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Letters from the Garden

Cottage

DOWNSTAIRS BATHROOM: THE PLAN

This downstairs bathroom renovation is becoming an interesting project. Little hurdles are popping up—nothing earth-shattering or more than the usual renovation snafus, but odd—but it looks like it’s going to happen. Soonish. Since I’ve blabbed on about it for a bit now, I thought I’d share with you some of the vision for what the room looks like. You’ll notice …

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Cottage

THE REAL-PERSON’s GUIDE TO RENOVATION

We are getting close to officially committing to redoing the downstairs bathroom. This is a big deal because (1.) this was the room we swore had to be redone immediately when we first saw the house we would buy—more than 13 years ago, and (2.) it is pretty much the last room to be renovated in this house. Everything we’ve …

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Cottage

KICKSTARTING A PROJECT THAT’S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING

So last week, I signed off on Friday Finds by saying that I didn’t know what I was going to do this weekend, but that it wouldn’t be cleaning a fireplace. So imagine my surprise when, just 48 hours later, I was crawling around in a firebox doing just that. A dirty old fireplace never looked so good. Let me …

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Cottage

HOW TO CLEAN A FIREPLACE SURROUND

Have you ever cleaned your stone fireplace surround? I bet the answer is no. I mean, how are you supposed to clean craggy rocks? We’re been in our house for more than 13 years and I know we’ve never cleaned our fireplace surround. My guess is that no else in the 70 or so years previous to our ownership did …

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Cottage

GREAT LIGHTING FINDS IN AN UNLIKELY PLACE

I’ve been trying to source things for our potential bathroom remodel as I make a budget for it and over the weekend I came to the line on my spreadsheet for lighting. I started looking around in all the usual online places, trying to stay mostly in the huge lighting Internet superstores and away from Circa Lighting, where I know …

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Cottage

VISITING BATHROOM SHANGRI-LA

In my mind at least, the downstairs bathroom renovation is ON. My mind and reality are not necessarily in the same place though. One thing I learned when we did our major house remodel four years ago now (I cannot believe it’s been that long! I still haven’t hung any art on the guest room walls!) is that it is …

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Cottage

LOOKING AHEAD TO A SUBTERRANEAN DIY PROJECT

First, let me start by saying that even though it’s the end of the August and kids all over the country are already back in school, summer is not over. Not even close. Dammit. Now repeat that until you really believe it. Because even thinking about fall and the miserable season that comes after it puts me in a foul …

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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 […]