I spent most of Sunday in the garden, which was a real treat. It’s fun to garden at this time of year, because most jobs fall under the “pottering” category. I spent a lot of time with my compost, sifting five wheelbarrows full and top-dressing parts of the garden with it. I still have about half a bin of finished …
In case you were wondering, I refuse to acknowledge that it is getting rather far into August. Please do not remind me. One of these days I’m going to take on the enormous project of making my basement into something other than a storage space (half of it is finished space and there’s a fireplace down there), and one of …
I’ve been staying out of thrift stores for awhile now because I have instituted a rule of not buying something if I don’t have an immediate use for it (and will fix it up within a reasonable amount of time). But I am in a few rummage-type Facebook groups in our area and every so often something pops up that …
I have never toured a garden and not taken something away from it that I want to put into practice or plant in my own garden. If you ever feel like you’re in a gardening rut, it is the single most inspirational thing you can do. The garden I visited a few weeks ago was one of the most impressive …
I’m on a really good streak with books. I’m reading Dear Friend and Gardener: Letters on Life and Gardening and although I’m only halfway through it (I’m taking my time with it, savoring every page), I just know this is going to be one of those books I go back to and may become one of my favorites. It is …
There is something rather momentous going on in my garden right now: Lavender is blooming. For those of you who successfully grow lavender, this probably doesn’t seem like something worth dedicating a blog post to. With lavender, it seems, you either have it, or you don’t. I’ve struggled with growing lavender for years, which is why my path is lined …
So I painted another door. By now, this should come as absolutely no surprise to you. When I get an itch, I paint something and 99% of the time it’s a door. What can I say? They are easy and you get a lot of bang for your buck. BEFORE (Wythe Blue door) AFTER (New York State of Mind door) …
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Just a couple weeks ago I wrote here about how I manage insect pests in the garden. The general point was that human intervention is often not required. If you create a garden with a healthy ecosystem, things will all balance out. If that sounds just a wee big smug, you can rest assured that […]
Earlier this week I opened my garden to a group of master gardeners. Although this wasn’t an official garden tour, there was a still a bit of last-minute fussing, the kind where you look at your own garden with a more critical eye. That led to pulling out a “more natural” area next to the […]
Me in February: I’m going to grow an entire garden from seed this year! I will grow all the things I’ve grown in the past and add in at least 20 new varieties because I am a seed-starting machine! And I definitely need to grow a whole flat of everything because I need backups if […]
I do, on occasion check out a few gardening groups on Facebook. For the past couple of weeks they’ve been full of posts like this: “What is eating my plant and how do I kill it?” A variety of answers come in, but in every case there’s at least one answer like this: “Put Sevin […]
Once a year I go to Mackinac Island, an 8-mile-round island at the top of lakes Michigan and Huron. And for the last several years I’ve been giving a bit of a photo tour here. It’s become something of a tradition to bring you a few photos, although some years both the plantings and the […]
If you’ve been reading this blog for a number of years you know what’s been up. If you’re newer you may think I fell off the face of the Earth. So this post begins with an obligatory apology. Every summer I head out in mid-July for a week or a bit more. And every year […]
I admit I’m an espalier novice. When I first saw an espalier tree (I’m guessing on “Gardener’s World” or in a British gardening magazine), I thought I had stumbled upon some great European secret. Silly me. Espalier is happening everywhere, and it’s definitely growing in popularity in North America. And why would
I’ve been gardening seriously for a couple decades now and I was starting to think I knew what made me happy in the garden. I never expected that 165 gallons of water would become one of my favorite things. When I designed the vegetable garden I left a big space in the center for some […]
I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced a spring like this. Cool days and cooler nights have persisted far longer than whatever can be considered normal, even in these days of weather that seems to have lost all semblance of normalcy. The partner to the cold temperatures is rain. In May it fell in long, […]
I’ve said it here before, but it bears repeating: The very best thing you can do for your garden is get out of it and into someone else’s. I cannot think of a a single time I’ve gone into another garden and not taken something away from it that I either learned or wanted to […]
There are plants in my garden that are coddled within in inch of their life. I check on them often enough that I usually know when a new leaf has emerged. And then there are the other plants that just quietly do their thing for years until one day you blink and wonder where that […]
The effects of our extreme winter are still showing up in the garden. With the cool, wet spring we’ve had (as much a blessing for a busy gardener who is thankful that the weeds aren’t head-high as it is a curse), everything is slower than usual. In fact I estimate that most things are still […]
One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is what basic gardening book I recommend. And to be honest I’ve yet to have a great answer. But at least when it comes to growing food, I now have an answer. This post may contain affiliate links. See my complete disclosure here. I didn’t know what […]
At this time five years ago I would have been about 10 big contractor garbage bags in to my annual garlic mustard weed pull. The property, actually the neighborhood, was full of it. I would pull the stuff until my hand cramped up and no more garbage bags would fit in the car to be […]
