My efforts to develop a cabin fever bed are starting to bear fruit. The winter aconites have come and gone, but I have plenty else starting to bloom. I purchased Bulbocodium vernum from Odyssey Bulbs last year. It is colored like a colchicum and used to be called a colchicum, but is now a separate [...]
New House, New Gardens
Make That Lingering Snow Earn Its Keep
March 21, 2014 – Posted in: Design, Front of the House, Hardscaping and Projects, How-to, New House, New GardensThe snow is melting, but not fast enough to suit me. I've already taken pictures of where the snow melts first, so I know where to plant my spring-flowering bulbs this fall. In the spirit of making lemonade out of lemons, I realized this lingering snow was the perfect opportunity to outline a new garden [...]
How to Analyze An Area of Your Yard to Improve It: The Parking Pad Bed
March 9, 2014 – Posted in: Design, How-to, New House, New Gardens, Parking Pad BedIn case you are just joining in: About two-and-a-half years ago our family moved from our long-time rural home to a different 19th-century farm house about twenty-five minutes from our previous one. I have been renovating the landscape around the house in a non-systematic frenzy and writing about it as time permits. (Previous posts are [...]
How To Make Garden Beds Without Too Much Fuss
February 5, 2014 – Posted in: How-to, New House, New GardensWhen I first started gardening, the "proper" way to prepare a garden bed was double digging. I wouldn't recommend that for anything except really long-lived plants, like peonies and asparagus. These days many people recommend lasagna gardening or something similar. I tried that, and it didn't work too well for me. The biggest mistake I [...]
Rethinking The Front of the House
January 29, 2014 – Posted in: Design, Front of the House, New House, New GardensThe front of our current house presents a very long surface to the road, having been added onto twice by attaching rooms to the side. It faces the most level land to be found on the entire ten acres, the front lawn. And yet, the house does not relate to its surrounding. When we moved [...]
The Cabin Fever Bed: Part 2
November 2, 2013 – Posted in: Cabin Fever Bed, Mud Season, New House, New GardensIn my previous post, I described my idea of a cabin fever bed as a way to enjoy at least a part of the garden from indoors, when the weather is too miserable to be outside. One of the goals of such a bed is to grow plants that provide interest as far into winter [...]
The Cabin Fever Bed: Part 1
October 29, 2013 – Posted in: Cabin Fever Bed, New House, New GardensCabin fever is a colloquial expression that means different things to different people. Wikipedia defines it as a claustrophobic reaction that takes place when a person or group is isolated and/or shut in a small space, with nothing to do for an extended period. Cabin fever describes the extreme irritability and restlessness a person may [...]
The Front Walk Is Finished
August 31, 2013 – Posted in: Front Walk, Hardscaping and Projects, How-to, New House, New GardensLast weekend the last stage of the front walk project was completed. Every stone had to be leveled and the gaps between stones filled in.That's how my sons did it, at least. A lot of people would use sand for the leveling and joint-filling, but they thought the crushed bluestone would stay put better. They [...]
Stone Puzzle: The Front Walk Emerges
July 28, 2013 – Posted in: Front Walk, How-to, New House, New GardensThe path project, on hold for weeks, finally took a step forward this past weekend. The split blue stone from the quarry arrived last week, three large pallets worth. The stone came in a variety of thickness and sizes, from half an inch thick to three inches thick, and from one foot in diameter to [...]
The Secret Garden
June 8, 2013 – Posted in: Design, New House, New Gardens, The Secret GardenThe Secret Garden is a path through the woods along the side creek on our property. (See map at the end of this article.) The creek comes under the road through a culvert and then drops several feet to the creek bed below. I refer to this as the waterfall, which may sound a tad [...]
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