“Looking for inspiration and relaxation? It’s all in your own backyard.”
Garden Reports and Rejoicing – December 11 Before reading this post you have to assure me that you’ll read to the end without clicking on any of the links. Promise? Because if you get diverted you’ll miss the point completely, and I think it’s important. You know how they say that one year of a [...]
Report From An Opinionated Gardener – May 25 …and some are not. Today I had one of the former and I’m totally, completely grateful. I did not have to get into an automobile once today, and from 7 AM until 5:30 PM I was in the garden. I weeded, planted annuals, sprayed spinosad to combat [...]
Report From An Opinionated Gardener – March 24 They call a spring snow “poor man’s fertilizer” because the flakes pick up nitrogen from the air as they fall, and then melting quickly, deposit that element into the soil. Thanks for trying to save me money, Mother Nature, but really…at this time of year I’d just [...]
Report From An Opinionated Gardener – March 14 Inch by inch, as I said in my last post. I heard from several people who replied that where they live snow still blankets the landscape. My brother who lives in Atlanta tells me that the Bradford Pear tree outside his window is in full bloom. Spring [...]
Report From An Opinionated Gardener – February 6 If there is one word that summed up the past week for me, it would be the title of this post. The past seven days were spent adjusting to changes in weather, speaking schedules, volunteer commitments and family needs. Snowstorms, mistakes in meeting-time listings, and a mother-in-law [...]
Report From An Opinionated Gardener – December 28 On Christmas day I picked one of the Meyer lemons (Citrus × meyeri) off of the tree in the kitchen and made a Meyer lemon risotto for dinner. The Meyer lemon is commonly grown as a potted, ornamental tree in China, and it’s thought to be a [...]
Report From An Opinionated Gardener – September 8 If you’ve got a shade garden, you need Kirengeshoma palmata. If you’ve got the room….yellow wax bells grows three to four feet tall in my gardens, and about six feet wide. A large plant, true, but one that doesn’t really show what it can do for three [...]
Report From An Opinionated Gardener – September 7 How long do you give a plant to truly show what it can do? For that matter, how long do you give other people or yourself? Plants are easier, but people are tricky. Most of us are familiar with the “First year sleep, second year creep, third [...]
Report From PIA – May 25 When people come into the garden center, they are frequently looking mature, ready to bloom plants. Those tiny annual Salvia, or the young stalks of Baptisia aren’t very compelling to many shoppers. The majority of those looking for vegetable plants don’t want to hear that some things are best [...]
Report From PIA – February 8 I walked around Poison Ivy Acres today, looking at the shrubs and trees we’ve planted over the past two years. Many of them are small, and show only a hint of what they will grow to be in the next five or ten years. Their beauty is possible, but [...]
