This vege/berry garden has bee in the work for months, with careful consideration. The plant sizing follow standard plant spacing and is for fully planted sizing. The actual planting will be certainly slightly smaller at any given time. 1. Siting and orientation. Ideally, the orientation should be diagonal, or North to South next. But my property border is at the North, so I run my rows E-W. 2. Sizing. My main concern is deer pressure. So I erect the deer fence. It would not make sense if I keep a couple of the fenced areas. The incremental cost for fencing is much smaller. So it makes sense to have a larger garden, instead of 3 smaller ones. 3. Framework. The perennials and annuals are in separate beds, except the raspberries. The raspberries are in a 8' wide bed, too wide. So I plan to grow okra or Brussel sprout in front of the raspberry. 4. All the 3 trellis systems will be permanent, with wood posts and some line posts. I'd rather set the framework at max size, instead of tearing it apart and enlarge it. 5. The plants are not initially at the max size. The raspberry and blackberry will be at the 1/2 sizing. I'll either propagate more, or add more plants later. 6. I do not expect planting at the max size at any time. I may not like the ones I planted; some may not adapt to my climate; some may die from weather or diseases, etc. 7. After the perennials are placed, the rest will be used for annual veges. There is still a lot of space left. And I do not plan to grow too much annuals, just for ordinary consumption. I grew 12 hot peppers plants this year and we do not like frozen hot peppers. I do not mind for surplus small fruits. We have two refrigerators to use. We can always use the extra fruits for drinks, jam/jelly, juice, sauce, even dried fruits. We have a 3 acre land. Besides this garden, I grow 20 fruit trees, 16 blueberry bushes, and 4 beds outside the fenced area. The extra beds are for garlic, onion etc., relatively deer proof. Right now, I do not have room for kabocha and pumpkins. No room for watermelon. No room for asparagus. I really want to find room for asparagus. It receives deer pressure. But it also takes on valuable space. I'll probably want to grow like 25 crowns. Picking berries should not be very hard. The plants will be on trellis. And we are not going to pick all of them. We may have more blackberries than we can consume, but not the raspberry. I still need to tweak a few things. So valuable comments are always welcome. You can never have enough garden space....

I think that tip #6 is especially interesting.... I've never heard that about overloading the tree bottom with ornaments on purpose. Then again, I'd bet that whoever suggested this tip does not have cats! :) Did I ever tell you about the time I made gingerbread men to decorate the tree? Every day I'd come home from work and find a cookie or two on the floor broken -- but I could never fine their heads! I eventually saw her do it: my cat would knock a cookie off the tree, eat the head, and leave the rest. :p So, is there a tip about WHERE TO PLACE A TREE within a room??? I have a 24' long LR, but it's narrow and one long wall has a large bank of windows across the middle, as well as a door. I've tried placing the tree in the far corner, but it seems so out-of-view. I've tried placing the tree on the opposite end, centered on the other short wall near the door, but it seems to be too "in your face", IYKWIM. I'm tempted to try placing it more in the center of the room -- near those windows -- but does it make sense to do that if the furniture has to be changed some to accommodate it???

You don't have to move the DR wall to have the fridge as I have suggested above. Think of it this way: all exterior walls are "load bearing", but all of them have windows and doors, right? The load is safely transferred by using "headers" above the openings, but the wall remains in the same plane. You can't usually see the structural components when the walls are intact, but they are always there. Think of it this way: What I was proposing is to create a "doorway" through that wall using the space now devoted to the narrow cab, plus the thickness of the wall and "stealling" some more space from the dining room. Stick the fridge in the opening (a kind of closet, in a certain way). Since you are stealing space there are techniques that will allow you to make an exceptionally thin wall behind the fridge. Anyway, imagine the fridge poking it's backside through the wall and then imagine the whole thing framed in and tidy. You could incorporate a built-in china cabinet on the dining room side for the rest of thickened wall space. The fridge shouldn't eat up more than 12-18" max of the DR. You would be creating a wall space that's thick enough to contain the fridge. Some parts of it would be accessed from the kitchen side, some from the DR side, if you see what I mean. You can minimize the thickness by using a so-called counter depth fridge, as well. You can remove and reframe the wall if you, want but you don't have to go to that extent, or expense. There may be ways to disguise the slight off-centeredness of the existing DR windows - curtains stacked outside the frame are one common tactic. If I haven't made myself clear, I can try again. I thought from your comments above you didn't understand what I was proposing: don't remove or move the wall, just put a hole into for the fridge. Don't think "outside the box", think through the sides of the box. HTH L.

I put the ornaments on my tree today. Last year I didn't and it actually looked alright but today I got the boxes down and before I knew it I was unwrapping and hanging ornaments. For some reason it was a little more frustrating than usual and in fussing to hang them just right, I broke TWO favorite vintage ones. :( Whenever an ornament hits the wood floor there is total destruction - of the ornament that is. I was, and am, so sad. Had to make sure I swept up all the slivers so cats wouldn't get them in their paws. May look on Etsy to see if there is anything comparable to them. Some colors are more difficult to find than others. But I'm glad I decided to adorn this year.