Mr. Mulch and I live in the northern exurbs of New York City, where we've been for over 30 years. It's about as far north as you can go and still have a tolerable commute. Just. It's an hour and 45 minutes each way; 3 1/2 hours a day spent just getting to and from work. I did that for some 25 years. By any objective criterion, that's just plain nuts. BUT. We had several acres, peace and quiet, a large vegetable garden, and terrific schools. Mr. Mulch tended the garden, and I canned, froze, and wrangled the vegetables onto dinner plates. I wasn't much of a gardener back then.
About 12 years ago we moved around the corner, intending to downsize to a lower maintenance property and prepare for empty nesterhood. We found a 1951 ranch house around the corner from where we lived, nestled at the bottom of an overgrown mossy hill, and in serious need of some TLC. We turned it into a Craftsman-style homage to Frank Lloyd Wright without the hard edges. So far, so good.
But we didn't stop there. We got carried away making terraces, building garden and seating areas. And I got bitten by the bug -- specifically, the flower, shrub, herb, bulb, and I can't-go-to-the-nursery-without-coming-home-with-24-more-plants-to-put-in-the-ground addiction. So now I'm as obsessive about the flowers as Mr. Mulch is about the edibles. And there's nothing low maintenance about the garden. We do, however, get more out of it than we put in. The vegetable garden feeds us 9 out of 10 months. The flowers and shrubs nourish our souls for most of the year.
This will be my 15th garden year, but I'm still very much on the learning and forgetting curve. Learning which plants thrive in which areas, forgetting in the spring what I planted where last fall. And never getting the pruning right on the hydrangeas. So every garden is an adventure, and hopefully, this blog will chronicle the successes (like last year's anemones) and failures (how do those damned bugs eat all the cilantro in a single day?). And if all goes well, it will cover both garden and kitchen goings on.
I've resigned myself to the fact that the garden will never be finished, it will never be perfect, but it can still be bountiful and beautiful, and for that reason, I'd like to share it with anyone who cares to read about it. Hence, this blog.
Enjoy, share, and let me know what you think.
P.S. I actually started this blog about 7 years ago and kept it up for 2 years before I got too busy. IMHO, some of those posts were pretty damned good! If you'd like to read the archives, you can get to them through this link. They will fill in a lot of background, besides providing a chuckle or two.