We are blessed to have a couple of hundred-year-old trees in our front yard. For the past two years, I have asked the family member in charge of mowing the front yard to use the bag attachment on the lawn mower for the final mowing, so that the leaves are shredded and collected by the [...]
Garden chores
Stop Traffic With These Daffodils
November 2, 2014 – Posted in: Garden chores, How-to, Narcissus, Roadside BedsTrue confession: I have a secret desire to create a garden so spectacular that it will stop traffic. I know that's not realistic. For one thing, we don't have much traffic. If ten cars go by in an hour, we say, "Gosh, there sure is a lot of traffic on the road today." I'd settle [...]
Some Things You Should Know About Bird Feeding in Cold Climates
February 13, 2014 – Posted in: Garden choresFeeding the birds is one of the most delightful things a cold climate gardener can do while she is waiting for the snow to melt and the snowdrops to bloom. No, wait--I take that back. Watching the birds flutter and feed and jockey for position at the feeders is delightful. Actually filling the bird feeders, [...]
How to Pull Your Potted Plants Through the Winter
November 17, 2013 – Posted in: Garden chores, How-toIt happens to all of us. At least, it happens to me and a lot of other gardeners I know. Winter is right around the corner and you have all these plants in pots that you were sure you were going to have time to plant during the growing season. And now the growing season [...]
Collecting Poppy Seeds: Fall Gardening Chores
November 10, 2013 – Posted in: Garden chores, Seeds and Seed StartingCollecting seeds is an optional fall chore for me. Most of the time I depend on the plants' own willingness to disperse seeds, or the availability of the seed from seed companies. But every so often I grow a plant and I am not sure I will be able to buy more seed, or I [...]
Autumn Mourning
October 4, 2013 – Posted in: Garden chores, Meditations, What's up/bloomingThe weather has been glorious. Perfectly blue skies providing a backdrop as the leaves change to their brilliant autumnal colors. It makes my heart sing--and mourn.Not because winter is coming, per se. I live in a cold climate; winter is supposed to come.But not before I get through my gardening list! Yes, by the time [...]
Garden Epiphanies
April 13, 2013 – Posted in: Design, Garden chores, How-to, MeditationsGardening experience, for the most part, is accrued bit by bit, as decisions are made to do this chore before the other, plants die and we know why--or we don't--and mental notes are made about what is blooming when. But every so often, the gardener has an epiphany, a light bulb moment. These milestones represent [...]
Sudden Freeze After Days of Warmth
March 24, 2012 – Posted in: Garden chores, Hydrangeas, Weather74F Last Thursday, 16F Predicted Monday Cold climate gardeners, we knew this was going to happen, didn't we? After the incredible, pinch-me-I'm-dreaming spell of beautifully warm weather, the real March weather is coming back with a vengeance. I don't think it got quite as warm here as it did other places in my general area, [...]
Peony Rescue with Cobrahead
March 20, 2012 – Posted in: Garden chores, New House, New Gardens, PeoniesThe unseasonably mild weather has prompted me to start in on garden clean-up. And since the garden was untended for at least a year, there is a lot of cleaning up to do. This was what the garden looked like last year in early June, the first time we went to see the house we [...]
Mulch Can Kill Trees
November 14, 2011 – Posted in: Garden chores, How-toMulch can kill trees--that sounds kind of extreme, doesn't it? But it caught your attention, right? I suppose it would be more accurate to say improper mulching can kill trees, but as I look around me, improper mulching of trees seems to be the standard practice, the only kind of mulching around trees that's being [...]
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