Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Today I’m issuing a challenge to any glove maker, manufacturer, or garden handware retailer: Make me a glove that lasts longer than 5 months! I’m throwing down the gauntlet, or the garden gloves as the case may be. So far I have not met a pair of gloves that lasts more than a few months. This pair of gloves was…

Last weekend I put together a small front porch for my garden shed. You can take a closer look at it at the Greenhouse Shed page if you have a minute!

But there’s a such thing as too hot! This weekend has been miserably hot. The temperatures have raced each morning to break above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Three days now in a row of triple digit temperatures are doing their best to put an early end to the garden. To make things worse the last rain we had was about a…

This Friday I thought I’d try something new…an open post!  I’d like to hear what you think about the garden, gardening ideas, projects, or just your thoughts on various issues.  So here’s what I’m going to do.  Every couple weeks I’ll host a Friday Free for All Post where you can comment on a subject and share what you think…

I was out today looking at the sorry state of the gardens and though it might be an interesting exercise to look back at how the gardens appeared last spring and compare them. Over the next few posts I’ll go back for a few photos of the spring time version and contrast it with that same garden today. Let me…

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…

On my trip to the Vizcaya gardens in Miami I saw this salvia (Salvia leucantha/Mexican Bush sage) and thought it was a perfect way to display it – against a red backdrop.  This salvia was located in front of a large patio area made from limestone blocks facing Biscayne Bay.  The faded red from the side of the patio is…

Our second submission for the Garden Blogger Fall Color Project comes to us from Anna who put together a really neat slide show of her trip. Anna’s trip to the Shanendoah Valley in Virgina is full of great Autumn photos from the old grist mill along Silver Lake to the mountains of Virginia. She also shows us a visit to…

Recently the folks at Lowe’s Creative Ideas asked me if I could put together a once a month project using products I found at Lowe’s that fit a specific theme.  Of course since I enjoy doing these types of projects around the garden I jumped at the chance!  This month they wanted a project centered around the theme:”Pots and Plants”. …

This year I’m really excited about our watermelons. I picked out the ‘Moon and Stars’ variety which not only is reported to be an excellent tasting variety but looks really neat too. ‘Moon and Stars’ are an heirloom variety that acquire a mottled coloring on the rind surfaces that resemble the night time sky! The nighttime sky also appears on…

Tuesday evening several of us Tennessee garden bloggers got together to meet. For some of us, including myself, it was the first time seeing the bloggers behind the screen. Our conversations ranged from garden topics, blogging topics, to air traffic control. So who was there? Who are the faces behind the blogs?Gail from Clay and Limestone is on the left…

Fall is fast approaching.  No matter how much we may wish to pause time and reap our summer garden harvest we have to start thinking about the fall garden.  This weekend I redid and rebuilt one of my garden beds to update it for fall crops.  If you’ve followed me for a while you may remember the raised circular garden…

Over the weekend we went to visit family at my in-laws’ house for Easter. While there I saw this amazing flowering display on the Bridal Wreath Spirea (Spiraea x vanhouttei). It was literally covered in branches of white blooms. They planted this spirea well over 10 years ago. I really can’t say exactly how long it’s been here (it’s not…

Welcome to Tennessee where spring comes early, leaves again, comes back, leaves again and repeats that process until April! We really have about 4-8 different “Winters.” Somewhere along the way to springtime we are blessed with a bounty of blooms that brighten moods while the long awaited anticipation of the start of the gardening season is almost at it’s end….

A few weeks ago I attempted my first ever leaf casting. We were putting some hand prints of the my children and nieces in concrete for my parents to add to their garden and had some leftover Portland cement to use. Conveniently my parents had a pile of sand in their backyard behind their shed (leftover from the patio/pavilion) that…

The other day I wrote a post about protecting your plants from a freeze. I followed what I preached and came through with no frost damage on my covered plants. I think Tennessee is now officially in the clear! I came away with these interesting shots. A new kind of pot garden?

Do you know the feeling you have when everything major is accomplished for a while and you have nothing pressing that needs accomplished? You may still have chores and tasks that need done but it’s more maintenance than giant projects that constantly beckon for your attention. After hosting our garden club meeting where I lectured about building an arbor and…

As strange as it may sound there are things still growing in the vegetable garden in November and it’s not because of our unusually warm weather. Unfortunately there is only one vegetable growing but there are several kinds of herbs that are doing great. All the vegetable garden pictures were taken this morning while a light frost was still covering…