Gardening at The Chicken Ranch

It’s gardening time here at the Chicken Ranch. We plant a fair size vegetable garden here each year that, along with the herb garden, keeps us in delectable summer table fare. We plant row after row of green beans, enough to carry us through the winter. Our salad beds are well established now, with spinach, lettuces, and other green delights ready for a rinsing and our favorite dressing and seasoning. Okra, black-eyed peas, and turnips are harvested here each year. Yellow squashes, zucchinis, and egg plant are grown in abundance because I love to grill them in a coat of olive oil. A good many of our meals come off the gas grill here at the Chicken Ranch.

We grill steaks, burgers, salmon, tilapia and a host of others foods. The item we eat with the biggest variety of recipes here is (as you can imagine) chicken. Barbecue, garlic dressed or southern fried, chicken is a favorite. We are quiet about it around the hens though, no sense upsettin’ the egg production. Then there are the flower beds.

Over the years our flower beds have grown to encompass three sides of the house. The east garden is part sun and part shade through the day and it has a variety of lilies, hosta, marigold, cone flowers and more. The brick sidewalk separates the beds and leads to the gazebo we built for our oldest daughter Melissa to be married in back in 1993.

The south garden is right off the back porch and is shaded by Japanese Maples, plum, crab apple and other trees that provide  shade as well as an explosion of colors in the spring. The purples and reds of the plum and Japanese Maple leafs blend with the greens of the other trees and offer a pleasing color mix all season long. Inpatients, lilies and columbine border the pine bark trails leading to the water fall and out to the apple and cherry trees in the yard.

The west garden is full sun and is part lawn. Ice plant and Ivy hugs the foundation of the house and shop. A bed of asters, petunias, lilies and more border the sidewalk while elephant and ornamental grasses line the drive. Years ago we planted forsythias along our lane as a hedge. It has now grown to a solid wall 5-6 feet wide and over 8 feet tall. We never expected it to fill so well, but we love it.

Our gardens here at the Chicken Ranch keep us busy and happy. We enjoy the outdoors, the smell and beauty of the flowers, and the stress-relieving work. Our reward is better health, and the fact that Patty can count thirty colors at once in July, when the gardens are in full bloom, helps us enjoy the time we put into our gardens each year.

It's a lot of work at times but, anything worth having is worth workin for I reckon.

If y’all are ever near the Chicken Ranch, stop in. We enjoy polite company. Patty is a great hostess, and the chickens are friendly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I better get. I have some weeding to do.