August 2004

For the past two (or is it three?) weeks, I have been putting up with a strained ligament or tendon that connects from my thumb to my wrist. I can still do most normal activities, but any kind of grabbing or pushing, from using scissors to wiping the table, makes me realize that I hurt [...]

Here are some additional plants in our lawns that are not lawns. Some I had forgotten and some I hadn't identified. Wild chamomile (pineapple plant), lambs quarters or pig weed (can be cookied and eaten;tastes like spinach), chickweed, rose mallow, butter and eggs, and sand spurrey. There are probably more!

Just got a huge bag of lovely daffodils, 100 dn1 for $15. I should be able not only to finish the row along the side of the quonset barn but put in a row in the lavender field and share a bunch with Mom as well. A lady saw me loading them into the truck [...]

Ever been to a county fair where the only tomato entries were green tomatoes? Noone had ripe ones up here. I'm not sure mine will ever get riipe. We're due for another cold spell. And some of the potatoes at the fair were the size of golf balls. My flowers are blooming beautifully, though! And [...]

Here's another garden blog, recently discovered via Don of Hands in the Dirt. It's the Garden Journal of Eating Peanuts. Emphasis on organic and permaculture gardening, mostly vegetables, it seems. Not sure of location. And no RSS feed that I could find. Drat!

Last Saturday and this one I weeded the patio bed, each time just enough to get one of my potted plants into the ground. Last week it was Molinia caerulea 'Variegata,' and today it was Polemonium caeruleum 'Brise d'Anjou.' Both of these have yellow variegation in the foliage which I intend to complement the flowers [...]

I've always been a fan of Mary Keen. Her Creating A Garden is one of my favorite books to drool--er--dream over in the winter. Now I see she has an online gardening column with the Telegraph called Cheat's Guide. (Need to register unless you get it as an RSS feed.) "Knowing what you can get [...]

This doesn't have much to do with cold climate gardening, but I found this article fascinating. Apparently Nepalese farmers have been growing the same corn as native Americans for so long they think it's native to Nepal--but it's not. How did it get there? No one is really sure, but that fact remains that "in [...]