A New Beginning

A lot has happened in the last year. We sold our house and our boat. We've come to our senses and are preparing for retirement. I can't believe how long it's been since I posted to this blog.

At my "old" house I had a little glass greenhouse. I liked to grow tomatoes in it because in Western Washington tomatoes are very suseptible to blight. Here in North Idaho, the summers are hot and dry, mostly, and this summer is very hot and very dry. So, I'm growing tomatoes "outside" in a raised bed. I just harvested the first one today! I also grew a lot of basil in my little greenhouse, big bunches of it. Now I've got basil growing in a raised bed next to the tomatoes. It is kind of a sad bunch of basil, I think I got the wrong kind of plants. Next year I'll be more picky! My dad was nice enough to build the raised beds for my new yard. I have two and they are 4-ft x 4ft and 8 inches high. I love them!

This is a picture of my "old" front yard. I really loved it and looking at this picture makes me a little homesick for it. My new front yard is very different, quite plain in fact. But much, much easier to care for. What you don't see in the picture are the tons and tons of blackberry vines that had to be cut out from the planting beds. Those blackberries would take over the world if I let them. I hate blackberries!!! The vines scratched my arms to pieces when I had to cut them out from the rhododendron hedge. The thorns even sometimes got through the leather gloves and into my fingers and there is a microscopic tip to the thorn that got stuck in my skin and it seemed like days before it would come out. And the blackberries themselves . . . they just have too many seeds in them! The people that bought my house don't have much time to garden. There are lots of weeds now . . . and those blackberries are gonna get them if they're not careful.