It’s the same every year. The Christmas decorations come down and almost instantly my thoughts turn to the garden. This is problematic because the earliest I can start working in the garden is early April, and that’s if all the stars align and we have an actual spring (something that is almost unheard of in this part of the country). …
I saw a lot of gardening “trend” stories pop up around the beginning of the year. The concept of trends in gardening always seems a little off to me. I look at photos of gardens designed a hundred years ago and love them as much (or more) than one designed last year. But I know particular kinds of plants come …
Since most of the country (and Canada) is in the grips of the polar vortex I’ll spare you my tale of woe and the pictures from my cell phone of the thermometer on my car. School’s been cancelled due to the cold for two days now and one of our buildings at work is without heat but my main concern …
Happy new year, everyone! I hope you had a nice New Year’s Eve and a great first day 2014. I was happy to get the house completely de-Christmassed. As much as I like the decorations (and I really just got them up about a week and a half ago), it’s still nice to reclaim the house. Last weekend, when I …
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There is a school of thought, which I wholeheartedly subscribe to, that the activities we enjoy for a lifetime are those that are difficult to master and that constantly have us striving to know more, or perform better. There’s no doubt in my mind that gardening falls under this category. But if I were so […]
It’s an unsettling time in the garden. Part of me looks around, thinks about all the tasks that must get done before it gets too cold out to want to do them and wants to just get on with it, and the other part of me realizes that the garden is still looking fantastic. […]
I used to dig in my garden, unearth a worm and be delighted. I took it as a pat on the back for my hard work in making good soil that earthworms would want to be in doing their good work. But for the past year or so that delight has been gone. It has […]
Longtime readers will know that I’m not one to rush the seasons (other than winter, which I’m happy to mentally check out of sometime around January 5), but we need to talk about autumn. And maybe a little bit about spring. Because even though my garden is currently enjoying a very summerlike couple of weeks, […]
It’s been a busy late summer so I haven’t spent as much time on the internet as I might have otherwise and therefore there wasn’t a lot of finds to share with you, but this week there’s some can’t miss stuff I want to share. First off, don’t miss the most charming little garden and […]
Two things happened on the same day earlier this week that once again reinforced my “garden for yourself” school of thought. First, I read Garden Media Group’s analysis of the gardening trends they see for 2018. One of the things it seems to show is that the trend toward a less cultivated style of gardening […]
You know how annuals at nurseries can look when things start getting picked over? Generally sad. It’s hard for nurseries to keep up on the watering, it’s getting hotter out making that even more difficult, and they might all be bunched up growing together. That’s how you get plants like this Supertunia Indigo Charm. […
Like most gardeners, for me this time of year is as much about late season chores like dividing and moving as it is about making notes of what worked and what didn’t. It’s always amazing to me how different the garden looks in September compared to what it looked like in June. Back in June […]
I’ve been considering the entrance to our house lately. It’s not pretty. We have a longish driveway so landscaping the areas that we don’t regularly look at ourselves has not been high on the priority list. We also live on a private road shared with our neighbors so curb appeal is not a high priority. […]
It’s a good time for reflecting on the gardening year, and I’ve learned to be a little tougher on the gardener (me) and the gardens when it comes to analyzing what worked and what didn’t. There are no perfect gardening seasons, so I try not to allow myself to make excuses because of the weather. […]
I have been enjoying the garden so much the past few weeks. It’s sort of a sweet time in the garden for me as most of the plants have done (or are doing) what they are going to do, the weeds, although ever present, don’t have a lot of places to grow and, thanks to […]
For a person who harps on the joy and importance of getting in every garden you can (there’s always a takeaway!), I don’t really go on nearly enough garden tours. However, our master gardener group recently had the opportunity to tour The Christopher Farm and Gardens, an expansive private garden that is often open for […]
It is always interesting to see how the same plant can grow differently in two almost identical locations. And in this latest case it was even a little disheartening. Sweet Summer Love clematis is a prolific bloomer, but one that needs a good while to get established before it really starts showing off. Four […]
Have you noticed that I’ve not shown you much (or maybe anything) from the vegetable garden this year? That’s because I got so late planting stuff that even my kale is only a few inches tall. The only variety I grow anymore is lacinato, which, as you can tell from the photo above from Mackinac […]
