It has been four weeks since the massive snow storm and the snow is just now melting. Today I was able to go out and check on my plants.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, three of my six blueberry bushes were pretty badly crushed by the snow. Two are now short little stubby shrubs, while one is simply a stick coming out of the ground. It’s too soon to say if it will survive or not, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

Elsewhere, everything else looks pretty good.  It’s possible I’ll lose a plant or two, but nothing major.

In the herb garden, it appears that I’ve lost a few plants — chives, mint, 1 oregano — but everything else is hanging in there.  Once the snow melted, I was surprised that none of my garlic has started to sprout, as it’s usually sending up green shoots by now.  Hopefully, now that the snow is gone, the garlic will get busy and grow.

I’m seeing evidence of deer activity, in the form of one rose bush that has been nibbled heavily.  Luckily, just last night I placed an order for not only deer repellent, but also a large roll of deer fencing.  There’s one area of the yard where the deer come in and I hope to get the deer fencing up soon.

On a positive note, I did notice today that some of the daffodils I planted last spring are starting to send up little green shoots!

We got a massive snowstorm a week ago — 22″ of snow in 24 hours.  The first three days, we were focused on digging out the driveway and a path to the front door, so it didn’t occur to me to think about my plants.

Yesterday, the highs were in the 30s and today the highs are already in the 40s, so the melting process is well underway.

Today, I was finally able to get outside and check on my plants.  I’ve missed having fresh herbs in the kitchen, so I began digging out the herb garden.  It appears that my rosemary and oregano have come through unscathed.  The mint looks fine too, although I’ve planted it more for bug repellent purposes than for eating.  I haven’t found the rest of the herbs yet, but I will.

My blueberry bushes were completely inundated by the snow and it appears that at least three of the six suffered significant limb breakage.  I’m not worried about the overall health of the bushes, but am disappointed in the short term, as this means far fewer blueberries this June.

Several of the butterfly bushes have snapped limbs too, but they were going to get a hard pruning this spring anyway, so that’s just less I’ll need to do.  It also appears that the little (only 3′ tall) Japanese maple in front of the house lost a branch or two.

Otherwise, I’m not too concerned about my plants.  I never trifle with fussy, fiddly plants that need a lot of attention, including my roses, so am guessing that everything will be fine.

Christmas is always an exciting time for us, but this year it is especially so because it’s our first year in the new house.

Do you see that photo up there at the top of the blog?  Imagine the front porch railings wrapped in colorful lights.  There’s no point in imagining festive lights along the porch roof, however, because Pete flat-out refused to endorse any activity that had me hanging 12 feet off the ground.  Also, don’t imagine an inflatable snow globe in the front yard — not because they’re tacky (and I recognize that they are) but because they’re really freaking expensive.  (Plus Pete ix-nayed that one too.)

But that’s okay, because our Christmas spirit is obvious from the first moment you walk in the front door.

Yes, it’s a little fake tree that I’ve had forever.  It came pre-wired with classy white lights, which I have removed and replaced with not-so-classy colored lights.  Hey, it’s all about the exuberance and joy of the holidays.

When you turn the corner beyond the wee tree and head toward the kitchen and the living room beyond, this is what you see:

That’s a mighty fine lookin’ tree.  And thank gawd it’s standing upright on its own.

Here it is up close:

Unlike last year, when we had the Big Ass Tree, this year, cooler heads prevailed and we decided not to get a Bigger Ass Tree.

I always think it’s pretty when people do themed trees, like all angels or all gold and white, but that’s not how we roll here in Jenworld.  Instead our tree has a motley assortment of Santas, snow men, Star Wars and Simpsons characters, University of Virginia-themed ornaments, angels, and more.

Those of you familiar with our house know that we don’t have a fireplace, so where did we hang our stockings?  Well, let me tell you, that was a topic of fierce debate for a week or two, because someone thought that we should just put the stockings under the tree and I disagreed with him.  (I grew up in a house without a fireplace and that whole stockings-under-the-tree thing never worked for me.)  I finally hit on a solution:

Pete’s not a fan of the stocking hangers, as he worries that someone could pull them down and break a toe.  I breezily brushed aside his concerns.  And I’ll be damned if not three days later, Elegant pulled one down on Graceful’s foot.  And then, not 10 minutes after that, the girls were messing with them again.  My loud and angry reaction caused them to see the error of their ways and now they stay away entirely from the stockings.  Hopefully, I haven’t scarred them for life.

Those of you who remember last year’s Holiday Homes Tour have probably noticed the nutcrackers in the photo above and are wondering where the others are.  Here’s a partial view of the rest of the collection:

This is the stairwell from the first floor down to the basement.  There’s a ledge along the wall and that’s where I put most of the nutcrackers, along with a half-burned-out string of white lights and a tattered paper chain that the girls and I made years ago. Since both staircases are open, when you walk in the house you see both the little fake tree with its colorful lights and also the nutcrackers with their half-burned-out lights.  We are truly class-ay people.

So those are the main Christmas decorations here in Jenworld.  There are other decorations elsewhere of course — the girls each have a little tree in their rooms with their own ornaments and there are little felted wool wreaths scattered here and there, not to mention the other odds and ends we’ve collected over the years.  It’s festive and fun and I’m enjoying our first holiday season in our new home.

Merry Christmas!

The seeds I ordered last week have arrived.  Today I sat down and read all their planting times,  then entered that information on my Google calendar.  There’s no way I’ll forget to plant them at the appropriate time.

Is there any better way to illustrate what a geek I am?

Today is December 9. Even though we’ve already had our first snow, technically it’s still fall. Not even winter. Definitely nowhere close to spring. And even further away from our last frost of approximately April 18.

In spite of that, today I placed my first order of seeds for 2010.

I am not kidding.

I learned the hard way last year that smart gardeners order early — as in, when there’s snow on the ground.

Today, I ordered from Seed Savers Exchange.  I got:

• 6 packs of a type of English pea.  This is a practice run for my eventual goal of growing enough peas to freeze the bounty and eat it for months, if not most of the year.
• 1 pound of edamame (soybeans).  I’ve grown it in increasing amounts for the past couple of summers and am ready to take the plunge into having a big-ass harvest.  Plus, edamame is really good for the soil, so I’m going to use it to help amend our piss-poor dirt in various places.  Where am I going to put all those seeds?  I’ve allotted two 4′ x 10′ sections of the garden and the rest will be tucked in around the blueberry bushes.  I plan to rotate where I plant things, so in 2011 tomatoes will go where edamame was the year before and vice versa.
• 1 pack of spinach.  I’ve never grown this before, so this is a first attempt at this early spring vegetable.
• 1 pack of cannellini beans.  Again, I’ve never grown this, so this year will be an experiment.
• 2.5 pounds of Yukon Gold potato seedlings.  Another first attempt.  Advice welcome.

I also ordered flower seeds:

• 2 packs of foxgloves.  I’ve learned that even if I plant foxglove plants, I still need to toss out seeds every year to guarantee success with this biennial.  I planted some last year and will be expanding into a second flower garden this year.
• 1 pack of red zinnias.  I love zinnias and plan to plant various colors of zinnias in with my veggies and herbs.
• 1 pack of morning glories.  I love this climbing flower and will end up putting seeds in a few locations.
• 1 pack of Johnny Jump Ups.  Some people consider these weeds, but I think they’re vital for those of us desperate for color in the early spring.

Like I said, this is just my first order and there are still lots of seeds to buy, including sunflowers, cosmos, other flowers, various veggies, etc.

Also, I’ll be getting lots and lots of plants, including more asparagus for the asparagus bed, two apple and two cherry trees, and strawberries.

So yes, it’s not even Christmas yet, but I’m already making big plans and dreaming big dreams for next year!

… is always the loveliest one of the winter.

Here’s the view from the front porch early in the day:

… and the view of the backyard, again, early in the day:

Gardening in November is somewhat bittersweet.

In some ways, I am disassembling everything I’ve created in the past eight months.  I have put away the hoses, flower pots, yard decorations, and patio furniture.

In the midst of all this, I am also creating.

The trees have mostly dropped their leaves and I’ve stuffed both compost bins as full as I can.  The remaining leaves will be chopped when Pete mows the yard one last time and then the bagged clippings will be raked out in the kitchen garden.

I am more than a bit obsessed with compost these days, as a year ago this yard was red clay with lots of rocks thrown in for good measure.  I have added multiple cubic yards of mulch and compost to amend the soil in the kitchen and flower gardens, yet there’s so much still to be done.  Yes, things grew, but not as well as they will in a couple of years when I have improved the soil further. I was especially disappointed in my tomatoes this year and know that better soil would have given me better results.

Having built gardens from scratch before, I know that it will take me a couple of years to attain the rich black soil I yearn for, so I’ll just have to be patient in the meantime.

I am also reviewing the 2009 growing season while I’m outside raking and cleaning up.  I’ve been making notes on what worked well for us and what did not.  I am also planning the layout of the 2010 kitchen garden and what I will plant in each section.  I’m doing research on new plants we’ll add, including the possibility of apple trees, hardy kiwi, and maybe even a walnut tree.

The weather is still nice here in Virginia and we’re probably a month away from our first snow.  It’s tempting to keep working away outside — creating new flower beds, mulching paths, and sneaking in a few more plants.  But I’m going to call it a day, so to speak, and take a break.  By the time February rolls around, I’ll be rarin’ to garden again.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that I haven’t posting here as much as I was during construction.  This started out as a construction blog and now that we’ve been in the house for nine months, I’ve been debating whether to stop blogging here entirely or to shift directions.  I’ve decided on the latter option.

I’ve talked here and on my other blogs  how much much I love gardening.  I started out as a flower gardener, but this year started focusing heavily on my kitchen garden.  Pete and I want to start growing more of our own food — it’s easy, it’s inexpensive, and the results taste far better than what’s in the grocery store.  There’s also the satisfaction of sitting down to a meal that largely came from our own garden.

So this blog is going to talk more about our efforts in gardening.  I have a lot of ideas and plans and can’t wait to talk about them more in the coming months.

So I just realized that I haven’t posted here in over two months. Whoopsies. Time just got away from me.

My last post was about changes I’ve made in the kitchen garden.  The yard and garden have consumed a lot of my time this fall.  A lot of people think of gardening as a spring and summer thing, but I’m out in the yard working on some project or the other nine months of the year. And we definitely got three seasons of veggies out of our kitchen garden.

All that’s left in the kitchen garden at this point is herbs and fall vegetables.  I planted lettuce, which we’ve been eating in salads for weeks.  I also planted cauliflower and expect to start harvesting that in a week or two.  The broccoli is probably going to be a bust, as some insect has nibbled it nearly to death.

Looking back at our summer veggies, I’m incredibly disappointed in how our tomatoes did.  I attribute it to our piss-poor garden soil, because those plants were watered, weeded, watered, mulch, and practically mollycoddled from planting to first frost.  I had hauled in bags and bags of good dirt and mulch, but apparently that wasn’t good enough.  We have two compost bins in the yard and I’ve been adding as much organic material to those as I can scrounge up  With any luck, we’ll have lots of compost in the spring that I can use to amend the kitchen garden.

I’ve also been laying down landscaping paper and thick layers of mulch in those places that I want to turn into flower beds next spring.  By doing it now, I’m giving Mother Nature a chance to kill the grass under the landscaping paper and for the mulch to break down and mix in with the dirt underneath.  It will definitely make my job a lot easier next spring!

I’ve also been making slow but steady progress in the front yard.  I’ve mulched all the way up to the front porch, under the porch, and along the foundation in the front and along the side.  I also planted a ground cover around the porch and hope that it will spread and fill in quickly.

I still haven’t posted photos of the new shed, have I?  I’ll try to get to that soon.

I’ve been making some changes in the kitchen garden.

Here’s what it looked like in May:

And here it is as of this week:

The biggest difference is that I connected the five individual vegetable/herb beds into one large one, which almost doubled my growing space.  Later in the fall, I will use stepping stones to divide the large area into eight smaller ones.

Most of the gaps in the bed now are where I covered the grass between the five original beds, but there are a few other open spots where I’ve pulled out plants now that it’s late summer and they are past their prime.

I have begun to put in some fall veggies, starting with cauliflower.  I hope to add broccoli and lettuces soon.

On the right side of the photos above, the skinny mulched area was originally where I put my raspberries, but I didn’t like the way it looked, so I moved those to the back corner along the fence.  My plan now is to put hydrangeas in that area to complement the peonies that are just out of sight at the bottom of the photos.  Also, the small rose bed in the botttom right of the photos is now balanced by the beginnings of a similar bed in the upper right of the second photo.

The border along the fence is where the blueberry bushes are, as well as various roses, perennials, and other plants I’ve been planting for visual interest and to attract bees, butterflies, and dragonflies.

I would like to eventually get rid of all the grass in this area of the yard and instead have mulched paths.  It’s going to be a laborious project, so I’m not rushing to start it anytime soon!

Jeff and Tom are outside right now finishing the siding on the shed.  I hope to paint the door next week, then will post photos.