Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Yesterday MeemsNYC asked me in the comment section of my What Would Thanksgiving Be Without the Nuts? Plant them of course! I gathered up a small box of acorns and brought them home with me from my in-law’s house. You’re probably wondering why would he gather up a bunch of acorns to plant when they self sow readily on their…

There are few trees that I know of that can rival the beauty of the Yoshino Cherry tree. I have a fondness for most plants in the prunus genus but the Yoshino is a special favorite of mine. It’s white blooms seem to glow in the sunlight and after they have fallen coat the ground like a luminescent snowfall. They…

Over the last two months life has thrown many curveballs that have beaned the batter on numerous occasions. You would think that I’d be making some runs here or there but unfortunately I seem to be getting out at third every time. What does this baseball analogy have to do with anything? Well sometimes we get taken away from what…

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…

It’s been a good while since I had a couple hours to “maintain” the vegetable garden. Ideally I would take 20 minutes each day to weed, search the garden for problems, weed, prune, weed, and tie up tomatoes. Yes you may have noticed quite a few weeds, let’s just say so did I! Today I did a little bit of…

The time has come! I finally purchased my own domain name this week and got everything all set up. Hopefully since I’m still using Blogger and everything is still hosted there everything should function as normal. If there are any issues please let me know but you should be able to use all the old links that you may have…

…digging the rain garden. I looked back at the January 12, 2008 post to see what I wrote about one year ago. During that week I was heavily entrenched (forgive the pun) in digging the rain garden. Today I’m very pleased with how well it functions. This January we’ve had at least 3 inches of rain so far, possibly more,…

The gardens are closing down for the winter and fall color is nearly peaking. Frosty mornings are here again. I’ll miss the warm temperatures, the yummy tomatoes, and the fresh air that comes with working in the garden. Every season has it’s own interesting things to enjoy and the fall-winter seasons are no exception. The first heavy frost hit us…

While we are eating, and playing, and celebrating the holiday let us always remember why we celebrate, our freedom! Happy Independence Day!

In case you happen to not be in cicada territory and don’t have the joy of listening to their “soothing music” here’s a video of our backyard with our local cicadas from brood 2011 blaring in the background. The sound in the trees is deafening and after 45 minutes of being outside your head begins to throb. Turn up your…

The gardener gone A.W.O.L. was me of course, but for good reasons I assure you! No doubt you are familiar with the saying “make hay while the sun shines.” Well…the sun has been shining in our Tennessee home garden. The past couple days I have been busy in the yard trying to turn this place into a fantastic garden this…

Red Spider Lily that is!  This Saturday I was mowing and passed by one of the garden beds on my riding mower when this bright red flower jumped out at me.  Did it really jump?  Nope but one day it wasn’t there and now here it is. Spider lilies (Lycoris radiata) are also called a variety of names like Naked…

The autumn equinox is this weekend which means fall will be officially here but along the way nature has been telling us that fall is here already.  Let’s take a peek at some of the signs of fall around my garden. 5 Signs of Autumn’s Arrival The annual discussion of what causes allergies begins when the golden rod blooms.  Goldenrod…

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…

If you are like me, you may have never given your wheelbarrow much thought. It really is a gardener’s best friend. This garden companion is with you in all seasons and through all manner of tasks. The poor little guy is taken for granted yet never complains and always does the job. Often it isn’t until the morning after that…

I’ll continue with the Seed Starting 101 Series tomorrow but I thought I would use today’s post to share with you a related project. Recently I purchased a seedling heatmat that I’ve been testing in the garage to see how seedlings will grow out there.  The results have been pretty good so far with good germination rates for kale, chard,…

In all our gardens we start small and add plants as we go. If you look back the the birdbath garden you can see what I mean.  What started with a birdbath and five small plants has slowly turned into a medium size garden area with about 15 different plants. The winter garden will be no different! With economics being…

This week we’ve gotten some serious work done on the patio area but there is quite a lot still to do; isn’t there always? Thursday I brought a truckload of sand to cover the gravel. The sand helps when setting the stones in place by creating a soft layer that is easily manipulated for leveling the stones.Here is how it…