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HOW TO PRUNE A MEATBALL BOXWOOD
My affinity for meatball boxwoods is no secret. In my very informal garden, they are one of the few nods I give to formality and I like the structure they provide. I usually prune boxwoods toward the end of June, but this year was a little behind weather-wise and then I left for awhile so I didn’t get to them ...
FRIDAY FINDS
So happy to be bringing you some Friday Finds today. We have enjoyed the most perfect week of summer weather and although I’ve been flat out catching up on work, I’ve been taking every possible moment to soak up the summer goodness because I know how fleeting it is. I love looking at dream properties as much as the next ...
ABBONDONZA OF ANNUALS: A PEEK AT A FAVORITE GARDEN
God bless the cloud. When my phone took one bounce of the deck of the boat last week before plunging into the depths of Lake Michigan I had no idea what had all backed up to the cloud before it offed itself. Thankfully, upon returning home I found all of the photos I had taken on Mackinac Island safely delivered ...
GARDEN TRIAGE
If it ever seems like your garden changes very slowly, just leave it for a couple weeks in the middle of summer and see what it looks like when you get back. Although I do this (rarely for this long, however) every year, it never ceases to amaze me how much the garden changes in what seems like a short ...
STAY TUNED
I had posts planned for you this week and in fact all set to go, but Murphy’s Law has made itself known and I dropped my phone with everything on it (including a ton of photos of beautiful gardens that I can only hope backed up to the cloud first) right into Lake Michigan. Almost directly under the Mackinac Bridge, ...
WHEN THE GARDENER LEAVES THE GARDEN
I’m leaving my garden for almost two weeks. It’s a bittersweet time to be away as I want to savor every bloom and new leaf and change and mentally bottle it to be conjured up come January. At the same time, summer is about much more than just gardening and it’s time to do some summer stuff. Any success in ...
NEW YEAR, NEW PLANTS
Every year I have the good fortune of growing several new plants, some provided for me to trial and others that I seek out and purchase because I NEED them. Since the garden is finally filling out, I thought it would be a good time to show you some of the interesting new plants I’m growing this year. It’s always ...
A FANTASTIC JUNE IN THE GARDEN
Last week I had to go to Newport, Rhode Island, for work, and although business travel isn’t high on the list of things I want to be doing in summer, it was a pleasure to be in such a beautiful city. Before I left I gardened like a mad woman to get all the major jobs in the garden finished ...
TWO ENDS OF THE COLOR SPECTRUM
It’s a rare Saturday blog post! I figured I owed you a little something with my sporadic posting over the past few weeks. The garden is finally coming alive, and although there isn’t a lot of things flowering just yet, it is a lovely combination of greens and almost everything is still looking fresh and new. I’ll show you more ...
GARDEN TOUR: A FAMILIAR GARDEN FULL OF SURPRISES
I love looking at photos of gardens. I study them and after a while I think I know them. I’ve been following Linda’s blog Each Little World longer than I’ve been following any other garden blog and I feel like I’ve become close friends with her Madison, Wisconsin, garden. But a couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to see ...
MY FAVORITE NO-FAIL, WAY-TOO-EASY GROUNDCOVERS
I’m nearing the tail end of the major work in the garden, which now consists of pulling out weeds by the handful and mulching. I’m certain I’ve weeded at least 10 wheelbarrows full and the mulch situation is completely out of control. I’m fussy about mulch. My favorite is a very fine pine bark with pieces a half-inch or less ...
FRIDAY FINDS
I forgot to show you a couple of photos that I meant to include in yesterday’s post about what’s happening in the garden. The ‘Blue Angel’ hostas in a corner of the garden have not yet recovered from a hasty division a year or two ago when they were badly in need of it so there is a little extra ...
THE EARLIEST BLOOMS
So many things have been happening in the garden and I’ve not had to time to show you any of them, so I thought it was high time to take a few peeks at what’s happening. Not much is blooming yet, but in a matter of weeks I expect the yard to be a riot of color. There are moments ...
THE DAY I PRETENDED TO BE A TV GARDENER
You are reading the blog of a movie star. Well, not quite, but I sort of felt like one for a day. A couple weeks ago I drove 60 miles west to the charming town of Merton, Wisconsin (where I think I actually covered a school board meeting once for one of my first jobs), to help at the grand ...
FRIDAY FINDS … FINALLY
It’s been a while since I’ve done a Friday Finds post and I’ve missed them. First, a little programming note. My YouTube channel is gone. What happened to it is a bit of a mystery that starts with bizarre, profanity-laden threats from a random person on YouTube and ends with my channel being gone a few days after I reported ...
PLANTING THE WINDOW BOX
After a lot of talking about planting window boxes, the weather finally (if briefly) improved enough to actually do it. This year I aimed for a slightly more restrained color palette (blue/purple, lime green and a touch of orange) and fewer plants. In the past I’ve jammed so many plants in the window box that I think they had a ...
Letters from the Garden
Letters from the Garden
