Of Junipers and Cranberries

    I don't like junipers. At least not the horizontal ground-cover type common in landscaping use here in Northern Georgia. I readily admit that they have their uses. They maintain a green ground cover year round.  I think they're also often used to keep a hill in place, perhaps due to the tangled, spreading root system.  But to me they looks boring, they're difficult to weed, and they're scratchy.
    Now if I had a type with berries, or softer leaves, or one with a pleasant aroma, I might love them differently.
    As it is, I find myself trying to root them out and banish them from my yard. The problem is how to replace their color and, more importantly, keep all the dirt from sliding down in a big rainstorm.

    Cranberries.  From everything I've read, cranberry bushes tend to make great colorful ground cover, and can also hold the dirt in place on a hill.  Plus they produce edibles (though Tryn is concerned we could never eat as many as we would grow). All else being equal, I'd rather have a bush that provides me food than one that just stands there filling space. I guess I want a plant to give me something back. If it's not providing beautiful flowers or color, a sweet aroma, or shade or privacy, then it should give me something tangible. (Just admitting that brings to mind the selfishness in Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree" and haunting refrains of "Feed me, Seymour.")
    I would have liked to replace all the juniper at once, but I thought I'd try one bush to start. None of the nurseries here carry cranberries, though. Apparently they're not very popular in the South. Should I take that as a message about their viability?
    So I ordered an American Cranberry bush from a mail-order nursery. It arrived looking much more frail than I expected, with thin, flimsy branches and leaves that almost resemble some types of fern.
    After work the other day I gathered my tools and began removing junipers. I thought perhaps just one would be sufficient, but I finally removed three and parts of another one. Not an easy task. An established juniper on a hill is like a crusted barnacle on a ship's hull. It took a shovel, a pick, two-handed pruning shears, and a lot of backbreaking pulling, but I finally got them out. By then the sun had gone.

    I dug a hole, added some compost and Miracle-Gro and placed the plant.
    I have great hopes. In my mind's eye I see that hillside covered with low-growing, fruit-bearing bushes awash in colorful flowers in the spring and fiery tints in the fall.
    I anticipate someday having enough cranberries for my children to bag and sell during the Thanksgiving season.

An Unlikely Gardener

Two years ago I didn't understand the passion for gardening.  Oh, sure, I knew that it is a good thing to plant vegetables, and I appreciated a well-laid-out garden.  But to garden properly requires time, and there were so many other things to do.  Also, I couldn't help but noticing that people who really got into gardening were just so . . . well, not so much like me.

For years my part of gardening was to go to the fairgrounds and get a load of manure, which I would then haul to the garden plot and dump.  I mixed it into desert soil and then left the choice of what and how to plant to my wife, Tryn.  She seemed to enjoy it more than I.  I also had to construct sprinkling systems, and motivate the boys to weed.

I liked the fresh tomatoes, and sometimes the squash.  I rarely go to taste the strawberries because the children ate them whenever they found them ripening, always before I got home, it seemed.  I did care about the fruit trees we planted, but couldn't seem to get them to produce very well.

In the fall of 2009 we moved into our new house in Georgia.  It has a good-sized yard, which needed some work.  We knew we wanted a vegetable garden, and I wanted fruit trees and bushes.  So I began trying to figure out the best place for the garden, which I decided was on the hill behind the driveway.  That required terracing, and a lot of work.

Somewhere in the process of moving the dirt, I began to acquire a taste for this gardening stuff, and my ambitions began to grow.  I began to understand in my aching muscles and peaceful, satisfied mind, the anonymous quote, "You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt."

Now I find myself spending free time working in the garden, and even reading books on plants and garden / landscape architecture.

Remember those people I mentioned?  I've become one of them.

But I'm still a novice, knowing very little about the science and art of planting and growing things.  I'm experimenting and learning.  And this is where I'll record and share my experiences-good and bad-and insights.  Maybe you'll pick up an idea or two, or maybe you'll share some of your own.  I look forward to the encounters.

Let's dig in!