Making space for a "Garden"

Well, the contractor had the crew working on removing the cement patio from our backyard, can you believe the difference it made? Now we have clear sailing for putting in a garden, plus room for a greenhouse in the future. We paced off the yard two days ago and were pleased to find that we have a space 26 feet by 56 feet to fill. I have kept busy looking and dreaming about all the various fruits and vegetables I want to put in, but Bryce says I dream too big and to keep it simple. That is what you can expect from an official 'desk jockey', right?

It is so exciting to think we are actually able to 'start' this year instead of some time in the future. Just gets my adrenalin spiking when I think about the possibilities. Does this appear to be an obsessive behavior? I don't really care, it makes me excited. Guess I need to take my blood pressure occasionally so I don't stroke out.

Here are the before and after pictures so far, keep posted to see the development of the perfect garden  (I hope). As you can see above the backyard was a sea of cement and now that the concrete is gone we will have a lot of growing room for a city dweller.
We had to remove the trees, sad to say they were desert willows that had for all intents and purposes  outlived their  beautiful addition to a sad landscaping effort. We hope to put in some dwarf fruit trees instead. On the west side, out of camera range, we have four pomegranate trees that have produced fruit every year since we bought the property over 5 years ago. We look forward to actually harvesting some for our own use this year.

Did I mention that I love to Garden? See you next time.

Time Flying?

Well, I think it is time to get back to blogging, sorry for the long delay. Our days and nights have been very full with school, travel, and just LIFE.
Here we are in St. George again, we had our tour of the USA, graduation from University of Phoenix, and visit to Disneyland in the hiatus. We are now in the Temple View RV park again, awaiting the remodeling of our home in St. George. Right now it seems so far into the future before we can actually move in. Financing a remodel is difficult at this lull in banking and home construction period.

We had a contractor and an architect work with us to draw up the plans for the remodel and hope to have enough to finish all at one time.
The picture below shows how the house looks before remodeling, behind the carport was a covering to the side patio, but we had them remove it so we could enlarge the kitchen. 

Trip to New York via Lodi, Ohio

Here we are safe and sound after traveling over 6,000 miles from St. George, Utah to New York. We spent time with family and friends in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Indiana along the way. We even toured the Lake Superior Circle around the largest inland lake in the United States and traversed the Soo Locks both ways out to the Canadian side and into the American side. We are happy but a little exhausted from all the beauty we have surveyed in our great country.

We travel from West Lafayette, Indiana to New Albany, Indiana to take part in a growers conference for a hydoponic company called Crop King. I took a few pictures at one of the commercial growers farm while there and enjoyed the training along with the other participants. We met others interested in Hydoponic growing of vegetables from Mississippi, Kentucky, Honduras, Texas, and Kansas.

After we left Indiana we traveled on to Lodi, Ohio where the Crop King Corporation is headquartered and toured the research greenhouse there. The pristine and immaculate condition of the show greenhouse reminded us how a commercial one should look like, while we were there they gave us vegetables picked the morning of our visit. We had tomatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers enough to last us for two weeks. Only one more meal of lettuce is left now.

As you may have realized by now, we love gardening and growing our own produce. This is one of the focuses of our trip, seeing how the food is produced in various parts of our nation. And we hope to promote the cause of organic methods where ever we decide to finally settle in to keep house and garden.

These last two pictures are of the lettuce production in nutrient trays that produce a new crop every 4 weeks and the product is great tasting with no residue from soil or bugs. Now that is a great inducement to try hydoponics if one has ever grown lettuce in the garden with all that comes with soil growing and bug infestations.

RV trip to Sacramento

 Here I am in St. George transferring everything from one RV to another, we bought a more recent RV to take our trips this summer. We had purchased the smaller one first, then we saw the other one and decided to upgrade even more. We really needed the room with all of our excess baggage we have accumulated since downsizing into a home on wheels. We still have to do some more, but are almost on to the correct amount of necessities for the long haul.

The next trip we took with the RV was to Sacramento to visit family and friends. We took a tour of our former home on Jonas Ave. with the permission of the new owners, they completely gutted the insides and are now working on the outside. The dark green carpets have been replaced in the bedrooms and hallways, new tan and brown tile in the kitchens and bathrooms and hardwood floors in the living and dining areas. What a difference it makes, so much lighter and spacious. Bathrooms were enlarged and updated with walk-in showers and separate bathtubs with double sinks with lots of storage space. An addition to the dining area was a large walk-in pantry, the old bathroom off the kitchen is now a laundry room. Next the stucco will be applied to the whole outside of the house and will be enhanced with modern features in the landscaping.

We really enjoyed the tour and wish we had been able to do the upgrades ourselves, but life gives us many challenges and moving away was one we felt we had to do.



This tree on the right is an orange tree in a RV park near Bakersfield where we spent the night on the way to Sacramento. It is quite old and I thought it was pruned in a typical topiary fashion that normally large trees are not. What do you think of the landscaping possibilities of doing this with fruit bearing trees? I think it is an exceptional labor on this sample and am in favor of it.

On our way to Sacramento we saw a lot of oleander bushes along the highways and I took the following picture of all the blooms, it beats looking at trash along the roadway, right?

By the way you may be wondering about how we senior citizens can travel in an RV that gets only 7-8 miles to the gallon. Well, we belong to an internet club called "the Filler Up Club", we subscribe for certificates that allow us to send in our gas receipts for whatever amount we signed up for, and get money as a rebate check each month. This has helped keep the cost of traveling down somewhat, without this program we would probably by staying in one place 'way too long'.

We love to meet new people and make new friends as well as contacting old friends as we chance to meet in various parts of this great country. We hope everyone is in a good place in their lives so that they are enjoying the beauty of this world. And if not we pray that they may receive the comfort they need from our Heavenly Father, his son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

www.fillerupclub.com/jbryce/invite

Planting the gardens at Care and Share Shelter in Cedar City, Utah

Today we also went to Cedar City to plant the garden beds we previously filled with compost and top soil a week ago. This project was one of the volunteer hours requirements to become certified as Master Gardener's, today we planted the donated vegetable and herb starts from the Lady Bug nursery. We had a great time working together and enjoying the warm day, including the stiff breeze that was blowing. As you can see the Care and Share Shelter will be able to feed many hungry souls with the bounty of the harvest. Starting very soon the lettuce and other greens will be on the table as salad fare.

Here my husband Bryce is planting onion sets, he was doing such a great job I didn't want  to disturb him. Neat little plants all in a row, only hope all grows well without our supervision. This bed has 2 rows of peas, the onions 4 rows, 6 yellow summer squash, 4 zuchini, and 6 celery plants on this end. Now that is a lot of vegetables in a 4' X 8' bed, but with proper watering and mulching everything should do fine.

Did I mention that I love to GARDEN!!!!!

Traveling with your garden on board

My husband and I are starting on a 4 to 6 month trip across the USA, mostly to see the sights together that he visited at one time or another in his travels with the USAF.

We just finished a Master Gardeners course in Cedar City, Utah and have started garden boxes with a kitchen garden. We are taking our home grown vegetables with us on vacation. It may be work, but we are sure that our food is organic and pesticide free. Besides the greens are so much more fresh when we pick them just before we eat them, right?