Suzi Gardenia goes live

Suzi Gardenia, the alter-ego of my loving wife has gone live with her own blog. Check out: www.suzigardenia.com     In it, she plans to chronicle her exploits in the yard as we build out our homestead.  Since home gardening can be such an integral part of a sustainable life style, we've planned all along to build and grow gardens and orchards all over our 3-1/4 acres.  In fact, back during the design stage, we hired some really talented and committed tree-hugging architects to "Master Plan" our gardens for us.  Daughter #2 and her colleagues at Grounded Design Studio in Chicago designed a site plan based on the principles of "Permaculture".  She then gave me a copy of one of the bibles of the permaculture movement; Gaia's Garden.

As we've finished the house build and moved into the garden and landscaping phase of our adventure, progress slowed considerably.  We're doing all this work ourselves and more than once we've asked "What were we thinking?  3-1/4 acres of garden and orchard... and in our 50's"?   It's a LOT of work, but it also is great Therapy after dealing with the corporate world all day!  So far, we have berries in the ground and the Trellis built, three raised beds in the main garden area and a couple more close in to the kitchen door for herbs.  We've got 4 apples and 4 pears planted. One peach is in the ground(that's already borne fruit last year) and we'll plant 6 more this winter.  Check out Suzi's blog for pictures of the winter crops we are enjoying from our hoop house.  In just a few short weeks, we'll get the jump on spring and plant fresh new greens in the hoop house and start the seedlings in preparation for warmer weather. Subscribe to Suzi's blog if you wish to keep up with our progress.
Cheers.