So Here We Go :)

If you are looking at my history for this blog you will find I don't have any.  Why?  New blog - new adventure.  I was pondering the other day the fact that I am getting old.  Yup, finally can get the senior discount at Denny's :)   But with that age is a desire to be prepared for the changes that will come to our family in the next few years.  Kids are grown (but not all out yet) and Jeffery and I will soon be retiring (or at least wishing we could).  So saving dollars are going to be very important to us.   Our retirement income is now crap (sorry) thanks to the government and the stock market so we will have to squeak out what we can from our home and our land. 

Now understand I do not have anything big as far as property is concerned - just your standard 1960's home with a small yard.  But I am determined to be able to use what I have to live, in part, off the land.  So Garden city here I come :)  I have a sweet friend who's philosophy is 'if it doesn't produce something that my family can use then it does not belong in my yard'.  Well since my yard space is at a premium I have taken that to heart.

 

This is a long shot from under the patio cover to give you an idea of how small an area I'm dealing with (this is from two summers ago).

Anyway, I figured that I needed a place to record my journal for my garden - hence, 'Plant . . Tend . . Grow'   Perhaps I should have capitalized that last word.  GROW. 

 

I guess my first confession to make it that I am a square foot gardener.  I soooo love the idea of boxes.  Addresses my OCD issues :)   Actually, truthfully, I live in the Central Valley of California and the soil here is Clay.  Solid, impossible to work with, hard clay.  I have tried in the twenty plus years I've lived here to amend it into working for me and two years ago I gave up.   I even own my own rototiller and couldn't win against it.  So I found a book by Mel Bartholomew, one day in my perusal of the Internet, called Square Foot Gardening.  Talked my poor husband, Jeffery, into building me boxes and there you go.

 

Best stupid garden year I ever had.  Never, NEVER going back to the old method.