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The Garden Appreciation Society — Week 1 (Join in!)
First of all, congratulations to Edie who is the winner of the DeWit bonsai tool kit. Edie, check your email! I have to say I loved all your comments so much. So many great stories of sentimental houseplants! And now, onto a bit of fun. Last week I told you about what I envision The Garden Appreciation Society to be ...
The Garden Appreciation Society
As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m extremely tight with my flowers. I rarely cut them and bring them inside to enjoy. But on the rare occasion I do, I absolutely love seeing them displayed in the house. Last year I went out before the first hard freeze and cut all the leftover flowers I could find. Without so much ...
What is the sound of spring springing? Sprong?
Funny how spring goes. One day you’re belly-aching about the horrible weather and wishing you could do more in the garden and then the next day you turn around and the garden has come alive, bringing with it all the good (flowers!) and bad (weeds!) bits. Silly me, I was feeling pretty good after two weekends of garden cleanup. I ...
Bring beauty inside with Indoor Plant Decor + a giveaway
I have only two indoor plants that I really care about. One is a spider plant I bought at the farmer’s market the day I moved into my freshman year college dorm, making it, well, old enough to be at college itself. The other is a large ficus tree I got from my grandmother’s house after her death. In her ...
Something finally planted
A new raised bed is in and the onions are planted. I plan to grow some kale on the other side of it, but most other things will be off limits as this bed is not protected from the overactive deer population in our yard. It feels great to have something in the ground (I did finally get the peas ...
A new view
As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we’ve been waiting for the tree guys to remove a few trees from our yard. I wanted to get rid of them sooner rather than later so I didn’t have to worry about protecting plants near them and we had some more time to figure out what to do to replace them. Many ...
Our first DIY fail
Maybe I got too confident about our DIY ability. After all, I’ve jumped in with both feet to projects I had no idea would work, we installed our bedroom floors, I laid a huge stone path through our yard and built stacked-stone retaining walls and I’ve even learned how to do some electrical work. Our theory on when to do ...
Food for the winter-weary soul
When all else fails, at least there is this: It may be short in stature and damn near buried in an uncleaned garden bed, but the sight of this little hellebore (I don’t know which one it is, unfortunately) did wonders for my soul this week. The weatherman tells us it will actually feel like spring here and I can’t ...
Slip slidin’ away to trash organization heaven
You know how sometimes I publish a little to-do list that shows you what I’m all working on and what’s been finished? I am going to spare you that because reading it would take up FAR too much of your time. I have balls in the air, folks. Lots and lots of them. I feel like I have about 20 ...
Me … in a magazine. Check it out.
I was excited to be featured in the spring issue of Proven Winners free online magazine Proven Beauty. If you want to know a little more about me and see a couple of my picks for my garden must-haves, check out the magazine here or click on the photo above (I’m on page 12-13). Make sure you sign up for ...
A tree that might be worth the chance
I’ve been spending some time doing lots of research on trees, which is an area I’m less familiar with, because we’re about to lose two very special trees. The tree cutters were supposed to come this week but the weather has kept them away. A March snowstorm took out half of this Cedar leaving it angled precariously close to our ...
Weed supression in 15 minutes or less
We’ve had just about two straight weeks of rain here, but I’m not complaining. For one, we need to fill up Lake Michigan which hit its all-time historical low water mark this winter and for another it could be so much worse. North Dakota got so much snow earlier this week that the federal government gave residents of the state ...
Pinterest Puh-lease! Pinterest tips you’ll want to ignore
Isn’t Pinterest just the best? So many ideas! So many pretty pictures! So many great tips! Except, um, when the tips aren’t really tips at all. There are some hilarious blogs that feature Pinterest tips gone wrong and sometimes it’s because people just don’t have the crafting/cooking skill of the person who originally created the tip/recipe/craft to begin with. But ...
Two sure signs of spring
A happy Friday to you all! There is indeed reason to be joyous this Friday. The painters were to come this morning to finish up a few last touch ups on the cabinets which means that I will spend a good part of the weekend organizing what I can while we wait for drawer fronts and cabinet doors. I can’t ...
Don’t count your chickens (or put away your dishes) …
No matter how much we try to keep our expectations in check, no matter how much we learn from experience, there are bound to be bumps in the road in any project of good size. Our kitchen mini renovation has been no exception. As much as we hoped we’d be in a state of kitchen flux for a small amount ...
The ever-expanding garden
I have been debating expanding my vegetable gardening space. Again. It’s funny how gardening works. You start with a garden of a certain size and you can’t imagine ever needing more space. Until you do. And then you add another garden or make the first one bigger and you think, “Well now I’m set for life.” Until you’re not. The ...
Letters from the Garden
Letters from the Garden
