W ith the table finally the right length (but not yet finished), it was time to turn my attention to the area on the other side of the door, aka, the dumping ground. As I’ve mentioned before, we have no proper entryways into our house and neither door to the outside has a closet within less than 30 feet and …
R emember how I got this slightly damaged table for a great deal at the Restoration Hardware outlet? Well, it’s been hanging out in our basement waiting for the kitchen project to get on track. We brought it upstairs and set it up. You might not be able to tell from this picture (ignore the green tape), but there’s …
A lot of gardeners have been blogging about ordering their seeds lately. Some of them take a strategic approach to the whole thing. Margaret at A Way to Garden orders from about a half-dozen companies. Carol at May Dreams Gardens ordered so many seeds she couldn’t keep track of them. I’m sure both of these women, and many other …
I t’s official: I am the worst person in the world when it comes to taking “before” pictures. I get halfway through a project and think, “Oh shoot, I should have taken a picture.” So about halfway through I take a photo. Or worse yet, it’s too late and I have to look through all my old pictures for something …
T here’s hope that winter may end after all. I just placed my order with Dixondale Farms for onion starts. I was so happy with their long-day sweet sampler last year that I ordered it again, although this year they’ve changed up some of the varieties they include in it. I’ll miss the Walla Wallas, which were wonderful last year, …
Is it possible to request your own intervention? Because I need it. Perhaps it has become clear through some of my posts, but I have a tendency to get hung up on things. Like REALLY hung up. Once I set my mind to solving some issue, I become obsessed with it. All free time is spent thinking about it, researching …
I t’s rather shocking that it’s February and I actually have something for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, held on the 15th of the month by Carol at May Dream Gardens. I guess getting a late start on the amaryllis bulbs paid off in at least one respect. (To see the other amaryllis I kept, which showed off a couple weeks …
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If you build it, they will come. Apparently this holds just as true for vegetable gardens as it does for magical baseball diamonds, because they’re coming. “They” would be the neighbors, who have taken a real interest in this massive project we’ve had going for a couple months now. It would be hard for them […]
Here’s my philosophy on vegetable gardening: I’m more interested in growing interesting and delicious food than I am in getting very high yields or never having to deal with a bug. In other words, organic is important to me. As you know, I’m all about encouraging people to do what they want in their own […]
Awhile ago I read that plants abhor copper and that it actually inhibits vines from growing up it. I wish I could remember where, but it probably doesn’t matter because I now think this is unfounded at best and bullpucky at worst. I can’t find any scientific sources to suggest that’s actually the case. But […]
Well, the raised bed gardens are built. And I’ll tell you right now, that took a lot longer than I planned. But they are built and we’re still married. At this point both seem like remarkable achievements. Before I get into it, if you haven’t read part 1 in this series, I’d recommend you check it […]
A quick note before I get into this epic post on an epic project: Troy-Bilt sponsored this post and the Flip the Yard challenge and provided products for my use. It’s funny how projects that start as one thing end up being something else. If you followed me on Instagram last weekend (you can catch […]
I got behind on my weekly reports of what I’ve been planting, but I think that’s how it works this time of year. It’s a gardening flurry and I’m in that part of the spring marathon where it’s plodding along and longing for gardening days when you putter in the garden rather than do an […]
Note: “Five Seasons” is streaming free at this link April 24-26, 2020. At one point during “Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf,” a new documentary on perhaps the world’s most famous living garden designer, the tall Dutchman is driving a Texas-sized Cadillac Escalade down a back road in Texas and he’
I think it’s safe to say I may have underestimated how time intensive the process of building the new raised bed vegetable garden would be. I can say this with some authority since we are now into June and nary a vegetable has been planted at my house. Still, I’m not interested in rushing this process […]
Astute observers will notice that there is distinct focal point in my vegetable garden plan. But the fact is, I don’t know what that focal point is going to be. It might be a small café set, so I can sip a coffee surrounded by my growing vegetables. But I’ve also entertained the idea of […]
I’m ready to go on record. I think this may have been the most deadly winter my garden has ever seen. I’ve been patient and following all my steps for what you should do when you think a plant has died, but most things are growing by now and those that aren’t are probably doomed. […]
With all the plants still perched in temporary storage locations around the yard, you would think I’d gotten nothing planted over the long weekend. But I actually did get a fair amount of things planted this weekend in between working on the vegetable garden. I was very excited to plant Double Take Peach quince (Chaenomeles […]
Sometimes what we picture in our heads for our garden is not how reality works out. That’s the case with a little project I’ve been working on but I have faith it will improve. This spot in the main garden off the patio is the closest thing I have to controversial area. Some of you […]
It’s the time of year when big changes happen quickly in the garden and it’s easy for me to forget about them. So I thought I’d do a weekend wrap-up post to just show you what I got up to. Most of these are tiny bits of bigger projects but if I wait until the […]
I take no pride in admitting that this Plant to Know, which is one I now hope to never be without, is also one that for a time I wrote off as just another garden plant. But that’s a problem with a plant that isn’t particularly flashy and that you rarely need to visit. And […]
