it rest. Kristina is going to be in charge of it this year. 

What have we done so far?

1. Went to Home Depot and priced, top soil, mulch, flowers, veggies, fruit, bulbs and seeds. Just for fun some garden ornaments. (We might make a trip over to Lowe's once we get back from grandma's. We might also visit a garden center near her place.)

2. Measured the raised flower bed and checked our anti-dog digging system.

3. Looked at the peach tree and decided what branches etc. need cut off before Juliet gets home. She looks after the tree.

4. Pulled out most of my gardening books so Kris can look at different plants and learn about different growing systems.

5. John cleaned out the flower bed round the holly tree.

Our plan is to take and upload photographs as the project progresses and write up-dates as things happen.

Just because it would not be spring without ......

Daffodils and Jonquils :)

Out front

At the bottom of our front yard we have a solitary Flowering Bradford Pear Tree. Round these parts they are called trash trees because they break so easily. We can attest to that fact. When we bought the house we had 4. Three of them have succumbed to weather of various descriptions.

It's a mixed up world - sort of :)

We had lovely weather yesterday so I went out and took some pictures round our yard. This is interesting (Ithink).

On the left our Forsythia bush is in full bloom just outside the sunroom/back door. On the right our Japanese Bamboo is still sporting it's fall/winter colors and berries.