10 years later I’m talking to the people who live in that house now and it is a fernpocalyose over there. Very Jerrasic Park vibes.

But now I have a blank slate shady front yard that needs ferns. Also I am itching to garden but don’t have any $ for it right now.

So today I dug up like 30 ferns from my old house, got 7 replanted in my new yard, and sent the rest to my mom, who brought me some potted up raspberries she thinned from her patch that I’m going to pass on to some friends.

The dream is for there to be no grass left at all by the time it's all grown up.

Please picture this as the shady front lawn of a charming Victorian with a nice porch.

Can’t afford my full gardening plans just at the moment but we sprung for a couple little herb starters for growing on the porch. Rosemary, two kinds of basil, oregano, and the mint quarantined in its own pot.

- dropped off my lead test today, to see if the huge dirt pile we got last fall from the neighbors retaining wall situation is safe to grow food in. Should get results in about 3 weeks.

- We had just a couple cherry blossoms this year, and only on the Carmine Jewel shrubs, but that’s more than we had before so I’m happy! I might manage to get like one cherry before the birds if I’m lucky. The blossoms are already almost done but several look pollinated!

- The bigger surprise was that the Honeycrisp apple tree flowered! We didn’t expect that till next year on any of our larger fruit trees, since they all got nibbled down to stubs their first winter here 2 years ago. But they did grow fantastically last summer and this one in particular has already reached over 10ft! Again, my cherished hope is to eat a single apple this year. In future years when the tree is filled out it’ll do much more.

- the peach tree survived! The damn online store shipped it so late we’d had several snows before planting it. But I packed it with leaves over winter and it seems to have come through allright!

- the blueberries all made it through. No flowers yet but I think it may be a bit early for that here anyways.

- the hazelnuts all seem to be establishing and developing green buds.

- The sweet cherry continues to be a single stick with no side branches. Like it has leaves but no branches. It’s now about 8ft tall and very goofy looking. Please branch, little guy.

- the redcurrants all not only survived their first winter but are all flowering like crazy. Gonna have redcurrants for sure! I think they’ll go well in a jam with the ground cherries.

- my wife has developed a personal vendetta against stinging nettles and is going to ask the neighbors if she can go into their back yard and rip them up so they stump burrowing through to harass our blueberries.

- the white lilac that was planted before we arrived is blooming fantastically again this year. No flowers on my yellow lilacs but they’ve both grown a foot already this season! I can wait another year for flowers, I’m just happy they’re thriving.

This brings the perennial fruit count up to:

2 apple trees

1 plum tree

4 dwarf cherry trees

1 semidwarf cherry tree

5 redcurrrant bushes

2 lowbush wild blueberry bushes

5 highbush blueberries

4 grape vines

1 lingonberry, that I got on sale, if it makes it.

and 1 peach tree

Not bad for a city lot.