Some images of gorgeous gardens of plenty. I'd love some flowers, too.

Interesting...in addition to plenty, I clearly have a theme of neatness.

I have a garden with seven raised beds. My husband and I built it ourselves...made the deer fence, the whole thing (it's up in Dutchess County, NY). We even tilled the field first. We rented a big old gas tiller, and I followed behind him picking up larger rocks (some were two feet!) and thinking that it couldn't be much different from the way people tilled that same field two hundred years ago, except they used a donkey. It certainly took as long! Our house is 200 plus years old, so someone probably DID till the fields in exactly that way.

We're currently finishing a drip irrigation system.

But that was the easy part (even though its taken about eight years!)

I DO NOT have a green thumb.

I have one bed of asparagus and one of raspberries (planted them because I love them and they're perennial), both of which do okay, though we can only garden on weekends so I realized, five years later, that asparagus was perhaps not the best choice. And I've grown other things. But they're mostly are scraggly or just don't flourish. Plus I want to grow DENSELY, so I don't have to week much and can have a much greater yield.

Possible problems: We do have shade...trees that we don't have the heart to cut down. I have to really check and see how much sun I get. That may be part of the problem. I can't really start from seed, since I'm not there, and when I sow directly into the ground, well, only some things come up. And it's expensive to buy plants. And I feel like I don't know what I'm doing.

I really want to create abundance. That's what I'm here for. I love the gardens you planted in Brooklyn. That first one might well be my dream garden (except I have much larger paths...we didn't want to overdo it, since we're just weekend gardeners).

I'll take some pictures of the beds this weekend and post them. I feel so incredibly lucky to have the space... now I want it to flourish!

(Oh...and I haven't mentioned the mice and bunnies and woodchucks...even with wire in the ground, they keep coming...sigh.)

WEEK TWO: March 23

I've drawn a garden plan and taken my first shadow measurement. It's cold out there!

Two more to go tomorrow.

Not sure if I'm supposed to be writing this here or somewhere else...the skillshare homework areas, if there are any, are hard to find! A bit confusing. But I'm ploughing ahead, no pun intended.

Louise GIkow

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