Gardening...

We started gardening when we bought our first house in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in New York State. Seventeen years later we moved to Raleigh, NC and left behind a garden that included an asparagus bed that produced about 1/2 pound of tender spears a day during the season, a super strawberry bed, several semi-dwarf fruit trees, and a garden plot that was about 50' x 60'. We only did minimal gardening in Raleigh due to lack of space.

One of our goals when we retired was to have enough land for gardening and a climate somewhat cooler than Raleigh and warmer than Saugerties, NY. We found what we were looking for in Canvas, West Virginia. We wanted to grow our own fruit as well as vegetables. Today we have four apple trees, two cherry, and three peach. We have a half dozen blueberry bushes, two red raspberry plots, plus black raspberries, blackberries, grapes, rhubarb, and strawberries. Nancy freezes all but the apples as well as making jams and fruit toppings for pancakes. We store apples in our basement plus dry them. Our garden space usually has tomatoes, green beans, aspargus, peas, radishes, lettuce, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, squash and pumpkins. Nancy cans tomatoes, makes low carb barbeque sauce and catsup, and freezes green beans and aspargus. Last year she even pickled garlic!

Here are some thumbnail pictures of our gardening efforts. To see a larger version click on a thumbnail photo.

Veggie garden	Herb garden	Blue Spruce & Irises	Roses
Coneflowers, Bee Balm	Bearded Irises	Rhododendron, Dutch Iris	Stargazer Lily, Hosta
Coneflowers, Lilies, Bee Balm	Bee Balm	Bucket o' Impatiens	Alligator in the Salvia
Red Haven Peach Tree