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IT’S NOT A SEPTIC MOUND; IT’S A SCULPTURE STAND
If you haven’t lived in a rural area, you might not know about septic mounds. They are one of the most common ways to deal with septic in the country when you don’t have municipality-provided sewer service. We are fortunate that our mound is on the far side of the property. They aren’t unattractive, they are just weird random lumps ...
UNDOING WINTER’S DAMAGE
I’ve been feverishly working on finishing up the new garden area in the side/back yard and I’m almost there. I’m at the really fun part of arranging and planting now. I love planting a new bed. There is something so wonderful about a clean slate to plant in. But with me spending so much time in that area of the ...
PAVE IT BLACK
We didn’t plan it this way, but this year has become the year of the back yard. Between the renovation of the gardens there and fixing up the garage, I think we’re finally taking care of some of the things that have needed attention since we bought the house 12 years ago. This is the before, farther down ...
DIY: WOODEN PLANTER WITH LEAD TRIM
Since it’s finally finished and planted, I think it’s high time I share with you how we built the wood planter by the front door. When the old planter fell apart after five or six years of year-round service, I was shocked when I found out how much large planters cost. Having found some wood ones at Restoration Hardware that ...
MIXING SOIL FOR CONTAINERIZED SHRUBS
Our poor garage. We’ve ignored it so much over the years (12 of them actually; the anniversary of closing on our house was last weekend!). As you may, recall, we’re working on fixing that, but I also made a change I could have done any time and just never did. I added a bit of greenery. The bit of garage ...
THE SOUND OF SUMMER
What is the sound of summer? Is it the song of birds singing early in the morning? Waves crashing on the shore? Wind rustling through ornamental grasses? For me, the sound of summer is the squeak of a tight spring followed by the slap of a screen door. I’m certain that it’s a sound that has probably driven many a ...
TOMATO WRANGLING GETS EXPERIMENTAL
Although it was not intentional, this has become a very experimental year in the vegetable garden. First I tried out the potato towers. The jury is still out on those as I’m seeing the first potato shoots coming out now. And it turns out that the “straw” that I bought (where they guaranteed it was straw and not hay and ...
FEATURE FRIDAY: CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW 2014
I’m declaring it here: Someday I will go to the Chelsea Flower Show. This annual event is a veritable utopia for gardeners who go to take in the show gardens (from large to small), and special booths often featuring specific plants. The only thing keeping me from booking a ticket for next year is the crowds. I’d have to figure ...
ANOTHER SPRING, ANOTHER WINDOW BOX DESIGN
As you know, I love planting containers. Of the containers I plant I think I put the most emphasis on the window box. It is probably the first thing you see when you pull up to our house and it’s one of the few containers I can see (part of, anyway) from inside the house. So I spend a lot ...
A LONG WEEKEND, A TREE IN BLOOM
Did you all have a great long weekend (at least my U.S. readers who celebrated Memorial Day)? I love long weekends (well, who doesn’t?) but my goodness, they are so exhausting. Saturday was our big master gardeners’ plant sale, so I took Friday off of work and spent nine hours helping set that up. Then it was back early Saturday ...
WILDFLOWERS: THE ULTIMATE IN LOW-MAINTENANCE GARDEN PLANTS
I can’t tell you how much I wish this post was showing you the new beds in the back/side yard, but I still haven’t finished pulling up the sod. Apparently I grossly underestimated how much sod there was to remove and just what a pain in the butt it is to remove. I think I can finish it up with ...
POPPING IN ON THE POPPING GARDEN
I’ve been so busy working on various projects around the garden that I’ve neglected showing you what the actual garden is looking like these days. As usual, there is good news and bad news in the garden. The bad news is that our cold, wet spring has really retarded the growth of many perennials. My hellebores are just showing buds ...
THE WORST JOB IN THE GARDEN
You think this is going to be about weeding, don’t you? Well, I do detest weeding, but it pales in comparison to the garden job that I truly abhor: pulling up sod.Last weekend I finally had the guts to cut the bed lines for the new side/back yard. I sort of had to; the can of landscaping spray paint I ...
FEATURE FRIDAY: CONTAINER DESIGN
It seems incomprehensible to me that I have given basically no thought to container plantings this year. By this time of the year I usually know exactly what I’ll be doing in all of my containers, but I’m just first starting to think about it now. Certainly the weather is partly to blame, but I’ve also had other gardening projects ...
A COMPOST CONUNDRUM
One of the trees we took down in our latest round of tree trimming and (dead tree) removal was an evergreen that the compost bin was located next to. Even though the only thing that shielded the bin was a (rather large) bare trunk, it somehow made the placement of the compost bin make sense. Now that the tree is ...
THE POTATO TOWER EXPERIMENT
I grew potatoes for the first time last year at one of the community garden plots my mom and I share. Despite the fact that I had no clue what I was doing and the soil in the new plot was very, very poor, we got a small but delicious crop of fingerling potatoes. The harvest was that much more ...
Letters from the Garden
Letters from the Garden
