[speaker001:] Phil, I guess a good question to ask is do you do your own work, or do you like to do it?
[speaker002:] Yeah, well, I, um, about, or just over a year ago I bought my own house, so this has been the first opportunity I've had to, uh, be working on my own lawn and garden, and, uh, you know, when, back when I was a kid, you know, mom would send me out to weed the garden. I, I'd hate it, you know.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Now, I sort of take pride in, uh, in the yard, and, you know, how the place looks, and, uh, so I don't mind doing it so much anymore.
[speaker001:] Yeah, so do you have a, do you have a garden, or do you just do your landscaping now and your lawn?
[speaker002:] Well, it's, yeah, it's, it's primarily just, uh, like landscaping a little bit. You know, I've got some, uh, bushes around the fou-, you know, foundation planning, things like that, and then there's some, just some little flower beds, and my mom grows, she's an avid gardener, and she starts her own stuff from seed now, and she gets a little over zealous when she is planting these seeds in the wintertime and starting them. Uh, she ends up with so many plants that she can't fit them all in her garden. They have a huge yard and a huge house, and so she brings them up here from Philadelphia and gives me all her extras.
[speaker001:] Well, that's pretty good.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] My, my sister is very over zealous, too. She's got some really nice flower beds. She puts a lot of time into them. This is my first year in a, in a house where I'm thinking about doing some flower beds and stuff. Oh, we, I've always had crude ones at my father's, but
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] this is the first time that I really have to landscape a house. His house is more like a farm house. It's not on a main road.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] My house is on a main road, and it has nothing [LAUGHTER].
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] I mean, nothing. But, um, what I do do, and I've always done it is, at my father's house, we have, my sister and I have a couple of gardens. I think we figured out total, this is for vegetables
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] about two thirds of an acre. So we each have a third of an acre we do.
[speaker002:] Jeez, that's
[speaker001:] That's a lot [LAUGHTER].
[speaker002:] more than, that's more than the property I have right here, that you've got as a, [static] uh, garden, that's amazing.
[speaker001:] Yeah, well, it's my dad's, and we've had it for ov-, he's been there for a long time
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker001:] so, um, it just happens they built a shopping center next to it
[speaker002:] Oh, jeez.
[speaker001:] but, um, they put up a nice fence, so we still have a [static] lot of privacy, and we grow a lot of food.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] Uh, I enjoy it, um, the gardens are kind of old, you have to step down in them now
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] because we've tilled them so much, but there's still, we, we, my sister uses probably a fertilizer. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But I wish this phone would stop screeching,
[speaker002:] Are you getting a lot of static on your end of the line?
[speaker001:] Yes. I'm trying, I don't know if it's my phone. This is bad. It's not getting any better.
[speaker002:] Yeah, I can't even hear what you're [static],
[speaker001:] Oh, okay.
[speaker002:] Oh jeez, it's gone.
[speaker001:] I don't see, I don't think my phone really does that, but every time I have this phone is a little weird, I mean it's been dropped on the floor a hundred times.
[speaker002:] Well, I don't know, there was well, whatever it was, there was a second there I couldn't even hear what you were saying, but, um,
[speaker001:] Yeah, I was beating on the phone going, Can you hear me.
[speaker002:] Yeah, I guess I was having a hard time there too. I thought it sounded, well, I guess we better stick to the subject
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] for the benefit of the people uh, uh, doing this work. But, uh, yeah, I mean, that's a heck of a pla-, you must have a lot of different stuff you get out of there, especially up in Vermont there, you should have, uh, some really nice soil.
[speaker001:] Yeah, we grow a lot of, uh, the basic, corn, potatoes.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] She likes to really get into her pumpkins and see how many she can grow. Bas-, corn, potatoes, and, uh, acorn squash are good winter keepers.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] I mean, things the way we grow are carrots, cabbage, that sort of goes to waste
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] you know, we eat it, we, just too much. She, she starts her own plants. She plants a lot of tomatoes
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] I let her do all the planting and putting, and I, I do a lot of the, uh, a lot of the, the ba-, the back work, and stuff. But she does, she helps me a lot, too.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] She puts a lot of financial. She plans it all out. Beans like to be near certain types of plants. Now, they find that tomatoes don't do well if you put them next to something like, uh, peas, I don't know. Something,
[speaker002:] Oh, really because of like the cross-pollination, or,
[speaker001:] No, it's just like, something like an onion and a tomato would go together, but you're not supposed to put your onions near your beans. I guess it's, it's just what scents it gives off, they just don't like each other.
[speaker002:] Huh.
[speaker001:] I mean, she, she reads all kinds of books, so. I wish I knew more to tell you why, but,
[speaker002:] Huh. My mom put, uh, cantaloupes and cucumbers near each other once, and the got cross pollinated by the bees
[speaker001:] Yeah [LAUGHTER].
[speaker002:] And we ended up with these, these, like things on the cantaloupe vines that, I mean, were looked like round big huge round cucumbers.
[speaker001:] Oh, that's really weird.
[speaker002:] Yeah, I mean, there, these were like some mutant.
[speaker001:] I've put my cucumbers down at one end of the garden and like I'll make an L shape I've put my cantaloupe. So they've been pretty close together.
[speaker002:] Huh.
[speaker001:] But I don't think the vines. They don't real-, they don't have to be touching or anything, like you say, they cross pollinate just by bees,
[speaker002:] No, it's just the, like the bees and insects will do it.
[speaker001:] Um,
[speaker002:] Either that or my mom just had some bad seed or something.
[speaker001:] Something weird.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] This year, this last season it was too wet up here
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] we lost a lot of our root things, our squash and our potatoes, and we got half our yield.
[speaker002:] Oh, well.
[speaker001:] It was really bad because of the water.
[speaker002:] Yeah, when I, my family used to live in Littleton, Massachusetts, and when we moved in there we had a, a really wet backyard, and, uh, my mom wanted a vegetable garden. So we trucked in, uh, I think it was seven, what was it, cubic, seven yards, cubic yards, I think that's how they measure dirt
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] yeah, seven yards of sand. I got to shovel it all, lots of fun.
[speaker001:] Yeah, I have to do that, I want to make some flower beds, and I'm going to have a seven yard truck come in with some top soil.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] And I'm going to, my problem is I want to use those rail ties to build up a planter
[speaker002:] Sure.
[speaker001:] but I don't know if the creosote in the rail ties is going to do something, you know, if I want to grow a tomato or something
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker001:] in there
[speaker002:] Well, it seems,
[speaker001:] I mean, I guess it'd go with my flowers.
[speaker002:] I've seen a lot of people use them, you know, for flower beds, but I don't know what, whether they'd have creosote would do anything, I mean,
[speaker001:] Yeah, I don't, I don't, I just don't think you, I always thought I'd put a tomato plant in there or something weird
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] but I don't think I could really eat the fruit off it without wondering. And I don't know if they make landscape ties that aren't treated.
[speaker002:] Well, you can get, um, you can get pressurized lumber,
[speaker001:] Yeah, but they put,
[speaker002:] Oh, that's right.
[speaker001:] some kind of chemicals in there too.
[speaker002:] there's even, there's bad chemicals in those too.
[speaker001:] Yeah. Well, I'm not really worried about it, it's mainly for flower bed, so I'm not going to, no goi-, I'm just not going to put that tomato plant in there.
[speaker002:] All right.
[speaker001:] But, I, yeah, I do want to have a raised bed. I've never, my flower gardens are always been like on the ground.
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker001:] They don't, it just looks so much better when it's up against the house, tiered up.
[speaker002:] Well, you can see it a little better and it stands out.
[speaker001:] Yeah, this house that I have is just a three bedroom ranch and I can tell you there's nothing around it, cement
[speaker002:] Um.
[speaker001:] foundation all the way around it. Not a shrub, not a bush. There was a lilac tree, and the landlord cut it down and said, Yeah, that's one thing you have to do is keep that lilac bush cut down so it doesn't rub up against the siding
[speaker002:] Oh, gee.
[speaker001:] And I'm looking at him like, Jeez. [LAUGHTER] People would kill to have a lilac bush
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] and he's cutting it down [LAUGHTER]. So. That's all right. Flower beds are all right. Anything, as long as it doesn't rub up against the siding.
[speaker002:] Rub up against the siding. Uh,
[speaker001:] Yeah, that's what he's worried about. The trees, or a bush, because lilac bushes, they, they grow fast. Some people, uh, would really like to have them, and then the people that do have them, they spread, and they sprout all over th-, their lawn.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] So, they're kind of a pain, but, you know, people who don't have them think they're great. And people who do have them,
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER].
[speaker001:] curse.
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker001:] Another thing I have that, um, is weird is the, a locus tree in the back yard. As a matter of fact there's three of them, very badly trimmed, they aren't trimmed at all.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] And I can imagine if I had to mow the lawn in the back, which we said we'd do, if the trees hang down so, and the locus trees have like three quarters of an inch thorns on it.
[speaker002:] Yeah, they're like, I think I've seen those before, but I don't remember what they look like.
[speaker001:] They're a pretty tree, but you just, when you walk up to them they're covered with thorns. So we're going to get a chain saw and limb it extensively so it gets the trees up overhead,
[speaker002:] So it'll give you room to get under it, sure,
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] Yeah, because I can just see brushing up against it, that it would
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] rip your skin. It's worse than a rose bush.
[speaker002:] Um.
[speaker001:] Many times worse, because of course, it's a tree.
[speaker002:] Oh, a tree is always something very nice to have.
[speaker001:] Yeah, my dad used to work on them, so I don't think I'll have a problem. My husband will have problems borrowing one.
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER] then you got to get him to, if he's going to do it, you've got to twist his arm to get him to go do it.
[speaker001:] Well, if that's not the problem...