Judging by my overflowing email inbox this weekend, I guess holiday shopping season is fully upon us, and that means that it’s time for a few gift guides. And I’m starting it off with my guide to practical gifts for gardeners. By the way, many of these items might be on sale or be offered with other deals, especially today, …
Bulb planting continues for me. I’ve been a bit pokey about it this year, just because the lack of a mid-fall warmup has me running a bit frantic in the garden. There’s lots of cleanup to be done, and some jobs, like digging dahlias seem to be taking longer than I planned. I have about 150 more bulbs—daffodils and alliums—left …
Well here we are, on the eve of Labor Day weekend in the U.S., the date many people think of as the end of summer. Well there will be none of that here! The garden is still going strong (although everything is a little beat up after our heavy rains) and I have a lot of “real” gardening left to …
I’m writing this on Friday night because a Friday Finds never happened. I gardened after work until late—I’m determined to have every plant that’s in a pot in the ground by the end of the weekend—and waited for a big expected storm to come through to water it all. It’s amazing how efficient I am right before it rains. The …
It’s been a bit since we’ve had a Friday Finds here, because there’s been so much going on in the garden. But I thought I’d dedicate this Friday Finds to all kinds of catching up. First off, I’ve been trying to get some videos up on the YouTube channel, although not as many as I’d like. Here are a few …
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’s paying almost no attention to the road. …
It’s raining out and I can feel the to-do list getting longer rather than shorter. Currently the list includes: Weeding. Shocker! It’s been alternating rain and sun, heat and damn near freezing here, which means the weeds are popping up faster than I can grab them. Designing my containers for the year. I can’t believe I haven’t done this yet. …
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Thanks to Longfield Gardens for partnering with me on this post. You don’t need to look far on this blog or in my garden to know that I am mildly obsessed with dahlias and have been for a long time. And while I admire, and maybe even envy, those photos of a field with row […]
A quick note: This post is done in partnership with Longfield Gardens, where I’ve been getting my fall-planted bulbs from for probably a decade (well before they knew I existed). Thanks to Longfield for the support. All words and thoughts are, as usual, my own. Bear with me for a moment here, because I have […]
As we approach the best days of summer it seems odd to be looking back at January with a bit of envy. Certainly that feeling has nothing to do with the weather (perish the thought), but there’s a part of me that longs for the kind of blind enthusiasm that comes in the middle of […]
This post is sponsored by Troy-Bilt, maker of great equipment to whip your yard into shape and supporters of neighbors helping neighbors. As usual, all thoughts are my own. Isn’t it funny how we limit our gardens to the little square of land we own? Obviously there’s a reason for this, but if the only […]
My garden has taught me a lot of lessons, but one of the most important is that good enough is usually good enough. When perfectionist tendencies rise to the surface, the garden is the perfect place to tamp them back into place. There is only so much a control a gardener can have over what […]
Thank you to Longfield Gardens for sponsoring this post and feeding my love of dahlias. Over the next couple weeks I will go through all the dahlia tubers I overwintered and plant them up in pots along with all the new tubers I just had to have. Starting dahlias in pots works well for me […]
Spring comes painfully slow here, something that I’m alternately thankful for and tormented by. It’s nearly intolerable to see the beauty of spring, all fresh green and flowery coming to other yards in warmer areas when mine is mostly still brown. But the upside is that I always feel like I get a bit of […]
I found myself with a bit of extra time at home last summer (imagine that) and, inspired by the amazing floral designers who I see sharing their work on Instagram, I decided I would try to get a little better at making bouquets. Mind you, I don’t do anything with these bouquets other than enjoy […]
I always say that the best thing I do for my garden is get out of it. Visiting other gardens never fails to provide the kind of inspiration I can’t find anywhere else. What is always interesting is that the photos I take on these visits continue to provide inspiration long after I’ve left, as […]
Gardeners love a good story and they are particularly drawn to anything that they believe will make their plants happy. This is where companion planting comes in: gardeners want their plants to have neighbors they love. It makes us feel good. But anthropomorphism aside, a lot of commonly held companion planting theories are a bunch […]
Hello flower lovers! I’m partnering with Longfield Gardens on this post, but you know the drill: all words and dahlia obsessions are my own. We interrupt your regularly scheduled holiday activities to talk about something that is, dare I say, even more important. And if you know me, you probably know that the only thing […]
Traditionally the gift guides here have featured a wide variety of gardening-related items for a range of budgets, but this year I’m going a different direction. Everything here is from a small or independent business, and most items are hand-crafted. You can still check out my Amazon storefront. (If you use that link I may earn […]
I’ve partnered with Garrett Wade to create a custom gift guide from their selection of high-quality tools, gear and accessories. I received some products to review to better inform my list (you know I’d never recommend something I didn’t really like) and compensation for my time. If there was ever a year that called for special
My first foray into pumpkin growing has been slightly less successful than that of Ian and Stuart Paton, 59-year-old British twins who obviously know more gourd growing than I do. The brothers just broke their own giant pumpkin record in the UK with a gourd of epic proportions: 2,593.7 pounds and 20 feet in circumference. […]
