The Joys of Gardening

The ibises made from recycled Indian oil cans and the cactus made of rusting metal are our favorites on this hill because they don't die.  And they are easy to find at the institution down the road that is known as Swede's Feeds. The metal art seemed expensive to us at first until we tabulated the cost of a plant, digging the hole for the plant, fixing the irrigation  when the gophers chew through it, the fertilizer, the mole bombs, the time one of the mole bombs caught the roots of the lavender on fire and damn near burned down the whole place, the new plant when the first one inexplicably dies and all the intangibles that go into keeping a garden alive in soil that isn't soil at all but rock and clay, they are cheap at twice the price. 

The reward for it all is a beautiful view. Everywhere we look we have lots of light and good views. From the front porch and the kitchen window we look across the Sonoma Valley to Annadel State Park and the hilly vineyards. From the back we look up this hill. The globes hanging from the arbor are solar and light up at dusk. It's a nice place to sit in the evening and watch the sun set. 

Underneath the red umbrella are the raised beds. It gets really hot up there, so the tomato plants get some shade in the summer from umbrellas.  We tried planting lettuce in a large bed just a few steps from the kitchen door, but the birds ate it, so it has been moved up top where we can put bird netting over it. The birds eat the tomato plants too, and eventually the tomato plants get too tall to fit under the row covers. OilMan says he doesn't mind sharing his lettuce and tomatoes with the birds, but he's not so sanguine about the rodents...

When the winter comes we have to worry about drainage when it rains, but so far it has worked very well....except for the leak it took almost six years to locate and repair....