October 2006

Got this email today: About 6 months ago, Mapmuse.com began a project- the interactive mapping of garden centers and nurseries across the US. We initially researched and populated these maps ourselves, with the idea in mind that the public would subsequently add to, and enhance, the information we provided. We mapped each garden center or [...]

Tick-tock, winter is coming. I was greeted at dawn with a few hours of light snow this morning. It melted as it landed, not like the snows that have recently visited Watertown and plagued Buffalo. It is a warning that fall is at a close and winter is coming. I spent this past weekend digging [...]

Here are plans to make an Earth-sheltered Greenhouse from a man in Idaho. He actually built it into the side of a hill to help moderate the temperatures inside. It looks like he dug it all out by hand. (Click on slide show for close-ups.) He must have wanted vegetables badly! I'm pretty sure if [...]

Sunday, October 8th, was a gorgeous autumn day, sunny and warm. I decided to go up the hill for a walk in the woods, camera in hand, and you get to share the results. (Be forewarned: this is an even longer than usual post.) But first, a little bit about where we're going. Our family [...]

If you're the type of person who pays attention to sidebars, you probably already know that I'm a member of LibraryThing. (Hint: it's a section called My Bookshelf, and it's only on the sidebars I thought most appropriate.) Over the summer, LibraryThing started a new aspect to their site called "Groups", which I didn't discover [...]

Several weeks ago on Garden Rant there was a small storm of indignation regarding the attitude expressed at a garden writers convention that what bloggers write was free for the taking without attribution. Most bloggers are flattered to be quoted, but instances of entire posts being republished somewhere else without permission, or even acknowledgment, are [...]

This is a section of the Birthday Garden, which is a somewhat raised bed sandwiched between the driveway and the house. At the base of the stone wall, looking rather pale, are some Colchicum byzantinum. Above them is an unknown chrysanthemum, which Debi Lampman of Bedlam Gardens in King Ferry, NY gave to me this [...]

Every fall gardeners buy tulips, and every spring I read blog posts complaining about tulips. Part of the problem, I think, is that many people assume that since they are sold at the same time as daffodils and bloom about the same time, that they behave the same in the garden. But they actually don't [...]

We’re in the midst of the last warm days of fall giving way to cool and colder weather. Light and medium frosts have been visiting with hard frosts soon to follow. It’s interesting to see how the plants in the garden respond to the weather. Placement and severity of frost have brought an interesting – [...]