Digging in

All five garden beds are planted at this point, and unless there's a crop failure, we'll have fresh lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, green and red onions and carrots in a couple of months.  It's a good feeling; the last piece of the puzzle that makes this place feel like home.  

I also planted three cottonwood trees out of the property lines on the north side of the house for some summer shade.  I love cottonwood trees so much I can track the seasons by the sounds their leaves make in the breeze.  Spring is a gentle, soft swooshing sound with baby new leaves barely touching each other.  Summer is more of a crisp clapping sound, as the fully-grown leaves shimmer in the wind.  Fall and early winter are a crackly rustle, as the drying, dying leaves scrape together and shudder before hitting the ground.  I miss all those sounds, and hope these cottonwoods winter-over well and explode forth with green shoots in the spring.

Beyond the gate

The other thing I've done is start exploring what's beyond the gate, in the lower pasture on the property.  I've found very poor soil at the top, fantastic soil in the middle, and OK soil down at the bottom.  The top of the pasture is poor because it contains a lot of the rocks scraped off the hill when they graded it to build this house.  The middle is lovely because it's been left alone; it has a nice, loamy topsoil due to the natural growth and decay of the plants that grace the hillside in spring and early summer.  The lower pasture is just so-so because a lot of the rocks on the hill have washed down to what's essentially a gully.  

So here's how I expect things will shape up:  Goats/sheep in the top third of the pasture, vines and berries along the middle swath, and maybe some deciduous shade trees at the bottom, which will shed leaves and gradually enrich the soil down there until it may support some grass.  I'd like a place to grow corn, wheat and pumpkins eventually, which take a lot of space, so this bottom area may be the spot.  But we have to improve the soil a little more first.

That's the 5 year plan, of course.  Today's plan is to grab a shower, freeze some more eggs and go into town and find a new hair stylist.  Takin' things one day at a time.