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As a gardener you learn that each year is a new year and no two years are the same, so reading though your Journals of the past years is as important to your success as this is because weather, pest, soil and time spent all effect growing and no two years are presented with the same conditions. I have my Journals 8 years back on this web site and invite you to read and see how each year, each growing season is presented with vastly different conditions. I also have videos in the Journals of our efforts and fun and some even funny which will give you some ideas to create your best gardens and landscape for you.

This is good point to let you know that all the rain and snow melt that hits the roof of our house is funneled from the downspouts to the goldfish pond, so the pond gets a fresh water source and when it gets filled it overflows to the orchard to water the trees and feed the trees from the fish waste nutrients. As an organic and a green family it is a easy way of creating some great fruit. One of the great things I did when we bought our house is that each year at Christmas we bought a Balled and Bur lapped Evergreen Tree, brought it in for a week decorated it and then planted on Christmas Day. We did this ever year and landscaped our quarter acre and also created a wind break for winter keep our house warmer, made our yard aesthetically appealing and to save energy. The Last couple of years we harvested Red Cedar trees from our yard that have sprouted in our yard because the neighbor has Red Cedar that floats seeds through out the yard and I let some of them grow in areas with no impact to use as our Christmas trees when they got to Christmas Tree size. Very nice trees and the smell is great.

During the summer, it got warm and the frogs came to visit

I encourage you to feed your local birds and the migrating birds in the spring as they will eat bugs that are coming out in the spring to feed their young as they nest or stop off to their ultimate nesting area. This will help in keeping insect populations to a more manageable level without using pesticides. We planted a couple of types of Milkweed to help the Monarchs and since the first year each year we get Monarchs stopping off . Please plant Milkweed, you will be richly rewarded.

Ponds attract Firefly's (Lightning Bugs) which need our help which are great for the garden!!!

Please note we are 1 mile from the Wisconsin Border and mile and half from the lake front. But this is not always bad, as in Summer we often have more even summer temps and more precipitation do to the lake. Our temps may be 10 to 20 degrees different than 10 miles Inland benefiting us Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.

Jan 5th

It is cold, only thing to do, Seed Catalogues. Ordered 2 Peach Trees Alberta and Sun Crisp because because these 2 types of Peaches that are being slowly taken out of commercial use and the only place is left is the backyard grower. The reason is because of shipping and color, mostly yellow. They are great tasting Peaches.

Jan 19th

Well we have a real winter, 3 days above 32 since the New Year. Another bunch of Seed Cartilages to look at with snow slowly disappearing with sun out. Always fun to see what's new to grow.

Preserving Endangered Fruit