Over the last month or so my husband and I have been considering a move to another city. The move would mean trading in our large, pie-shaped lot for a postage-stamp yard, as well as the loss of my large community plot. This made me sad. I put on a brave face, though. After all, you have to make sacrifices sometimes in this life. One of the first things I checked into when considering the new city (one we’d each lived in before), was the state of the community garden life there. I found out that there are seventeen community gardens in London, Ontario, two in the neighbourhood we were targeting, neither of which had waiting lists. That helped. I was relieved that gardening, especially vegetable gardening, wouldn’t be out of reach, even if we bought a place without much of a yard to speak of.
More recently, however, we’ve decided to explore other options, like refinancing our existing debt perhaps, in order to be able to stay at our current house with our current yard and large back yard, that we’ve put so much love and care into over the last three years. I was ready to commit to the challenges of small-space gardening, but I’m relieved that it looks like we won’t be facing those challenges this summer.
Some things I’d like to do next season in the yard:
Continue to expand the little beds surrounding the back deck, adding shape for interest.
Add some plantings around the new shed, so it will blend in better.
Pay more attention to the compost. Stop just throwing stuff in there, and actually turn the compost and work more organic matter into the soil.
Plant fewer hot pepper plants!
Grow onions.
Plant more annual flowers to fill in the perennial border.
Expand the front bed a little further down the driveway.
Plant a cutting garden at the side of the house, and keep the tomatoes in the vegetable patch.
Don’t grow vegetables we don’t like to eat.
What are your goals for the next growing season?
The yard this week.
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Well, we are moving to a new garden on Saturday – so my first goal will be getting to know my garden. I am alrady planning a small herb garden near the kitchen door, too (thats a necessety). And then I will probably start on planning my vegetable garden.
First project will be fencing in part of the garden, to allow the cats to go outside with out running free. We were first planning on a small compound, but are now considering a larger project, so that might end up being the only thing getting done next summer
Relocating can be hard enough, but pets and kids transplant pretty easily – no so for precious green “family members.” Must be hard to face, but then you have to measure all the potential opportunities. Having been a renter and a landscape architect for most of my adult years, I’m the proverbial cobbler who’s children go shoeless. So I can pick up my house plants, dig up a few strays that I always end up planting, and move along. My last residence was an 18 year stay, and we just move two doors down from that place, so I still have ‘visiting rights’.
Just before we moved in July I posted a piece at my blog about leaving my green family behind. It was posted under the title “Surrendering Plants To The Enemy” (http://gardenwiseguy.blogspot.com/2007/05/surrendering-plants-to-enemy.html) and was a tongue-in-cheek goodbye and conscience check. It might give you some solace.
Keep us posted. I’ll be back for a more thorough read. Wanna exchange links?