Pardon me if this is a duplicate post. I think the original may of been
eaten though.

At any rate, we are down to tomatoes and peppers in our garden. Several
things happened this year that made us rethink our gardening plan.
First, we did *all* of the gardening at my in-laws place. Now, we are
there often enough, but this year we had a death in the family, I got
sick and I hurt my back so the garden got rather full of weeds. Also, I
had a "plan" that I thought I could manage but my husband and his mother
kept "adding" and in the end it turned into more than I could handle on
my own. On top of that, we had a not so wonderful summer weather wise
so things didn't produce (except the weeds!) as well as we might of
expected. Still, overall it was an excellent experience and we did reap
some rewards. So far, next year we're thinking that at the in-laws we
will plant corn and greenbeans which are pretty low maintenance and
since the green beans are something the MIL likes/wants/requests she
will help maintain them a bit more. We will upkeep the strawberry patch
we started, which the FIL hopes runs out of the garden and over the hill
towards the creek and chokes out a bunch of the other plant life around
there. Hee hee. I'm guessing that the MIL will plant squash because
she likes it and she did it this year (too bad it got fungus and died, I
know that was a huge disappointment all around and I'm being serious,
not sarcastic.) That's it for their place, anything else there I will
not be responsible for. In fact, I will barely be responsible for the
corn and green beans. Now, the big change, gardening at hour
house!! Our yard is basically a large L shape with the end of the L
hiding behind the garage so one often thinks the yard is just a big
rectangle. Behind the garage is where our new garden is going to go.
Since our yard tends to retain a LOT of water and given this year's
weather and the realization that things happen that prevent hours of
weeding in the garden plus going back to work full time we've decided on
container gardening, more to the point, considering tire gardening,
which is something I didn't know about until Pat showed the resources to
us. After poking around back there I am figuring on 16 tires arranged
like this: | || | and we are putting pea gravel in between to make the
aisles attractive and easy to navigate. Now I need to figure out what
I'm going to plant. I am figuring one tomato or pepper plant for a tire
which takes out 6 tires if I go with three tomato plants, three pepper
plants. (actually, 2 bellpepper plants and then one tire of jalapeno
peppers which I think 3 jalapeno plants in a tire). This leaves me 10
tires to plan and agonize over for the next few months.. Yay! I just
need to figure out what I'd most like to have. So, is any one else as
neurotic as I am and thinking about next year?

BTW, yesterday we were raking the yard and noticed our backyard neighbor
(the yards meet up and there is no fence yet) has a HUGE apple tree and
TONS of beautiful large large apples. I think I am going to walk around
and introduce myself and ask if I can take a bushel. I think they must
be pretty easy going because they allow our other neighbor to practice
fly fish casting across their lawn. Hee hee.

Heather H.