Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

The gardening adventure is full of ups and downs. Of excitement and disappointments, of frustration and elation. It wouldn’t be exciting any other way I suppose but those low periods sure can be low. Take for instance the deer infultration this week. The vegetable garden is my main concern – I want to eat food from this garden – it…

We’re home again! For the last week we’ve been on the road and away from home which means that not much gardening was happening. I was away teaching at a band camp and my family was staying at the grandparent’s house. It was a busy and tiring week at band camp and now that both it and the wedding is…

As the official date of the beginning of winter is almost upon us it’s time to say farewell to fall! What better way to say good bye to the fall of 2009 than by taking a look back at all the wonderful posts that our fellow bloggers have written about fall foliage. The weather was an issue for many who…

I won’t be posting a Seed Sowing Saturday post this weekend since it’s Easter weekend. I’ve included a dogwood picture and if you would like to read more about dogwoods I wrote post for the Tennessee Gardener online that you may enjoy.  Also for an update on the plants in my garden shed feel free to take a look at…

I thought I would put together a catch up post for anyone who might have missed the past Garden Blogger Assignments. You are welcome to write about any of the past assignments over the last several weeks. I won’t be putting together a new assignment until next Sunday so please enjoy taking a look back at what some of the…

Last week I told you about a garden pavilion I’ve been working on and off again in my parents yard. I was working on building the railing to begin enclosing the structure for eventual screening. We completed the rails last Wednesday and here’s how it looks now. The railing pattern: We designed this pattern after a couple images we saw…

Tonight Middle Tennessee is resting peacefully beneath a blanket of snow. Bitter cold set in here as it has in much of the eastern United States.  With the cold came swirling winds and all this white stuff.  So far this winter cold we’ve been experiencing is about 20 degrees below the normal averages for our region. December has been extremely…

As autumn’s colors have wrapped us in a cloth of color we have peeked into the foliage around the gardening blogosphere. Participants from Canada to Florida and Illinois to England have offered up wonderful illustrations of fall’s foremost feature. It’s time to take a look back and see where all that fall color came from and where it went! I’ve…

As you can see from the picture to the left that this tree has taken a beating. Last fall when the deer were out in force a buck decided to rut against several of my favorite trees. Coincidentally all the deer damaged trees were young trees that I had planted in the yard including two maples, a dogwood and one…

Before I begin to highlight a few more front garden spots in my yard let me just say that many of these locations have not been prepared yet for the year. I still need to weed more, mulch more and add new plants in places!These first few pictures are from the mailbox garden. Pretty much everyone has something around their…

Here are some pictures of what is blooming for today’s Wildflower Wednesday post which is hosted by Gail at Clay and Limestone. This June has been unusual in that the temperature has been 10+ degrees warmer than it should be. In fact the weather report this morning said that we have had 16 days in the 90’s which is much…

Friday afternoon and evening I was in the yard and garden vigorously hauling compost from truck to the raised beds. Fortunately one yard of compost was all that was necessary to complete the filling of the beds.   Saturday’s task will be mulch: mulch for the garden paths and for various other locations around the yard. I can’t wait to…

This formerly beautiful coreopsis that I raised from seed last year was nearly completely devoured by leaf beetle larvae.  I don’t know enough about insects to identify which species of leaf beetle it is but I am positive it is a Calligrapha. The damage is pretty devastating. The leaves are spotted with holes and very few leaves have escaped untouched….

It’s been a few weeks since I last mentioned a notable weed but I can tell you that doesn’t mean the weeds haven’t been growing!  Ragweed and Johnson Grass are coming up in force with the warm weather and so is the weed I’m about to talk about today – pokeweed!  Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is a very prolific weed in…

Propagating plants by cuttings is by far the most common way I propagate plants. When you take a cutting from a plant you are making an exact genetic duplicate of the original plant. Essentially it’s a clone. No you won’t see any George Lucas movies about plant propagation (I don’t even want to think about weeds using the Force. The…

Today is a great day for fall color here in Tennessee. I went outside a few minutes ago and took some pictures for my Garden Blogger Fall Color Project Post which will come later this week. We also have a hat trick of fall color from several Tennessee bloggers!Peaceful and tranquil beauty grace the grounds of Gail’s Garden, the blogger…

Since I’ve been doing posts on trees this past week for Arbor Day (April 25th) I thought I would take a second to talk about one threat to your trees, tent caterpillars (Malacosoma americanum). They are quite common in Tennessee and many other areas of the country. Watch out for these little caterpillars on your hardwood trees. Once they form…