Oregon Trail In Reverse

And so it’s been a year and a half since my last post. The foundation has shifted. Everything is different. We’ll see how it goes.

A blog or two back I mentioned my newfound grandmahood. We have, in fact, done it. I retired last July, we left a home of 30 years, and drove 2,000+ miles across America to live closer to my daughter and son-in-law and newly minted grandson.

I take care of him 20-30 hours a week, usually 10 hour stretches. It’s a lot. I’ve grown old. So I haven’t had much energy to blog. And no promises even now that it won’t be another year before I sit here again. But I have a moment here, now, and I’ll try to be brief and toss out some photos, and maybe that will help me to actually publish this. I’m going to jump straight to the gardening to keep things simple.

This place we bought has a little acreage so I have more room to garden. We didn’t get as much land ready as I’d hoped, nor the soil as prepared as I’d wanted, but I planted anyway.

The soil is VERY sandy, with a capital S, my old garden started out very much clay. My biggest threats back in my old garden were slugs, aphids, and cabbage moths. Here, I meet a new predator weekly. So far we’ve grown to know potato beetles, Japanese beetles, giant June bugs and most recently tomato hornworms. It’s been interesting.

With the climate here, it was wait wait wait for it to be warm enough to plant and then overnight things grow (because it doesn’t cool down at night!) Anyhow, it’s been different and interesting. Here’s a little of what has succeeded so far.

I’m currently in northern Indiana, so if anyone with a similar climate, sandy soil, or is familiar with the aforementioned insects has any advice, I’d love to hear it! Or if you just want to talk gardening, grandparenting, moving, or say hi, comments are open!