Hello everyone!

Recently I've found myself coming back to these forums to gather tips and tidbits from for our garden planning, and I decided I'd probably benefit by joining, rather thank lurking. I'm a wife and a mother to two children in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, relatively new to gardening, and learning a little more by trial and error as each season passes. In my past life, I was a nurse practitioner, but I left the professional world to be home with my children, and to begin homeschooling them.

In terms of what we grow, we have a few raised beds where we plant several types of tomatoes, in addition to cucumbers, bell peppers, and eggplant. This year, we're also going to try planting marigolds around the perimeter of the beds, in the hope that they will deter some common pests. We have gotten great sunshine to the beds the past two summers, but this winter, we placed a privacy fence, and I'm realizing that the beds are going to need to be moved to accommodate the shading that occurs as a result of the fence placement. Live and learn, right?

We also have a few beds in the front yard with three types of encore azaleas, woodland phlox, southern comfort coral bells heucheras, liriope, and periwinkle. I just recently purchased some lilacs, hydrangeas, and dahlias to place in the back yard, which is relatively bare aside from a bed of iris, lilies, and gladiolas that we relocated from our last home. My husband also helped me make a tiered herb garden from an idea I saw on pinterest, and I'm growing seedlings to plant some basil, cilantro, rosemary, and thyme in our screened porch.

Additionally, this winter we planted a Tuscarora Crepe Myrtle in the front yard, and several Nellie Stevens Holly outside our fence along a sloped area of the yard, to hopefully provide low maintenance shrubbery, as well as erosion control along the slope.

It's a random collection of trees, shrubs, and flowers, I am aware. My garden "guru", aka, my grandfather, passed away right when I started taking an interest in gardening, and I hope to be able to rely on the collective expertise of this group as I gather more information and apply it to our garden. I'm sure I'll have a great deal of questions, and look forward to making new friends here.

Have a wonderful weekend, and I hope your day is as beautiful as it is in the Piedmont region of NC today! This week looks to be perfect spring weather for us.