Cultivating A Green Thumb

In the past I've been hopeless at keeping plants alive, but since moving into our new house, I've made an extra effort, and it has paid off. The previous owner was a master gardener, so all we had to do was watch our back hillside garden bloom in the spring and continue to bloom all summer (at present it's covered with yellow and orange lilies). I managed to plant impatiens and hostas in the front garden, and they have flourished.

Inspired by that small success, yesterday Ickie and I drove over to the most extensive and impressive nursery I've ever visited and bought a montmorency cherry tree for our yard as well as some potted herbs. The tree will commemorate our first year in the house as well as the summer The Kid is born. We'll be able to admire a tree full of these blooms next spring:














...and more importantly, a tree full of these tart cherries for pie and jam:













(Some of you know tart cherry is my favorite type of pie/jam, and I obsess about the cherry season each year.) Granted, it'll probably be several years before the tree can yield enough fruit for half a pie, and I suspect we'll need to make a concentrated effort to keep the rouge birds and squirrels from eating them, but I'm excited all the same. At the nursery I fought the inclination to buy every fruit tree in sight and turn our tiny back yard into an orchard full of apples, plums, pears, and cherries because I figure The Kid will want a bit of space for throwing a ball around without hitting one of mommy's trees.