Edible Forest Gardens

The magnolias are done swooning on my lawn, their fat pink opulence already becoming this year's spring memory. There are the usual forsythias, the dogwoods are still a tender, tiny white and pink glow. It's springtime, folks, and summer is just around the corner. K. is outside planting his "edible forest garden." He hated gardening (or so he claims) until this past year when he read a book called Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke (with Eric Toensmeier) and now he has gone absolutely crazy, planting pear trees and plum trees, blueberry bushes and hazelnut trees (bushes?). I, who never could tell a zinnia from a dahlia, have also been infected but my enthusiasm is more muted. My energy is directed at keeping something pretty and flowery around the yard. I chose a ground cover of strawberries and goldenstar and hopefully that will be attractive to look at. To this K. added wintergreen which, so I am told, has edible berries.

In the backyard, I have become an expert chipper. While K. digs up the pesky bushes that we can't eat (and the deer won't eat either), I use our new machine to grind all of them into chips to be composted into topsoil. Farmer K. contemplates his soon-to-be edible yard with a beatific smile. I am less entranced, thinking of all the deer that will now show up. In any case, I'm more of an indoors-type. Prefer polishing the newly-installed shelves in my office so that I can finally start work. Or maybe I'll just surf the internet a little while longer...