Comfrey!

You know how there are some little things that you feel just fill in a little more of the complete picture of how you want things to be?

We planted comfrey.

Not only an amazing herb and good livestock feed, it a perennial. Like the 2 apple trees we planted last year, it sends that little message of this is home. We're going to stay here and see this grow and bloom year after year.

We got big, thick sturdy roots from a Missouri homesteader  http://thegreatoutdoorfamilyexperience.blogspot.com  and we're thrilled. Handsome planted them in the garden right away. And then we walked through our work-in-progress and worked out a little more of the plan. It's going to be really lovely when it's done.

  Every year gardening is like a new adventure. This year, my seed starting efforts, while normally a vast success that take over every flat surface in the house, were an epic failure.
And that's ok. Or at least I'm ok with it.
  I kind of have to re-learn to garden in this climate anyway, so I will experiment with direct seeding things I usually start ahead, like tomatoes and peppers. And we will hedge our bets with some bought seedlings.
  Last year we had a huge garden area plowed and we planted perhaps a third of it. That was good though because there was some very lush, weedy growth that was plowed under and has spent a year rotting into the soil. We are only ever planning on having the garden plowed once. One huge soil disturbance and now we'll tend by hand. This year we will be working all the ground and planting all of it. Even if we don't get it all into raised beds and planted with vegetables, we will grow animal fodder, like alfalfa and millet. As we expand into those area, we'll just cut and dry the growth and turn the rest under for green manure.

I am really looking forward to this year's garden.