I've been so reluctant to do a garden journal post of late, mainly as I get a little sad when I go into the garden. It's so productive at the moment and it'll be hard to leave it behind. If we do sell super soon I'll even miss harvest time which is a bit upsetting - part of me wants to delay all of this for a year, but then the tug will be just as hard so I'd rather get moving so I can get closer to building my next dream garden, which has the potential to be even better.

Can't help but think of @edprivat digging potatoes this morning...HIVE gardeners will understand, remembering his endless potato digging in an early #gardenjournal.. mine aren't as big nor as plentiful!

The raspberries are doing well - there's a bird nest inside one with three blue eggs, so every time I pick a raspberry or two (they never make it to the table) the bird and I get a fright! These ones DID make it into a smoothie though.

I grew elecampane for the first time this year - both that and the horseradish are doing well so I'll definitely harvest the roots of those, and the ashwagandwa, before I go. I've also had the best chamomile crop I've ever had. Maybe because it was in the vegetable enclosure safe from all the bleeding rabbits which have hit plague proportion.

The elder trees are in full flower but the berries are also forming. Please let the berries be ripe before I go - I really want to make a bunch of elderberry syrup! Not many people have elder trees around here. The annoying thing is they are poppping up all over my garden -ahhh.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse are already ripening, which is well before Christmas. I have to stake all my tomatoes but again, every time I go in the garden I feel a sense of 'what's the point', as I'm leaving anyway. But I shouldn't think like that - leaving a good garden for the next person is also a noble thing to do.

I've been putting down cover crops of green manure as they say that one of the first rules of regenerative ag is to make sure no soil is uncovered. I keep thinking of all the good things beneath the soil doing their good thing - without the bugs and the whole soil biome we are screwed. I feel like I should leave notes for whoever comes after me - dont' use poison, it's time for garlic in this bed and beans in this one - I guess if they were a good permi they'd ask all of those things.

The zucchini is producing already, but I do need to plant more. Again, if I'm not here to harvest, should I plant at all? But what if I AM here - do you see my dilemma? One can always use zucchinis on a zucchini pizza, though, right? The secret with this recipe is to saute the zucchini with onions first til they're soft, and lots of fresh basil (which is also doing great in the greenhouse). @buckaroobaby, one for your pizza oven? Mmmm with goat cheese!

I think I was skipping the January garden journal challenge due to holidays, so I guess we'll know more when it comes to the Febuary garden challenge, right? Maybe I'll be container gardening out the front of a caravan, being homeless and all.... eeek. Or just enjoying other people's gardens. Funny, how your garden can be like an extension of yourself. I think there will be some grief in leaving it, but I'm not the only one to do this of late (@owasco, @trucklife-family!). Plants always gonna grow, right? Besides, the creative opportunities in starting a new garden are limitness! Bring it on, right?

Sob!

We also got the drone photography done to sell the house - looking at it from above is a marvel. LIke, do we really own that much land? Why are we even selling?

We can't believe, looking at this, how much things have grown. When we moved onto the place there was just the house and a couple of tiny trees barely visible from above. It feels good at least leaving it for the next person to enjoy!

It's pretty awesome to have 5 acres on the edge of town like this and we won't ever have that much land again. I'm okay with this, because as I get older I find it harder and harder to do that much work and in many ways I'd like just to have enough for a kitchen garden and a physik garden, and join in on some kind of co-op for bigger crops. It'll be a whole new thing gardening in Tassie. A lot of people seem to have raised beds there and covered gardens against thieving marsupials! Be really interested to hear from Tassie gardeners. There's a huge permaculture community down there which is pretty exciting!

THings keep changing for us, so even coming back to this post after a few days means the plans I outlined at the beginning of the post might not hold true now. We've decided to wait til after the summer to sell as we do want to fix up a few things to make sure we get our money's worth for the house, so looks like I'll get more harvest after all. Still, I doubt I'll be planting much.

Hope all your garden dreams are coming true!

With Love,

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