New home=new gardening adventures … and in my case, a new blog: Intrepid Gardener. I have been doing the Twitter thing for a while but decided to specialize: http://twitter.com/IntrepidGarden

Here’s to new beginnings — and cherished memories.

I also picked a handful of raspberries off the vine this morning. They are heritage raspberries and they were delicious, velvety and sweet.

Like my other Northern Nevada gardening friends, I have found that the tomato business is really odd this year. But there are a decent number we harvested off the vines and enjoyed. The Sprite tomatoes are the winner this year. We also had one really yummy slicing tomato yesterday. It was the real deal.

I loved living in Reno and I loved this yard. It’s really spectacular. I had some visitors to my yard over the weekend and they were awed by the yard. They told me that it was exactly what they hoped their yard would look like some day. I feel lucky to have lived here and enjoyed being the gardener in residence. I hope someone will come along and fall in love with it, just like I did.

There are some plants that will make the move with me but I have others that need homes. If you are a gardener in the Reno area and would like to adopt plants–or need nursery pots for propagation–let me know.

I also have squash, tomatoes and eggplants ready to pick. Yay! Life is good.!

Just want to note that I did not plant this acid-loving, humidity-loving plant in the hot, dry alkaline garden. I am just trying to help it be a stranger in a strange land in the hopes that someone will do the same for me someday.

I never cease to be amazed by my successes–and depressed by my failures–in the garden. My hostas flourished last year–but this year I lost two of them. (Admittedly, they are tough plants to keep happy in a dry climate.) My cape honeysuckle returned this year but has barely grown–this is a vine that can grow 30-40 feet in one year. I have a dracena that looked like it was on steroids until a few days ago and now it looks sickly and has dropped half its leaves. Too much water? Not enough? Who knows??

On the other hand, after losing two of my three raspberry plants last year, suddenly I am a raspberry farmer, transplanting 10 plants this year and easily overcoming last year’s losses. I also have two volunteer butterfly bushes in the vegetable garden area that look great. I am calling them my welcome mat for pollinators. My plumeria was naked as a jaybird a few months ago after a spider mite infestation. It dropped ALL of its leaves–today, it’s a happy camper again. I had a dwarf banana that looked like a dry brown stalk in May and today it looks as good as the day I bought it.

So when something goes wrong in the garden, take a few minutes and make a list of all the miracles.