Already past mid-March, it takes a lot of self-control to refrain from getting into the garden. The crocuses twinkle secretively, their early purple and golden smiles beckoning you outside. Where you do stroll and immediately enter the trance of garden dreams . . . I’ll pull out that awful section of thorny nastiness this year . . . and plant my tomatoes here, after getting a load of horse poop from next door . . . and I’ll dog-proof the perennial area . . . yeah. (Scroll over the pictures throughout this post for comments on our garden beginnings thus far.)
After 7+ days of laborious moving, Michael and I have landed at Iron Wood Farm, and the garden dreams have already grown so large, we’ve requested the services of a landscape planner. The Brandywine Conservancy, a land and water conservation organization, was happy to point us in the direction of such a person living in our area. Tomorrow we’ll meet for a second time to outline our goals. At the moment, we know we’ll need to address long-term planting in the two large fields at our new place. A look across the road reflects a Jekyll face in the mirror of what awaits without week control (the previous owners’ horses took care of errant growth with their hooves).
While our initial plan for building a home upon moving to Pennsylvania has changed, the Iron Wood Farm (whose history I’ll research for future commentary) gets us a good way down the road. Also up for immediate consideration is a prioritization of house projects, such as pouring a floor in the basement to mitigate radon, which would then allow for placing our clothes washer down there as well (such machines want a very stable ground situation). Will we install a water softener to preserve the lifespan of the pipes, as the home inspector recommended? Will we install a UV water filtration system? And what about a couple of solar panels out in the field to offset, say, 30 percent of our electrical usage? 
It’ll all get hashed out here in the months to come. Please excuse any arugula breath that may traverse the webwaves.
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