It’s fall! BRRRRR…..

Our garden is in constant need of improving. It causes me a good bit of stress because I *love* gardens and yet not much grows (that’s worthy of note, we do have plenty of weeds 🙂 ) in our yard because of the trees, trees, trees. I’m having hubby save up for some major tree cutting but it will be a while. They gave us an estimate last year to cut down THREE trees — approx. $1000. Not fun. The bad thing is that we have black walnut and honey locust aplenty, and the roots are toxic, so unless I put raised beds all over, not much will grow well. NO WONDER our tomatoes and eggplants the past few years had been sickly. And I thought it was me! The annoying thing is that even if we had raised beds all over, we’d still have too much shade. I would *love, love, love* a cottage garden — except I was doing some reading on *real* cottage gardens the other day and hah! The first sentence jumps out at me: “The first thing you need if you want a real cottage garden is….. (tadaaa!) a cottage.” This house wouldn’t look like a cottage even if I took a bulldozer and a wrecking ball to it. Plus the kids and the hubby won’t like that. So…. I’m stuck with the house, but I’m not really complaining, but not having the garden of my dreams is getting to me. Hubby says, though, as he is wont to say…. “one thing at a time.” Yes, dear.

So. A few days ago, I placed yet another order with my favorite bulb place: Brent and Becky’s Bulbs. This time I ordered some Pink Pearl hyacinthus that I last grew in Pennsylvania; some muscari to fill up the other half of the space under our tri-colored beech; and tulips, again, to replace the ones that died a couple of years ago. You’d think no one can kill tulips but die they did. It may have had something to do with an over-eager weed whacker, a.k.a. my darling husband.

Besides those, I placed an order with a new company — The Maine Potato Lady, for garlic and onion sets. I will plant the garlic beside the roses…. it’s been a perpetual wish of mine to plant some garlic there and annoy my landscape-obsessed neighbor, who’s always giving me tips like “use bleach on your lawn to get rid of the dandelions, blah blah blah”…. The onions will go *somewhere* not too conspicuous but still towards the front yard so I have easy access to water while keeping them far away from the toxic trees. One of these days we’ll get things right.

Another great place to buy garlic: The Garlic Store. Those were the best Chesnok Reds I grew one year.