2023 Growing Season

[Anthony Bonner]

So. I'm not a veg gardener at all but I've spent the last 18 months or so doing planning and permitting for a bunch of landscape improvements around our house. We're on just short of 7 acres of very flat land in NNJ.  Last year (2022) was a lot of removal of invasive plants in our forested areas as well as some early stage landscaping/hardscaping closer to the house.  This year will be adding a bunch of formal gardens (one very naturalistic near the house and then one very formal around a garden folly tbd.)  But probably bigger than that is turning several acres of our lawn into a meadow - part of which will be used to hide a pool we're putting in our front yard (house is weirdly oriented with our back yard legally being our front yard so need a yet tbc variance and the approval of the historic preservation commission - hence the meadow growing around the pool).  We're also doing a lot of restoration work in our woodlands including wide spread planting of native fruit and nut trees a shrubs. It'll probably take five years before it all looks the way it should.  The meadow stuff especially is really an interesting process and I've hired a firm noted for their meadows to oversee the whole project.  

Anyway the first expenditure of 2023 showed up yesterday.  Definitely the dumbest toy I've ever bought. Also gonna do my own snow removal. So I've virtually guaranteed a snow free year for the tri-state area.