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Friday’s Weekend Column
About a Minnesota Man Exploring Life in the South Settling In
Yes, that is what Wanda and I are doing. We are settling in to our home and community. We are getting down to some routines. Now that we have things planted we check on them every day and it always seems to fascinate me how rapidly things grow. This is no joke, when vegetable plants are starting out you can count four leaves on the plant one day and five or six the next and they grow that fast up until they start setting fruit. Also now I have to do a bit of weeding every day. You let the weeds get ahead of you, and your garden looks to be a mess, but a few minutes a day makes it look great. I also try to clear out a bit of the vegetation along the edge of the garden every chance I have. Right now my garden is small, maybe 500 square feet. I would like to double it this year, so a few feet a day of clearing will do that. Wanda and I have a big yard to tend to. It is about 330 feet long and 200 deep with many trees. So every day we can walk around and pick up fallen branches and clumps of Spanish moss. That is a big reason for our building a fire pit. Beside growing vegetables, we are also doing the flower thing. Wanda built a big rock garden, and we had to fill that with dirt and plants. She has all sorts of container gardens with a variety of flowering plants. We had to prune the crape myrtles, and now that the camellias are finishing their blooming time, so we will have to prune them. Then we have azaleas, many roses, dogwoods to think about. We are constantly asking questions at the garden center in town and at O'Tooles herb garden out this way. You don't ask, and you don't learn. That is something I learned a long time ago. Gardeners are more than happy to share their knowledge with you, and it is surely a good way to make friends. Some day this place might get to be too much for us, but until then we are going to enjoy every minute we can put into it. It is fun and a real collaboration between the two of us. We talk about what we are doing now, and we plan what we are going to do in the future. We want to make the place special. We want to make it Jim and Wanda's yard, and a place people like to drive by and see. Yes, a work of art if you please. It is, however, going to take some time before it really pops out. The Lord has really blessed us! |
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