Not Again! Farm

It must be the warm weather that is making me think about gardening. I hope that I can start my cottage garden this year. I plan on doing 2 4×4 square foot gardens for vegetables and would like to start a couple of gardens around the house.

Except for my poor sick Maple trees, it looks like a desert in the front and side yards. As you can see from the pictures, there has been practically no landscaping done here in decades. There are a few crepe myrtles on one side and a forsythia that has as much wild privet hedge as it does forsythia.

I have two challenges to doing any gardening this spring. One is lack of tools. I don’t have a rototiller so I am left to break and dig any ground by hand. The other challenge is funds. I am barely making it here as it is right now and I know in my head that I can’t afford to go buy plants. Sigh… it’s my heart that argues.

It’s already too late to plant daffodils. They are my absolute favorite but I will get them next fall. I do have sort of a plan. A friend of mine has a house with old gardens and she hates to garden. Most of them are overrun with weeds and vines but there are still some actual flowers and herbs in there. She has told me that I can take all I want… all of them if I want them.

I think I am going to compromise and clean the gardens up, separate out some of the flowers, mostly iris and maybe see if I can snag a little lilac bush. It isn’t much of a start but it’s something. There is also some rosemary bushes that are huge and I can thin them as well.

So a few Iris, a lilac bush and some rosemary will be a start. I thought about doing some trading on one of the garden sites but I have nothing to share this year. My yard is barren. The two small gardens that are already here are… sad. I am going to have to dig them up and add topsoil and compost to get them going again as even the daylilies look sad in them.

I’d like to get a small kitchen garden started in the corner where the main house and the kitchen addition meet. It’s a small space and gets the morning sun but misses the scorching hot afternoon sun. I think it will do well there and it will give me a place to start.

There is another month or so to dream and plan and so much may happen between now and then.