Well Spring is very late here in USDA Zone 7B..  Cary, NC.  ..  this means longer azalea blooms,  native wildflowers are blooming about 2-3 weeks later.  My annual Edible and Gourmet plant sale is starting later.
I am very glad I started my indoor seed germination later this year as well.
Gardening and growing food is an eternal learning curve, sometimes I get some thing right, sometimes I don't..   the "Dont,s", are best viewed as LESSONS.  
My lesson this germinating season?   Start small, go slower, plant later ..  
The later planted Tomatoes, peppers and eggplants catch up with their early planted siblings.. and by waiting until after last frost date..  There is less work applying nightly frost protection.

In years past, I had too many seedlings... which meant MORE water, more labor, more space, more materials needed, more expenses..  these are important considerations when one is trying to make a small living...
One the plus side.. I had more plants to gift!
This year, hope to have a better balance.

Back again 2013,

Back from a long, long absence.  I started the Blog one peaceful night as and experiment, then,  dropped it..  I started to follow others blogs on Blogger and needed to resurrect the Betsys_backyard.     Will try to get some content up and running..
Thanks for stopping by..

     Many factors are required to explain that gap in years since first starting this blog..  Most have to do with managing multiple family health crisis and long term medical care issues.  Moving past that, I have a big confession to make..   I am better at telling stories than writing!  You see, I think primarily in pictures.  I find it easy to create ideas- and share themm but the craft of writing is, for me, very laborious.
   So where am I now?   I am still managing our little half acre in suburbia - keeping an eye on native plant and animal interactions, increasing and modifying my food production plan, growing edibles for my Spring plant sale AND am still a veteran second hand scout.  
      I attempt to embrace industries of both my PA Dutch Grandmothers-  frugal living, cottage industry- and sharing this with others.
        
    

Suburban Safari

My name is Betsy and I live with my family on just under a half an acre of Carolina suburban bliss. I am an Horticulturalist by schooling and a Naturalist by heart. Over the last 15 years, we have turned our yard into a suburban experiment in sustainable gardening AND wildlife habitat enhancement.
My goal is to demonstrate small, simple ways that most of us can apply to create a sustainable lifestyle and while increasing our nature awareness. I can think of few better ways that to start with garden.
Gardens allow us to create, relax, energize, excercise, contemplate, share, imagine, connect and nurture. Our property has several gardens.... The sunny, terraced front is primarily for edibles; including fruit shrubs, herbs and veggies. The Shared Sunny side garden is home to our Kindergarten playhouse- a real outdoor playhouse with edibles and flowers for walls! The backyard is shaded by numerous 60 year old + oaks and hickory. Here is were I have colonies of native "rescued" wildflowers, a shady "screen" border, small nursery beds and propagation area, large natural area, and amphibian breeding ponds.
When friends visit Betsy's backyard they notice things..... "there is life all around!" " I never thought there would be a forest in a little backyard" and "how did you do all this?!" are common comments.
This blog site is an attempt to answer the question "how did you do all of this?!"
Please stay tuned for pictures of what we have, and how we did it.