Looking into the future Part 3

This is the last installment of my planned 2008 "resolutions" posts. Yeah, yeah, I know it's March. But my heart just hasn't been in it, because this is a list mainly about gardening, which I equate with being outside, sunshine and warmth.

During winter I TRY to remind myself that the plants are hibernating and that humans can sort of hibernate too -- slow down, pull in, look inside, plan and become expectant for the coming growing season. Some days it works, some days it doesn't.

But now it's March and I'm starting to "wake up." My thoughts have turned to the coming growing season and how to improve and increase my "greenness." Here's what I've come up with:

1. Find a way to capture and store rain water for watering without selling a child to pay for it. (Hmmm...wait a minute...)

2. Find a better way to get the compost-able food scraps from the kitchen to the composter. (caption reads: "All I know I learned in the compost heap.")
Last year the fruit flies were horrible, not to mention the smell.

3. Plant a tree in the back yard near our air conditioner compressor. I hear, from the Arbor Day Foundation, that doing so increases the cooling efficiency as much as 10%. AND since ONO's and my anniversary is coming up, and the traditional gift for the 6th year is wood, we're giving each other a tree.

4. Take care of the nasty, evil Japanese beetles that have plagued us the last two years in a "green" way (notice I didn't say humane). I'm looking at some stuff called "Grub Guard" from Gardener's Supply that's supposed to kill the Japanese beetle grubs and continue working a few years down the road.

5. Grow more of the veggies that we use more of. For example, being mostly vegetarian we use a MEGA ton of beans in our meals, so we're including that in the list (see #6).

6. Use only heirloom and organic seeds in the garden this year. We bought our seeds from Heirloom Seeds on-line and I was thrilled at the variety of very interesting sounding choices.

RUBY RED SWISS CHARD
BLACK TURTLE BEAN
PINTO BEAN
LIGHT RED KIDNEY BEAN
AMISH SNAP PEA
GOURMET SALAD BLEND
MONNOPA SPINACH
RUSSIAN RED KALE
YOLO WONDER PEPPER
SUNBRIGHT PEPPER
GOLDEN DELICIOUS SQUASH
SWEET POTATO SQUASH
CUBANELLE PEPPER
ITALIAN HEIRLOOM TOMATO
OLD VIRGINIA TOMATO
AUNT RUBY`S GERMAN GREEN TOMATO
HONEY BEE MIX—these are flowers

7. Buy an energy efficient deep freezer to store the bounty produced by the above listed seeds. This will go in one of the new storage closets of our nearly finished basement.

And the biggest project of all…..(drum roll, please)……

8. Landscape the front yard.

Grow, baby, grow!!