It’s gorgeous isn’t it?

Those trees are on the neighboring plat, the rock outcropping is to the South-East, which is going to make for some awesome sunrises.

Believe it or not, this is zoned as a residential neighborhood. Rural residential (which means animals are okay) but still residential.

My inner rock hound is delighted, being so close to all the best places to find the best shiny things nature can provide.

I’m so indescribably happy. And worried. Happy because I’ve wanted to get a place where we could keep a few larger animals (not horse large, but a dairy goat would be nice) and some chickens, and because I really still don’t like the way our neighborhood has changed over the last few years (all the cool people got divorced and moved away, leaving room for not so awesome people to move in and start annoying me.)

And worried because we have a whole property to plan and develop.

maybe, I hope, I think so, it could be

Since the sprouting it hasn’t grown much, just this side of two inches– I’m almost confident that its a real orange tree sprout and not a weed seed that found its way into the potting soil.

Since the 29th of October I’ve kept it in good condition and have managed to not kill it off by neglect. Although I almost killed it by leaving the light over it on too high an intensity over Christmas holiday.

I haven’t planted anything else, but I’m planning on ruining my yard this year and cutting a 5×20 foot garden right in front of the house. I say “ruin” somewhat tongue in cheek because the beauty of a yard or  garden is subjective. I tend to think a perfectly manicured lawn is lovely, but I live with two children, four dogs, and a patch of feral strawberries that are determined to keep such a yard a distant and unrealistic dream.

Have you ever run over cleverly concealed ripe strawberries with a mulching lawn mower in August? I did, the carnage was great. Day one smells like a strawberry punch, day three after the mowing smelled like strawberry wine, day 10 and my yard smelled like a Ceasar salad. Not wholly unpleasant but mildly disturbing in that I was tempted to fetch croutons and Parmesan every time I went out to water the hedge.

Usually I try to scatter my food gardening as unobtrusively as possible around our property, a side effect of living in a family house is the fear that everyone is going to criticize any change, no matter how small and no matter how great of an improvement it might be over the way things Grandma had them arranged.

Grandma had dark fake wooden paneling in the living room– and I took so much flack for removing it. Mom’s dog used to pee on that rhododendron by the front door, never mind that the plant is dead it had sentimental value. Can’t dig there because we buried a cat there 4 decades ago.

The reality of it is though that if Matt and I hadn’t purchased the place then it would have been bought by people who would have seen it for the money pit that  it is, razed it to the foundation, torn out all the landscaping and built a duplex here. This year, I’m just going suck it up, brace myself for the finger pointing and cries of heresy and treat my property as my property and manage it the way I like instead of catering to a bunch of people who never bother to visit unless someone has died anyway.