Contact
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 ...
THE BEAUTY AND SADNESS OF FROST BOUQUETS
There is a traditional among northern gardeners in which the night before the first frost we all run out to our gardens and cut every tender flower we can find. Last Friday, the night of the first predicted frost, I got home later than I expected, which mean that I ran outside in the very last remnants of daylight and ...
AN OVERHEAD VIEW SHOWS A GARDEN’S ISSUES
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a few things you can do in your garden in fall to set yourself up for a great gardening year ahead. I accidentally came across another one: check out the sky-view of your garden to look for potential improvements. While looking up something else on Google Earth, I zoomed up to our house ...
FRIDAY FINDS
Well, it looks like we may get our first frost tonight. I’ll be making myself a big bouquet of flowers from what is left in the garden and bringing the poor spider plant after work. I don’t think I’ve told you about the abused spider plant before and I’ll have to something. I bought it the day I moved into ...
HOW TO DEADHEAD DAHLIAS FOR BLOOMS ALL SEASON LONG
It is mid-October and the dahlias in my yard are looking the best they have all summer. Most have been blooming since July, basically nonstop and I’d be hard pressed to find another flower that puts out that kind of performance. Some of their success is part of the nature of dahlias, but the reason they are still blooming, and ...
4 WAYS I SIMPLIFY MY LIFE
Despite how the headline of this post sounds, I’m not giving life advice. That would be most ridiculous case of false expertise blogging in the history of the Web (and if you read blogs you know that there are a lot of “experts” out there). I prefer to think of posts like this as tidbits about stuff I’ve done that ...
GARDENER’S CONFESSIONAL
In the interest of keeping it real, I sometimes feel obligated to fess up to my shortcomings here. And today I will show you what happens when I’m not thrilled with how a container turned out. The poor thing gets forgotten about. The container plantings I did at work this year were not great. The coleus grew too well and ...
FRIDAY FINDS
This is going to be so darn cool. I have never even heard of a meal planning system, but I’m pretty sure our current method of a 4 p.m. phone call every day with a cranky conversation about what we don’t want to eat and who is going to go to the store can be improved upon. Deborah Silver did ...
4 THINGS TO DO NOW FOR A GREAT GARDEN NEXT YEAR
The garden is looking remarkably good for this time of year, but things will change quickly, so now is the time to take care of a few jobs to prepare for next year. Here are four things you can do right now to have a great garden next year. I cleared out the half of the patio garden that I ...
A BLOOMIN’ SURPRISE
It’s no secret that I love clematis. I absolutely cannot get enough of them. Last time I counted I think I had 22 different varieties growing in the garden. A few of them are not doing well, so that number may go down, but it’s far more likely that by next summer the number will go up. Having maxed out ...
FRIDAY FINDS
Yep … another post today! Truth be told, the today’s first post was supposed to run on Wednesday, and then Thursday, but I didn’t get back to it until late Thursday night. Anyway, it’s time for some Friday Finds. The complete guide to shiplap. Because as I told you, there is going to be some serious shiplap happening in my ...
STAYING POSITIVE ABOUT THE END OF SUMMER
The first day of autumn was this week. This depresses me more than it should, and facing winter gets more difficult with each passing year. However, I’m making a concerted effort to be a more positive person, so I give you my list of things to look forward to in fall. Acer japonicum ‘Acontifolium’ at its peak color. 1. The ...
STAKING MY CLAIM AS A GARDENER WHO NEVER LEARNS
I have learned a lot of lessons about gardening over the years (case in point: don’t buy one of everything!) but I’m starting to think there are some lessons I will never really learn. One of them is the lesson of staking. Plants that need staking need to be staked before they need staking. And even though I know full ...
ANNUALS TO GROW FROM SEED
The end of the growing season might seem like a strange time to be talking about growing things from seed, but I find it to be a time to take stock in the garden. I’ve had a whole summer to figure out what worked and what didn’t and yes, I’m already making mental lists about what I’ll start from seed ...
FRIDAY FINDS
We’re still enjoying the bounty of the garden here (it’s really just beginning, actually), and last weekend I made one of my favorite summer treats, but fancied it up. Usually I just chop everything up in big pieces and toss it in a bowl, but it was a special occasion so I stacked thick slices of home-grown tomatoes, avocado, cucumbers ...
BE BRAVE, BE BRUTAL WHEN IT COMES TO LATE-SEASON TOMATO GROWING
Yikes, it seems I took an inadvertent break last week (and, um, half of this week). Sorry about that; it turns out that the “end of summer” (somebody else’s term that I refuse to use) is an awfully busy time. On top of all sorts of things going on a work, an event I’ve been helping organize (that ended up ...
Letters from the Garden
Letters from the Garden
