My little fruit patch

We were excited about the vegetable garden, and then we were offered raspberries. My excitement multiplied exponentially. Because I like veggies, but I ADORE raspberries. And the thought of having our own little stash growing all summer long in the backyard thrilled me to no end.

This wasn't going to be an easy project though. We have rocks all over our back yard. Rocks and overgrown bushes. It's terrible. Apparently the last owners wanted a very low maintenance backyard, and so they rocked all over the previous owners flower beds. And then they went bush crazy. It's a tiny backyard and there are over 25 bushes. No lie. We have dreams of removing every last river rock from our yard. One day we'll get there, so we started our rock removal program with the raspberry patch.Rory and I worked for hours on this section by the garage and got rid of 5-8 inches of rock, hauling them by tarp over to the rocks by our driveway. We found this drain thing that our neighbor Alison told us was put in because the garage used to get icy floors and the previous owners wouldn't be able to stop once they pulled their car in during the winter.

Since we also value the ability to stop our car in the garage and not just plow through to the other side, we decided we had best keep the drain. So Rory did some repair and we put some rock down over the tube and then wrapped the tube with some fancy material so that mud wouldn't cake the tube before the water could get through. Then we covered the whole thing with more of the same soil mix Rory had used for his Veggie Garden.

Ivar watched us the ENTIRE time. And he looked about as enthused as you would expect a kid would while watching his parents move rock from one side of the yard to the other. But he never complained. He's so good to us.Our plan is to post all of this River Rock on craigs list for free. If you or anyone you know is looking for lots and lots and lots of free rock, look no further! It's yours!And finally, thanks to Kathy Anderson, my life-long next door neighbor (until I was 17) I planted the raspberries. I realize they are WAY TOO CLOSE TOGETHER, but we were sort of banking only a third of them surviving. Turns out, the day I planted them was good and humid and the two days since have been muggy and wet and basically perfect for transplants. So it may very well be that I will have to find new homes for many, many of my raspberry plants. Either that, or we'll have the raspberries to feed the neighborhood all summer long.

Next up, rhubarb and dwarf blueberry bushes. Yum, yum and yum.