We moved to our present house the summer of 1995. It had been a rental for several years so I had a lot of work cleaning out the front garden. (There was a lot of work to do to the house as well, but that is another topic.) In the beginning I planted mostly perennials but over the years added more and more roses, many of them heirloom varieties. Now that area is about half roses, half other plants. I kept on adding roses as I moved around the house to the sides and back, except for an herb bed near the kitchen door and my nearby Hobbit Garden. While I still love roses best, I came to a point when I wanted to grow more food plants. Some of you will remember my early experiments of growing pumpkins in rose beds. I do not recommend it. Pumpkins do not play nicely with roses, and neither do tomatoes. They are bullies and thugs, both of them.

I'm a slow learner. I find I do everything the hard way with many failures along the way, but I don't give up. I've actually cut back on my roses by about a third. These days most of the areas near the house are dedicated to beauty, filled with roses, lilies, perennials and bulbs. A little further off we are putting in a series of raised beds for favorite vegetables. Where climbing roses once filled an arbor, I have now planted table grapes. And in the far back yard by the fence I am planting an orchard. I plan to keep in pruned low for easier maintenance and harvest. This house came with a number of fruit trees, mostly citrus, but I am adding apples, plums, a pomegranate and a persimmon, avocados, a pear and a peach and an apricot, perhaps as many as twenty trees by the time I am done planting, not to mention the blueberries. We both love blueberries. Today's task is to prepare the blueberry bed with peat and bark chips and sulfur. Perhaps next year I will find a spot for a small raspberry patch as well. My father always grew raspberries. My children when little would go out and graze on Grandpa's raspberries, as happy as children can be.

Rosefolly