From the monthly archives:

May 2006

Worldwide Bestselling Gardening Books

May 29, 2006

Just in case you don’t subscribe to The Economist, I thought I’d let you know what are the top ten bestselling gardening books in all of Amazon-dom. This list is compiled from April 2006 sales figures from all the various Amazons combined.* So, yeah, it’s not the whole world, it’s all the world that shops [...]

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Heirloom Narcissus

May 24, 2006

First I’d better define my terms. By narcissus, I mean plants in the genus Narcissus, which many know as daffodils or jonquils. By heirloom, I mean that I inherited them. There is probably an official definition of “heirloom” as relates to Narcissus, but I don’t know what it is. I have seen some of my [...]

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Mother’s Day Mustard Pull

May 14, 2006

The next time I doubt the depth of my gardening devotion, remind me that one of the very best Mother’s Days I ever had was spending the entire afternoon pulling garlic mustard out of the Secret Garden with my younger sons. In case you aren’t familiar with it, garlic mustard is a very invasive plant [...]

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Native Plants This Spring

May 14, 2006

May is always a busy month, what with birthdays (3 this month), Mother’s Day, a garden going to weeds, and homeschooling paperwork, but this past week had additional expected and unexpected busy-ness. It’s very easy to miss the spring ephemerals if you’re not careful. I know, because I’ve done it before. And if you go [...]

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Primroses: Labels Can Be Deceiving

May 5, 2006

Just read a very informative post by Don over at An Iowa Garden. He describes the hybrid primroses that grow well in his garden, what species they’re descended from, and how they’re labeled–and mislabeled–in the trade. The only thing he didn’t include was the name of merchants who sell accurately labelled plants. Maybe he doesn’t [...]

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Currently Fretting About . . .

May 4, 2006

Perhaps you’ve read it in the sidebar. In one of the random quotations I quote my friend Chan:
I am instinctively suspicious of any garden writer (or gardener) who is insufficiently fretful.
You don’t worry about your garden if you don’t care about it. And if you do care, you fret. At the beginning of the season, [...]

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Leafing Out

May 3, 2006

We are on the cusp. We balance for this one moment–these few short days–at the place of middle spring.
The grass has greened, but the trees have not yet burst into full leaf. It is fascinating to look at the hillside and see how different varieties progress. In some places bare wooden branches stick up, rimmed [...]

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Back Online

May 2, 2006

I just moved to a new account with the same webhost that I’ve had all along. It took longer than I expected but everything seems to be back to normal. Let me know if you run into any problems.

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