Berries!

I made a delicious discovery as I took Toby for an early morning walk on Friday. Raspberries! For weeks I have been watching the wild brambles go from bare, to being loaded with hard, green, and then pink and red berries. At last, some have turned dark purple. Even though we were in a bit of a hurry to get Toby's "business" taken care of so I could head off to work, I had to stop and pick a few. Everyone knows that the first berries of the season are the most delicious, and I wasn't about to miss out. Later today when it is not so hot out I'll go pick a bowl full. The only down side to enjoying free wild raspberries is that many of them are surrounded by poison ivy or poison oak. Chiggers--those invisible buggers that burrow under your skin and make you itch like crazy--seem to hang out around raspberries, too. However, the wild berries are tasty enough to make wearing long pants, long sleeves, and bug spray worth it, even with temperatures in the 80's.

It is somewhat of a tradition for me to make a raspberry cream pie each year. However, since I have become a devoted weight watcher, I think I will work on finding a lower calorie way to enjoy these scrumptious treats. Suggestions welcome!

Finding the raspberries reminded me that last weekend I picked a couple of quarts of sour cherries and put them in the refrigerator to pit later. What happened is I completely forgot about them. I have yet to check on them; I am so afraid I'll find a moldy mess of cherries representing wasted effort and wasted time. Even though I am basically an organized person, I just have not been able to find a way to fully balance working full time and taking care of such a large yard, the house, and so many animals while still leaving time for other things like eating, sleeping, and sitting down for a couple of minutes without feeling guilty about all that is not getting done. Oh well--I do what I can do, and keep looking for ways to simplify. The garden boxes are a good example. It is so great to enjoy wonderful home grown vegetables without all of the weeding, tilling, and hoeing. I'm sure I'll keep discovering better ways to do a lot of things, or learn how to let them go.

Starting Down the Path

Friday, May 16, 2008

I decided to start a blog when my garden boxes arrived from agardenpatch.com. After years of gardening the traditional way, I decided to try garden boxes to bring back the fun of gardening. Now that I have fewer hours to play in the dirt, and pulling weeds and fighting bunnies has lost some of its appeal, I have decided to give garden boxes a try. Friends, co-workers, neighbors, and fellow gardeners have asked me to keep them posted on how they work. Keeping a blog seems like a good way to share my successes and failures with the boxes, as well as a more fun way to keep records for myself.

I am happy to say the garden boxes were very easy to assemble. I had all 10 of them put together in under an hour. I was a bit alarmed at how shallow the actual planting box is. You can really grow two tomato plants in one of these? We'll see how it goes...

While researching the boxes I read that you should use only potting mix--not potting soil, which is too heavy, and only potting mix that does not contain plant food. We were able to find potting mix without fertilizer at Lowe's. Now that the boxes have arrived, the instructions say it is OK to use potting mix with plant food. The mix with plant food is certainly easier to find. I still need more planting mix, so I think I'll go ahead and get the Miracle Grow kind, and mix them half and half.

I have decided to place the garden boxes in my vegetable garden, so my job for tomorrow is to pull up the early weeds, lay down the weed barrier, and arrange the plant boxes. I hope the rain stays away until at least late Sunday!