Creating A Peaceful Garden In Your Backyard
April 18, 2012 By
Create A Zen Spot In Your Backyard
It’s been a long week at work. You want a place to go to settle in with a good book (or kindle), or just hang out with a cup of coffee. You’d like to have a place where you can listen to the winds of time just flying past you. Why not spend that time in your own garden. Simple easy ideas to transform your yard, or part of your yard into a litte oasis of peace. Don’t have a backyard? That is okay. You can use potted plants and some trinquits to plan your space.
We all need a little zen. We all need a place to go to get chill out, and find some peace, and wouldn’t it be great if you could walk right out your back door and enter a world of peace and tranquility.
Creating a zen garden only takes a little imagination, a few plants, a few decorations and you can spend your summer nights in peaceful surroundings.
Creating Your Garden
The first thing you will want to do is map out the area. You can use a sketch pad. Just simple drawings are going to be fine. It is for you to see it coming together and reference as it goes along. Add x’s for places for garden art, and circles for plants. Squares can be added to mark where the furniture will be placed.
Picking Out Plan
After your map is created, make a list of plants that will grow well in the area you have chosen. If it is sunny, you will need to pick out plants for sun to full sun. If your oasis is going to be more in the shade, then you will look for Hosta’s and other shade loving plants.
With list in hand, visit your local nursery center and pick out your plants. Be sure to read the tags for all care instructions. Also, be careful that it is meant to grow in your zone. Many nurseries sell plants that work as a perennial in one zone, but an annual in another. Periennals will grow every year, while an annual dies at the end of the season. You can add some extra annuals like petunias, and marigolds for color
Pick a Theme
Do you think you would like a theme? What is your theme going to be? Zen? Rustic? Contemporary? Each one will make a beautiful place to hang out with your family and freinds. It will be totally up to your tastes.
Colors can also be incorporated into your theme. Pinks and purples with a splash of white? How about yellows, and reds with a bit of light green foliage. Themes are totally up to you.
Time Well Spent
It will cost you a little time and effort, but when your garden is all put together, and you can sit there and enjoy it, you’ll realize it was all worth it. You’ll have a haven of peace right in your own backyard. Invite friends over, or simply relax in your new zen garden space.
Organic is Better Than Poisoning Our Earth
June 22, 2009 By
Garden “experts” such as Paul Parent Garden Club, should NOT be promoting poisonous products to the public. On his radio show, The Paul Parent Garden Club, he promotes using Round Up. Round Up is made by Monsanto, a company who has is trying to take over the seed industry. If Monsanto has their way, we will not be able to seed save and grow our own food. Monsanto wants to own it all. Please watch http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food for more information on Monsanto, and how they are poisoning our planet.
The point being is that Paul Parent, and other “gardening experts”, should know how important it is to grow organically. Everything is best grow organic. From our lawn to our veggies. This earth does not need poisons spread on it like Round Up.
As long as Paul Parent Garden Club promotes the use of poisons such as Round Up, I say we should stop listening to him and his radio show. Boycott the poison pushers, just like you would a drug pusher.
For more information, please visit www.hulu.com, and watch The Future of Food http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food.
Plowing Up the Fields
May 22, 2009 By
If the tractor did all the work, then why am I so tired?
Yesterday, we spent most of the day plowing up the gardens. We need to get the seedlings from the greenhouse in the gardens.
We had 3 huge garden fields last year. We decided this year to combine the north and south gardens into one gigantic one to save time on mowing in between them. This will also give us quite a few more feet of planting space.
The Crabtree garden is on the agenda for today. This one didn’t do well last year, and the soil needs some amendments to it. It is on the adjacent property to ours, owned by Allen Crabtree. He was nice enough to let us use part of his acreage. He owns about 20 acres that wraps around ours. We only used a small portion of that. It use to be part of our property years ago. Most of the neighborhood use to be part of our farm. Cloverleaf farm was once about 100 acres. Over time it was subdivided or donated. The church in the background is the South Effingham Church. This land was once part of our farm, and was donated to the church in the late 1890′s . Cloverleaf Farm was last subdivided in the middle 1980′s.
20 Yards of Loam
May 19, 2009 By
Yesterday, we recieved 20 yards of loam. That is alot of dirt. Our chore now is to spread it around to different places in the yard to level off some areas. Some will be used to redo areas where crab grass had taken over. The crab grass was due to Freddy who dug up the beautiful lawn that was there. We are still not sure what ideas he had in his head. He, and the children that lived here, not only terrorized the neighborhood, but ruined the yard. We have spent the last 3 seasons fixing what they ruined. The neighbors are amazed at the transfromation from what it was.
Today again, we will tackle the pile of the loam. Michael looked at the pile the other day after the truck had left and said “this means something”. I quickly replied, “yes, it means go find a shovel, we have loam to spread.”
Winding Down
September 13, 2008 By
The gardens are starting to wind down. I am glad in a way,?? but sad in others. It will give me a chance to get some other projects done. It gives me time to get all??my canning done before we have to start getting the yard and gardens ready for winter.
Today, I will be making and canning tomato sauce. I think tomorrow, we will work on gathering apples from the neighbors and cidering them for juice for the winter. We froze the juice last year, but this year, I am going to can in quart jars. It will save room in the freezer for other things we need to stock up on. We plan on stocking up and hunkering down for the winter. Since the grocery store is about 40 minutes away, we want to make sure we have all that we need to get us through most of the cold winter months.
Stacking wood will be next!
The End of Summer?
September 2, 2008 By
The unofficial end of summer is of course today Labor Day. The kids will go back to school and most vacations have ended.
Around here, summer will not end until September 21, which according to history is the Autumn Solstice.
From then forward we will prepare the gardens, animals, and house??for the coming winter months. Not an easy task. It the spring tasks in reverse. Putting the hoses aways, tilling in the compost and other such chores. This year, we will build a chicken coop for the new chickens as well. We will too get ready for the goats that will arrive in the spring.
While summer vacation is over for most, life here on the farm is as busy as ever.
