happy at home

KITCHEN GARDENI am very excited to begin square foot gardening in the spring. For the last few months, I have been walking around my yard, trying to find a spot that gets a lot of sun. We live on a very heavily wooded lot, and I had been afraid that I would have to cut down several trees to have a place that would be good for gardening....until I had an epiphany in the shower a few days ago (don't you do some of your best thinking in the shower? Maybe because it is the only place we can have some quiet?). The above picture is the parking pad where I park my car. It is right off the kitchen door and is at the side of the house that faces the street (the front of our house faces the woods instead of the road). We also have a circular drive at the front of our house.

Ok, so picture this. I can have four raised beds on this parking pad. I will have a pathway between each bed. The great thing about having my garden here is that weeds won't grow, since there will be the pebbles/cement under the raised bed, and I will already have pebbled walkways, without any additional work. Then, I am going to finish the fence and add a gate. That way, if someone parks on the street (which happens most of the time), or when I get the mail, we can walk through the sweet little gate, down the path that goes through the kitchen garden, and in the kitchen door (this is the entrance that almost everyone uses, since it faces the road). This spot also gets the most sun. Here is how it looks now from my kitchen porch entrance.Here is where you pull in from the road, where I want to finish out the fence. I think it will be oh-so-cute, and very Williamsburg, in keeping with the style of my house. I am going to plant the beds with herbs and veggies and a few marigolds and nasturtiums to keep the bugs away. I want to do the sweet little wattle corner guards that were used in Williamsburg too. (This image is from chispa on flickr.com).

Oh, BTW, I would start parking on the circular drive at the front of the house. There is a pathway from the drive to the kitchen door, that goes down the side of the house. It is a few more steps, but not too many. What do you think? Can you see any flaws in my plan that I am overlooking? My explanation seems very fragmented, probably because it is four in the morning. Does this sound like a good idea? Because in my head it is fabulous!