Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Some days the rain gets you!Here’s one very wet cardinal finishing off the seed from our bird feeder in the rain.

I successfully rooted a Florida dogwood (Cornus florida) from a cutting! This is a tree that’s been tricky in the past for me to propagate, and I finally had some success I think is worth sharing. In this post, I’ll walk you through exactly what worked, step-by-step instructions for how to root flowering dogwood cuttings yourself, and some tips and…

Creeping thyme or Thymus serpyllum makes a great ground cover that is very easy to grow.  Once started it quickly grows and spread to fill out areas. Creeping thyme is an extremely easy plant to propagate.  Why is propagating creeping thyme so easy?  Let’s take a look! I planted three small seedlings of creeping thyme a couple years ago and…

Recently while upsizing my tomato seedlings into larger pots I needed some plant labels. Normally I will use the cut up slats of mini-blinds. I have a few sets I’ve collected over the years just for this purpose but I actually didn’t have them here at our current house. They were back over at the old house waiting to be…

I’m sure you’ve seen the commercial. The one where a couple is in an elevator, then elevator music happens and they recognize it as the theme song to Lexus commercials.  That’s when it dawns on the unsuspecting member of the couple that the other one is giving them a Lexus for Christmas.  Those commercials are driving me nuts.  I don’t…

When gift giving holidays are upon us (and happen during the growing season) I like to find gifts that can be planted in the ground and will give back the pleasure of the first gift many times over. I did that again this year with Valentine’s Day. My usual gift to my wife is the sweetly scented hyacinth.  The flowers…

Like everyone else this time of year my chore list seems monstrous, insurmountable, and just plain humongous.  To write it all down would be a chore in itself. I suspect that if I did write it all down at one time it might look so large that I would just give up – probably not, I enjoy gardening too much…

When you think about power tools do you think electric? Maybe it’s time you should! Recently Greenworks sent me their battery powered Greeworks Pro 80 Volt 18″ Chainsaw (Amazon Aff) to test. I had some doubts. Could a battery powered chainsaw actually cut through well enough to be a part of my arsenal of power tools? Would a charge last…

As the summer fades and cooler temperatures arrive the play of the sunlight in the mist and the trees can bring a very picturesque scene. This photo was taken one early October morning from our back deck.

Here’s the second second of my “waiting on spring” posts called The Garden: Then and Now. The first one featured the Deck Garden, this one is all about the Birdbath Garden. The birdbath garden originated with a little copper birdbath we were given years ago. It was designed to hook onto a deck railing on the back porch but we…

We have three children in our household who love to be outdoors.  It’s extremely hard for this gardener to sneak outside without someone tagging along.  That’s a good thing! I’m thrilled that they love to be outside in the open air experiencing what all kids should have the opportunity to experience.  It’s important though that the garden be a safe…

To say I’m furious tonight would be an understatement. The deer have struck again, and again this week, relentlessly. This week’s attacks have been the most brutal by far. I normally like the deer. It’s fun to see the fawns scamper through the backyard, or to watch the watchful mother and father deer looking after the young ones. But today…

I was able to get outside this afternoon and do a little potting with some cuttings that had rooted. It’s a constant process right now since as soon as one batch gets rooted I start some more. You never know if you will have enough! Sometimes you give away the plants to friends and family, other times the little plants…

It’s the invasion of the lady bugs! Or really the Asian lady beetle. They are coming! As I write there is one on the windowsill in front of me. These beetles are great in the garden, they eat pests like aphids but when they invade they home they can become a problem. They go everywhere and leave yellow stains behind….

By now you may have received your first seed catalog(s) in the mail. It’s a fun time of the year for gardeners. We get to sift through the pages, read the descriptions designed to entice us, and dream of what we will plant next year. When the weather is cold and dreary the catalogs give us something bright and hopeful…

You read it right! It’s not March Madness – or maybe it is – but it’s also MULCH MADNESS! This morning I picked up 20 bags of mulch and fit in my Honda CRV. That’s a yard and a half of mulch ready to go on the gardens. And at a $1.34 per bag it was quite a bargain!

In one of my last posts I mentioned receiving my free Arbor Day trees. Those trees have now been planted. While planting them I was pleasantly surprised by a couple things.1. The trees were marked very clearly with the color coding system. It was not just a thin little line above the roots indicating which tree they were, but rather…

Sometimes when you look really close at things they appear much different than you expect. Sometimes closeup pictures appear almost…alien. Like a strange land that contains unique flora of its own. What do you think? Can you imagine the foreign fluffy ferns and gigantic puffy cup-shaped mushroom fungi? Can you disappear for a moment into the picture and immerse yourself…