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MAIL ORDER PLANTS REVIEW: ARROWHEAD ALPINES
The plant deliveries came fast and furious last week, which is somewhat funny since as recently as a month ago I hadn’t anticipated ordering any mail order plants this year. I discovered Arrowhead Alpines from a familiar source: Margaret Roach at A Way to Garden. I swear, reading that blog can get very expensive. I went there for one specific plant ...
FRIDAY FINDS
Everything is running a little late this Friday, so here are some very late-in-the day Friday Finds for you. How to create real alpine plant trough (without killing the plants). Drawing in perspective was always difficult for me. M.C. Escher I am not. But I like this tutorial on how to draw your garden in perspective because it starts with ...
ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: WEEK SIX (AKA THE END)
Thanks for your patience on this. I got behind on all the last minute details and just couldn’t finish this up in time to join the first wave of “big reveals” Thursday morning. If you’re wondering what all this is about, I joined the One Room Challenge, hosted semi-annually by Linda at Calling it Home and attempted to renovate our ...
ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: HOLD, PLEASE
If you’ve been following the renovation of our downstairs bathroom through the One Room Challenge, you probably came here today expecting to see the final product. And I’m here to tell you that you just have to sit tight. I’ve never been a great “finisher” and that really came out in this project as I was frantically finishing the roman ...
MAIL ORDER PLANTS REVIEW: DIGGING DOG NURSERY
My friend Linda over at Each Little World has been doing an excellent series on mail order plant purchases this spring and it inspired me to do the same. My first mail order plants arrived last week Friday from Digging Dog nursery. I don’t think I’ve ordered from them in the past, but they have excellent reviews on Garden Watchdog, ...
CHICAGO IN BLOOM
We spent part of the weekend in Chicago for a function we were attending Saturday night. I can’t seem to sleep well in hotels, no matter how comfortable they may be, so when I woke up at 6 a.m. I figured I would get some coffee, get ready and head over to nearby Millennium Park to check out the gardens. ...
ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: WEEK 5
When I thought about joining the One Room Challenge I thought six weeks was a tight timeline, but not so bad. Yet here we are in Week 5 and I think it’s safe to say five weeks have never flown by so quickly. Catch up on Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 and Week 4 if you missed any of the ...
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE GARDEN
I got a message from a friend and blog reader the other day who asked, “How come you aren’t blogging about planting?” It’s a fair question, this being primarily a gardening blog. The fact of the matter is that it’s still really cool here and there is very little to plant. I did sow a few very small areas of ...
FRIDAY FINDS
I hate to whine about the weather so much, but my goodness it has been COLD here. I have a lot of seedlings in the temporary greenhouse and I’ll be honest, I haven’t gone in there in two days because I’m afraid of what I might find. They cannot have been happy the last few days with very cold nights ...
ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: WEEK 4
If you’re wondering what all this bathroom talk is in the middle of high gardening season, I’m participating in the One Room Challenge, a quest to renovate one room in six weeks. Start from the beginning of this journey here. We all know that every renovation has its stumbling blocks and this one is no exception. But it is interesting ...
GREAT CONTAINERS AT ANY PRICE
Yesterday I wrote about the factors to consider when choosing a container. You can read it here, but I broke it down to four factors: Size (err on the side of bigger) Style (what suits your house, garden and personal preferences) Material (will you leave it out all year or have to move it) Price Now I’m going to share ...
HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT CONTAINER
You know that gardening season is truly upon us when I start dreaming about container plantings. In preparation for this year’s containers I have been poring over Deborah Silver’s old blog posts, combing through Pinterest and drooling over some of the amazing containers the rest of the world seems to have access to, but for some reason are nearly impossible ...
FRIDAY FINDS
I have more garden cleanup (both my own and at a master gardener project) on the schedule for this weekend, a date with some nasty garlic mustard weed that, I kid you not, grew 5 inches in one night when we got a lot of rain and one more sowing of tomatoes to try to salvage my seed plans scheduled ...
ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: WEEK 3
First off, thank you all for your wonderful comments from Week 2. I’m happy to say that thanks to some insanely long hours by our tile guy, the tile portion of this project is moving nicely. There were a couple of factors that came into play with the selection of the wall tile. This bathroom was always going to be ...
FAILURE, AND SUCCESS, COMES EARLY
We’re well into seed-starting season at this point. I can tell because I’m bored with it. Well, not bored with it, but it is lot of work to check on those little guys multiple times a day to make sure they are feeling happy. Overall, I would say my seed starting has not been as successful this year as it ...
FRIDAY FINDS
After several weekends in a row with snow, we finally have a favorable gardening forecast for the weekend. I’m looking forward to getting a serious amount of dirt under my fingernails and checking a lot of gardening to-dos off the list. Some of the seedlings I’ve been growing inside are going to have to be moved outside to the temporary ...
Letters from the Garden
Letters from the Garden
