The Garden

Yesterday when we went to the Mennonite grocery store, we took the back route so that meant coming home from the back side of the house and I was surprised how nice my garden looked.

I wonder if anyone drives by and says “That’s a nice little garden!” I think this picture probably gives you a better layout of the place than all of my previous explanations.

About the house – see the two vents for the fireplaces? The fireplaces are in the middle of both the upstairs and downstairs family rooms. The windows to the left of the fireplaces are in the family rooms and there’s an identical set on the right side of the fireplace. To the right of the downstairs family room is the sewing room and then going towards the front of the house is a bathroom, a couple of storage rooms and a bedroom. To the right of the upstairs family room are the bedrooms and bathrooms on the main level.

If you can see the corner of the deck, below that is the downstairs garage. It has a roll up garage door and a walk thru door. That garage is air conditioned and heated so that’s probably where Vince will do his 3D printing . . maybe. The sewing room also has walk thru doors and four windows.

You can see Vince’s shop, or the corner of it at least. All he has to do to get to the house is walk from the shop door to the walk thru door under the deck.

You can see the solar panels off in the distance and then the neighbor’s house. That’s it – part of the house, part of the yard and part of the shop!

Here’s the asparagus bed. Can you believe I just planted those roots this year? They have grown so much. They were two year roots and I’ve always been told not to cut any the first year but I’m kinda thinking I should have because it’s so thick, it may need to be divided already.

This is a tomato jungle. I had 6 plants in there, which was about right. Then a friend gave me four she had started from seeds. I couldn’t let them go to waste so I planted them and now . . it’s a jungle and I can’t even reach the tomatoes in the middle. I knew it was wrong to plant those additional plants but I couldn’t help myself.

I guess it was the heat, or the soil, or the water, or the gardener but I couldn’t grow a decent pepper plant in Texas. These things have stems as big as small trees! This is a jalapeno. I have three jalapeo peppers and two bell peppers, and one hot red pepper.

I have one 4 x 4 bed that’s strawberries. I have to decide if it’s better to buy strawberries at the farmers’ market and use that space for something not available or rather expensive at the farmers’ market. Tomatoes are expensive there – not really expensive but enough so that I wouldn’t buy a couple of cases for canning so if I can grow them, that’s a cost effective product. I’ll grow asparagus and peppers because they’re easy to grow. I haven’t seen much asparagus at the farmers’ market but they do have pepper but they’re about the same price as the grocery store. I’m not complaining – I am happy to support the farmers but if I have the space and want lots of them and can grow lots of them, I will.

The okra – I love okra but one 4 x 8 spot isn’t going to give me much. I think I can use that space for something more productive next year.

I do want to plant a couple of yellow squash and a couple of zucchini next year. I did plant two yellow squash this year but they promptly died.

The fence never got built and so far, we haven’t had any problems with deer. The 4 x 4 bed that was to be used for herbs never got put out either so we’ll see what next year brings.