My Half Acre of Paradise

By the way, that’s my backyard in the photo banner at the top of this page, and I built that arbor this summer. I looked at ideas from a book, and just drew up some simple plans and did it from scratch. OK, I’m bragging. :-) Anyway, I love that photo — the backyard looks so lush, seeing all the shrubs, with the roses blooming and the butterfly bushes behind them, with the somewhat distant vegetable garden and its tall corn showing up past them. It’s a very nice backyard.

I used to have a pretty cool website when ValleyGardens.com was all about gardening in California’s Central Valley. I had a database of plants that grew well in the area, with comments on each one. But since I moved to Utah in 2001, I haven’t made the time to recreate all of that with Utah information. But perhaps this blog could take the place of some of that site. I could create a category called “plants” and make posts with photos that describe particularly good plants I’m growing, then they could be found through that category later.

One of the most popular things about the old website, though, was the discussion forum. I just might need to create a new forum in addition to this blog, because others can’t really do much with the blog besides posting comments. I frankly have enjoyed using GardenWeb.com’s forums, but their website is so saturated with those pop-up layer ads now, that it’s really annoying.

A few weeks ago, we were having some really cold weather, staying below freezing for a few weeks, but a week before Christmas, it suddenly warmed up into the 40s and even the 50s. I wonder if that will have any effects on my plants.

So far, we don’t have much deer damage in the backyard this year. Last year wasn’t too bad, either. The twins and I saw three deer in the back one night a week ago or so. But they didn’t eat much.

OK, so it looks like I’ll be running this blog on my website. Let’s see how it works. I plan to use it as my garden journal, so I can look back and see what problems and successes I’ve had and have some reference for following years on what to do when, or what to avoid in the future.

Here’s my first problem:

I have a funny-shaped Linden tree in my yard. I thought it would grow wider than it is, and it has all these branches reaching straight upward. Here is a photo of it.

I posted a request for advice at GardenWeb.com. Click this link to see the request and responses: Funny looking linden - should I prune it?