Our zone 3 garden is planted and after 7 years the soil in the raised beds is finally the right consistency to make planting a pleasure (although it’s been too cold and wet to grow much the past few days). It’s not perfect soil, but much better than the clay and rock it contained a few Springs ago. Fruit trees planted three years ago survived another winter—and the hungry deer and rabbits. Blackberries transplanted from a friend’s garden are leafing out; the fickle blueberries even have a few leaves. (I never have had luck with them.) The asparagus is finally old enough to start to harvest, going through 2 years to reseed itself. The hens are frolicking outdoors after being cooped up in the barn all winter. Perennial flowers have begun to fill in the flower beds. It’s almost picture-perfect.

Of course all of this can only mean one thing… we’re moving.

Moving has always been exciting to me—well, maybe not the duct tape/box-packing/can’t-find-the-coffee-pot part. But it’s a chance to start over and create a new garden with a new personality, sometimes on a very blank slate.

While it’s still a wee bit early in the season here in Wisconsin (or at least unseasonably cold), we’ve found the new acreage about 80 miles to the southwest already has tiny apples forming (what kind is beyond me), asparagus (in the tiered, overgrown flower bed), and raspberries (in another flower bed—entangled in wild rose bushes, weeds, a small dead tree, and orange columbines, which are lovely at the moment).

We’ll be busy digging and transplanting whatever we can salvage from both places. The horseradish is sitting in a pot ready to be relocated “south” and we’ll have to salvage some rhubarb before we go, since the new place doesn’t have any. (Almost every farmstead in Wisconsin has a rhubarb bed generations old.) Hopefully we’ll be able to harvest some of the strawberries before a new occupant gleans the goodies.