Garden Retrospective

Or, An excuse to share photos of green growing things

We’re in the gray months

Gray skies. Nothing but gray skies.

Here in Michigan, we’re in the longest season of the year. Gray, cloudy, cold. It lasts for months. 8 months of morning frost. Cloud cover more often than not. Snow turned to gray grit by vehicle exhaust, then to gray slush from the intermittent thaws. Gray above our heads, gray below our feet. 15 of every 24 hours covered in darkness. OK, so I’m not likely to be enlisted as a spokesperson for the state tourism board any time soon. Summer here is glorious. Fall is resplendent. But there’s a reason thousands of people from our state travel to Florida this time of year. (Sunshine, the reason is sunshine.)

Gray snow. Gross.

Remembering the green times

So I thought some photos of green plants and sunny days might be in order.

The Backyard, Garden Progress 2016 to 2021

Starting with a straw bale tomato and herb garden in the summer of 2016.

2016. You never go back to the old life after you eat homegrown tomatoes.

The slow dismantling of the lawn began the next summer (2017).

2017. We still love us a straw bale garden, though.

2018, the lawn still survives but there’s a strip of food production at the north fence.

2018. Sure, that lush lawn is pretty, but just think of all the food that could be grown there instead…

2019 brings expansion of the garden and a garden fence, mainly to guard the produce from one particular member of the household: Puppy, Terror of Gardens.

Sometimes a 9-year-old wearing a bike helmet is all that stands between the last ripe melon and the puppy who would destroy it.

Fancy fence, 2019

Summer 2020, the world changed so why not double the garden space? We left the fence posts but moved the fence. More lawn was sacrificed. We ramped up our compost game. Basically, we were all in now to this food garden thing.

2020 Victory Garden. Various compost systems upper left.

2020. We start calling ourselves The Suburb Farm.

Summer 2021, cramming as many plants in that garden as we could. It got a little wild. Might add some organization in 2022? But oh, just drink in all that green!

…and an umbrella, because sometimes we actually see the sun and it gets hot.

So friends…

How are you holding up this January? Is it cold and gray where you live? Frigid and snowy? Year-round warmth and sunshine and you can’t fathom why anyone would live anywhere else? Feel free to commiserate or gloat accordingly in the comments. Until next week…