Letters from the Garden

Other

California dreamin’

As you know I was out of town a couple weeks ago (you know, when I just ditched you all without even attempting to blog while I was gone?). Mr. Much More Patient and I headed off to the great state of California for a little bit of work and a little bit of pleasure. It was my first time ...

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Garden

The evolving window box

I followed my own advice this weekend and spent a good amount of time in the garden, although all I accomplished was a lot of weeding and a little bit of planting. There is still tons to do. I hope the weather hangs in there awhile, even though the first day of fall really felt like the first day of ...

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Garden

Gardening tool I’m never without: my phone

I stayed up late last night to work on a blog post. I was quite proud of myself because I even scheduled it to go up automatically. Often I get close to finishing them, but work on them a little bit in the morning before I hit “publish,” but it’s so much nicer when I finish them and they just ...

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Other

The best way to manage blogs

I said I was only going to skip one week of The Garden Appreciation Society but I’m still getting back in the swing of things here and it has been a very bad week in my life as far as technology goes. It is unbelievable how long it takes to set up a new computer. And by the way, don’t ...

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Garden

Fall is not for sissies

Well that was a bit of a break, wasn’t it? I had great intentions of posting while I was out of town but have you ever tried to do any real typing on an iPad? Oh my gosh, it’s exhausting. So I didn’t. Anyway, it was a great trip and I’ll share a few photos from it soon, but today ...

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Garden

The Garden Appreciation Society Week 17 — I know you have flowers … link up!

The Garden Appreciation Society seems to be getting later and later each week. And last week I really screwed it up when I set the dates wrong on the link tool. Sorry about that. I have a good excuse for having this week’s on Friday, though. There won’t be a Garden Appreciation Society link-up next week (for the first time ...

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Garden

A return to something other than the garden

It’s not unusual for me to let house projects slide during summer. After all, there is gardening to be done and fun to be had. And winter up here is way too long so it’s good to have some things to keep busy with. But this summer, more than any other, I pretty much walked out of the house, leaving ...

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The Impatient Gardener blog was started in 2009 and its library of posts includes practical how-tos, plant guides, favorite garden gear, successes and failures and much more. If you’re looking for something specific, the search function at the top of the page can help.

When the world was busy panic-buying toilet paper, I was busy panic-sowing.  As it became clear that the novel coronavirus pandemic was going to change life, at least for awhile, I was in the middle of my regularly scheduled indoor seed starting. I had made a quiet promise to myself that this year, for once, […]

As you probably know, I live in the land of the delayed spring. So when I started getting questions from a couple people asking about why their tulips and other bulbs were short I didn’t think much of it. Maybe they planted them too deep or had something funky going on with the bulbs they […]

In a very random Instagram moment over the weekend—a hastily shot story made while practically running past the compost as I dashed around trying to get a few jobs done before it rained—I showed an exciting compost-related development: a second bin! OK, very few things related to compost can possibly be classified as exciting, but […]

Do I dare? Do I dare even get my hopes up that we may indeed be having an early spring and trust that we will roll right into a warm spring and a “normal” summer?  You know the answer to that. I absolutely should not do that and yet I will. I am.  This year’s […]

After you garden for awhile, you start to get a pretty good idea of what kind of gardener you are. Your style and approach to garden tasks becomes pretty clear. And after two decades of gardening in some form, I think my weak point is clear: restraint. As much as I know that restraint is […]

I don’t often talk about houseplants here, and on the rare occasion that I do, it’s done reluctantly. I’m just not all that comfortable with them, and I certainly don’t have the passion for them that I have for all the great things that grow outdoors.  I have a few houseplants that get special treatment […]

I have to admit something. I cried watching a gardening television show. Not during the reveal of some kind of makeover for a deserving family. Nope. I cried watching Monty Don talk about American gardens.  Let me back up a bit. For those who are unfamiliar, Monty Don is perhaps the most well-known gardener in […]

Well I’m predictable, that’s for sure.  Every couple years, almost without fail, I take on a really big garden project. I cannot explain what compels me to follow this arbitrary yet somehow predictable schedule, but I do. And so, since I spent much of 2018 building the dream vegetable garden, and part of last year […]

Most winters, I make it until at least January before I start ordering plants for a gardening summer that might as well be a light year away, but this year I got a head start. It wasn’t my intention to start buying when I should have been Christmas shopping for other people, but the early […]