Placed my "berry" orders today

Green for st patty's day:

I place my "berry" orders today, hope they all arrive (put on there no substitutes and no credits so I can hope they obey) and hope they all grow as this will pretty much  round out the plantings for berries in my forest garden.

I ordered 3 each of 5 kinds of raspberries to add to my raspberry patch, 3 fall gold, 3 fall red, 3 heritage (which are all 3 everbearers) 3 amber and 3 black hawk which are summer bearers.

I ordered 2 black satin thornless blackberries to add to the primocane Jan's that I put in last year, these are runnerless and have to be tip layered for propagation so that is great.

I ordered 2 Purple Juneberries to go with my 2 Serviceberries I put in last year.

I ordered 2 more paw paw to add to the babies that are growing now.

I ordered 2 Hansen bush Cherries to add to the other cherries we have (2 sweet, 2 sour, 1 ornamental and several wild)

I ordered 3 kiwi's to try here, a male and a female Arctic Kiwi Hardy and an Issai that is said to be self fertile but will also fertilize the female Arctic..they will go together over a sturdy arbor with some grapes and climbing roses in the forest garden

I ordered 2 golden Clematis Tangutica which I had before but they died when I attempted to move them..so I missed them and want them back.

a Blue fountain Agastache ..love agastache

12 creeping phlox as a ground cover under my walnuts trees.

40 liatris, just cause i like them so much, they do good here and they were SOOOOOOO cheap.

One blue Velvet and one blue Moon Honeyberry bushes, as they are supposed to be seedless and a lot like blueberries and my husband can't have the seeds, they bother him..so we'll try  these.

That about rounds out the orders for SO FAR this year..can only do so much with limited funds but do still want to buy some seeds and some plants for the pond, found a place i can order wild rice plants..which I want to get started as well as some others for my ponds..of course.

still a lot of ice on the ponds, the ground is still solidly frozen and we still have a lot of  snow..even though it got to 58 yesterday and remained 42 overnight..chillier today and colder again next week.

a few of our deer

I snapped a couple of pictures of the deer in our front yard, there were 7, 4 does and 3 yearlings but not all are visible in the photos:

Through the window and screen so not really clear but there are a few of them..

first and last  photos are from the living room window the center one is from the gym room window..there is a hook with two tube feeders there with sunflower seeds..  also had a turkey here this morning at our rear feeders.

ice storm 1/4 " with snow on top..pretty (also afgan I just finished)

Just finished making this afgan this past week, nice and cozy. Used up some leftover yarns that I had for a previous afgan.

I really like the way it turned out.

We had an ice storm on Friday with 1/4 " of ice coating everything and then it turned to snow, with 6" of snow on top of the ice which made the snow stick on everything like a coat of frosting..here are some photos of my front yard.

SW from front door

south from front door

East from front door, note rose hips are still hanging on on March 5, 2011

the drainfield mound garden (for those of you that have asked about it)

We have a raised drainfield that is 4' above grade that we have turned into a lovely landscaped garden in our backyard. Many have asked about the garden and how it is constructed so here are some diagrams and photos as well as an explaination as to how it has been constructed and planted.

As you can see above, (although the diagram is cut off at the bottom) there is a central circular area of lawn, with a garden around the lawn . the garden is in the shape of a toilet seat..(fitting for a drainfield garden)..it wraps around the circle on the west, north and east sides..and though you can't see it here there are lawn paths that go down on both sides just south of this picture to the east and to the west.

you enter the lawn from the house by a lawn path, and the two little circle there are dwarf pole apple trees on either side of the lawn entry..the beds are equal size (imagine the letter C laying on it's side) on both sides of this lawn..with the arbor on the north end of the lawn with grapes, clematis and roses up the arbor ..photos to follow..then there is another section of lawn with a lawn path that goes to the east down to grade..and a deck with steps going down to grade on the north.

to the west of the arbor is another dwarf apple tree (gala) and to the north is a seeded apple tree down on the below grade and to the east of it is another dwarf 5 on one apple tree down on grade..

on the sloping sides of the toilet seat shaped and other surrounding beds are perennial plants, ground covers and shrubs as well as those dwarf apple trees..

directly behind the house are also 2 dwarf cherry trees on the slope leading down to the grade west of the drainfield.

This shows the circular lawn from the back porch of the house..this was taken during a drought in June last year. Where I'm standing here there is a lawn path that goes down to the ground level to my right and one to the left out of the picture.

This shows a little more of the path top where it goes down to the right and a little more of the slope off to the east of the drainfield top lawn. this bed goes down at about a 45 degree angle to the ground level grade..(to the east of this is a large pond).

this is a photo of the WEST side of the drainfield garden taken from the ground level looking up the 45 degree slope and toward the North from just south of the cherry trees. That shed you see North of the drainfield mound garden is a shed I made from salvaged 7' long pallets, worked out well.

this shows a few of the shrubs and perennials growing on the west bank of the drainfield garden

This is the NW corner of the drainfield mound garden, the poppies are planted on the north just west of the apple tree.

this photo is where the steps come down off the north end of the drainfield deck..the apple tree that was grown from seed is seen to the right of the steps in the photo.

this path goes down to the west at the south end of the drainfield lawn behind the house..you can see a fairy ring that sprouted up in the lawn last year. If you know where to look you can see two very small baby dwarf cherry trees behind the house. They were just planted and were only a couple feet tall.

Looking through the arbor at the north end of the drainfield lawn ..path goes down to the pond on the east just past the arbor, there are now some baby graepvines planted on the arbor and later in the summer there are some clematis that bloom on it as well. You really can't see the deck but it is behind the roses..

I hope this gives you some what of an idea what you can do with a raised drainfield mound.

Book Reports

OK, three more book reports..

Permaculture in a nutshell.Patrick Whitefield..a tiny little book, british, a cute little overall view of permaculture..a very short read..It's OK..but don't buy it.

How to Make a Forest Garden..Patrick Whitefield...same author a bit better book, still british. More complete than the previous one and more likely to recommend it but still think Gaia's Garden is a better read for North Americans

Forest Gardens by Robert Hart

OK this one is a lot too British for me, but OK. Still feel that  as I said above Gaia's Garden was a better read for North Americans but if you have the time to read it, go for it..but get it from the library.

Right now I'm reading Permaculture Designer's Manual by Bill Mollison..so far it is what I expected and contains a lot of information that I have already read in other permaculture books and phamplets by the same author. If you aren't familiar with permaculture it is a good book to buy, even though I haven't finished reading it..I'll finish this up when I have..later ..

I have added some book reports to the Ecologically Sustainable page at the bottom of the page. The reports are on the following books:
Gaia's Garden
Introduction to Permaculture
Plants for a Future
Perennial Vegetables
Edible Forest Gardens volume 1 and volume 2

please go to the Ecologically Sustainable page and scroll down for more information:

some old time tools and helpers

Someone posted this site to the Homesteading forum today and I thought I'd add a link to it to the blog here as it has some really good old fashioned ideas, some might still be useful today.

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/device/devicesToC.html

Reading Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke

I am half way through volume 2 of the two volume set of Edible Forest Gardens books by Dave Jacke..wow...what a lot of words !

These are the most wordy books I have ever read, but some good information. Most of the information I was already aware of and it is quite a lot of words to read to get through the information, could have used a bit of editing in my humble opinion.

However, I do recommend reading it as there is some good information in the books that I haven't found in any other books that I have read (and I have read an extensive number of gardening books).

I also would recommend that you first get the books from the library and read them before you decide whether or not it is worth your $150 for the set, for me it wasn't but for those with more money it might well be.

I would recommend if you can't get it at a library to read or afford to purchase it you stick with Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway which has a lot of the same material in a less wordy and easier to read single volume.