Mary and I have been partners in "yardening" in the suburban southeast for 6 years. To us, "yardening" means expanding the garden plot beyond the usual confines and using the entire yard for sometimes unconventional gardening techniques, such as planting tomatoes and eggplants between the azaleas because the sun exposure seems just right, and bordering a front yard bed with a row of beets for color contrast and tasty salads. Besides, it's fun to see the surprised looks when folks passing the front yard foundation beds recognize vegetable plants between the shrubs. So we want to use this site as a vehicle for sharing successes and failures in our gardening and share what we've done to support the wildlife around us.
What we do:
Grow good things to eat (especially heirloom tomatoes!) and share our harvest with friends and family;
Provide a healthy environment for our local wildlife.
To be completely candid, we don't always agree on techniques and approaches. For instance, Mary would prefer to permanently dispatch marauding squirrels who grab a bite out of ripening tomatoes; whereas Charlie insists on keeping our many bird feeders and bird baths full, so the squirrels have a Thanksgiving bounty apart from the garden. Guess who had a pet rescue-squirrel? Mary loves to figure out the best ways to get maximum germination of seeds--so she handles the seed starting in early spring. Once the plants are ready for the garden, Charlie takes over, monitoring and pampering the tomatoes all summer. But we share the joy of harvesting the fruits of our labors, watching the cycle of life in the birds nesting in our bird houses, and soon, we hope to add bee hives as our next yard adventure. Through this website and blog, we will share successes and failures, through words and pictures. Please share yours so we can learn from you!