Gardens

One thing I looked forward to when we bought 1 1/3 acres 18 years ago was growing a garden. Well it didn't quite work out.

Our land is rocks held together with clay and sagebrush, so just throwing seeds in the ground is absolutely out of the question. Raised beds it is...

Except I always have better financial priorities than wood for gardens.

And dirt. I have trouble buying dirt when I own more than an acre of land. But our dirt isn't exactly "bread basket" material. Pot-making maybe. Plant growing, nope.

Then there are the critters. Our gardens have been eaten over the years by quail, jack rabbits, cows, mustangs (!), and our own dog (Bear, who passed away several years ago, ate all my roses. I even wrapped them in barbed wire to keep him off and it didn't slow him down. I gave up.)

Add to all that the moisture-zapping wind and 100 degree heat we get every August and :-P

Despite all this we keep trying.

A few years ago the kids and I tried our hands at building beds out of rocks. It worked fairly well, though not as well as wood. But rocks we have in plenty (I keep threatening to paint eyes on all of them and put up a sign that says "Pet Rock Ranch." I'd have made a fortune at the height of the pet rock craze.)

Last year I got the idea to move the beds we do have up the hill to the "orchard" (a whole 7 trees, none of which produce anything worth mentioning.) and fence them all in together. It worked! only the quails, mice, squirrels, bugs, and jack rabbits got in:-)

(Now, if I were planning the property today, I would plant the trees downhill from the house instead of uphill. I put them uphill because I thought the back door would be our main entrance, and that put all the growing things real handy to our main path. But it turns out we never use the back door. In fact I gave up and put my freezer in front of it, we used it so seldom. So downhill from the house would actually have been more convenient, as well as easier to water.)

This year, I plan to buy a small greenhouse, tie it down to the ground, and do all my food planting in it. This should reduce or eliminate the mammals getting into the garden. Flowers will be planted around the trees and in the old beds, and I will plant tomatoes in the lovely big red planters Hubby bought me for mother's day last year (where they do very good last year.)

I wish I was better at gardening and surrounding us with more of God's beauty, but it's especially hard here in the Alpine Deserts of Nevada. I will accept any suggestions :-)