Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

The majestic oak is one of Tennessee’s most beautiful native trees. It’s also an extremely useful tree for our local wildlife as it can host over 200 species of insects and animals. You can see why you would want to cultivate more oak trees! Recently I gathered some acorns from a nearby tree on our property. The oak tree is…

This week I went to my mom’s house to do a little digging.  Back in the late spring we noticed small butterfly bush seedlings beginning to sprout in the pathway’s of her vegetable garden. As they grew large enough to transplant the weather became hot and transplanting wasn’t a great idea. Then my father passed away and just about everything…

Skeeter has brought us our latest Fall Color Project post!  Skeeter teams up with Tina at In the Garden and offers up her garden experiences from Georgia for readers to share.  Go visit Skeeter as she strolls the Augusta Canal with the beautiful Savannah River in view. You know how spectacular fall colors and water scenes can be so go…

Yesterday we went on a scouting mission. Needham’s Nursery in Mount Juliet was the territory we explored. The game was scarce as the season has not officially begun, but as I said it was only a scouting mission. We wandered the paths of our quarry occasionally stopping to observe, admire, and record the potential acquisitions.Although it was early, what we…

I had one of those extremely busy weekends.  The kind where you have so much to do you don’t know exactly where to start.  When you finally do start you discover that to do one task you have to do another task first. Then when you finally get going you move from one job, to another, to another, and there…

The plants are gradually beginning to come to life here in my garden. Yesterday’s post highlighted a few of March’s blooms, today here are a few more flower photos! The hyacinths are blooming all over. So far I haven’t been able to detect their sweet scent on the wind, but maybe I haven’t been outside enough lately. If it would…

Here are some pictures that we have taken of 2008!Here is a snowfall on a very cold evening. I like how the white snowflakes are captured, frozen in time, by the reflected light of the flash. A visitor to our new bird feeder! This white-breasted nuthatch (Sitta carolinesis) is cracking open the shell of a sunflower seed for his feast….

In our newly formed back garden areas I’ve planted several things that are virtually rabbit proof. Things like caryopteris and Russian sage are perfect plantings here since the rabbits just don’t like them. But what do you do if you want to plant something that the rabbits believe is a deliriously delicious and divine delicacy for dinner? You have to…

Being mid-November there isn’t much to show for blooms. We’ve had several light frosts and a couple hard freezes which for the most part silences the perennials and annuals that worked so hard for us during the growing season. But there is always something worth looking at in the garden! Like these pansies in the front garden. The salvia by…

A couple months ago we finally found and purchased land to build a new home and (of course) new gardens. No matter what property you have there will always be imperfections that need to be addressed in some way. One of the biggest problems with our property is the driveway. It’s a LONG driveway that is approximately 1000′ before you…

Has this ever happened to you? You cut a tomato open only to find…it’s growing!Our tomato we sliced open for dinner on Wednesday was sprouting new plants inside of itself. It was ripe and was still in very good shape. I guess the seeds were just ready to grow!

Forgive the slightly blurry picture of this zebra swallowtail butterfly. It refused to hold still for it’s photo! Recently while out exploring I noticed a butterfly floating about. It was a zebra swallowtail butterfly which is the Tennessee state butterfly. I’ve seen them before and so I knew a little about them including one fact in particular, their favorite host…

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,…

Thanksgiving is coming up next week and soon those turkeys will be filling our homes with the savory scents of a delicious dinner to be enjoyed among friends and family (and perhaps a nap to follow).  A lot of preparation goes into preparing that perfect Thanksgiving dinner and this being a gardening blog we aren’t talking turkey here but rather –…

It’s already time for another look at what’s blooming in my garden for Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day. It’s mid-October and the trees are just beginning to turn but there are still plenty of blooms to see. And if you’re interested in showing off your fall foliage colors then please participate in the Garden Blogger Fall Color Project!Here’s what blooming in…

Summer is the peak time for tomatoes which makes it the perfect time for tantalizing tomato talk! I’m pretty excited about this particular tomato that my wife selected from the Baker’s Creek Catalog last winter. I’m talking about ‘Woodle Orange’! It’s a funny name and prior to reading it in the catalog I had never heard of it before. Because…

Gardeners garden for many reasons.  Perhaps the most common reason is to get back to that part of us that belongs with nature.  We want to see the world around us come through our garden and provide for its positive growth.  How we do that can vary in thousands of ways but almost every method provides some sort of food…

The other day while my youngest daughter was taking her morning nap my other daughter and I went out to play in the garden. It was a nice August day, very atypical as it was comfortably in the 80’s. Our first stop was down to her garden. It was full of the zinnias and sunflowers that we planted several weeks…