Cold Climate Gardening

Meet Mr. Terra Cotta. He came into my life on my most recent birthday. I sowed some chives seeds in his scalp, and they have made for him a hairstyle rather complementary to his astonished expression.

However, the chives are ready to be potted on, and Mr. Terra Cotta needs a new “do.” Can you suggest a new plant for his hair? The only criterion is that the plant be happy in a 4.25″ pot, because that is what he is.

I am still busy planting and writing in my head. I have, however, been microblogging on Twitter. You can read my updates on the left sidebar (under the Search function), subscribe to them via RSS, or sign up for Twitter yourself and follow me.

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Recently someone asked me to recommend a watering can. We have been using this Rubbermaid watering can for over a decade. What I like about it: [Read more →]

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Poppies, peonies, and iris: the three Grandes Dames of June

In a cold climate, the gardening season is shorter and more compressed. By the time the spring flowers get going, boom! it’s summer. Consider this: on May 29th we had our last frost. The next day it hit 80F (27C), which we reckon to be summery, and a mere nine days later it was 92F (33C). So anything you wait until danger of frost is passed to plant gets hit with summer before it knows which way is up. That doesn’t happen every year, but it shows why we often have what other people consider spring flowers blooming with summer flowers.

Around here, there are three flowers synonymous with June: Oriental poppies, peonies, and several kinds of iris. [Read more →]

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The view from here is wonderful, as long as my back is to the garden, and my gaze goes across the road, across the far side of the valley. [Read more →]

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Endless Summer Hydrangea: Dream Come True–or Nightmare?

Hydrangea ‘Forever & Ever Double Pink’ stole my heart in 2006. This photo was taken September 7 of that year

It’s just like Elizabeth said. We gardeners want to believe that our dream plant is out there, just waiting for us to find it. I know when I first saw photos of the ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangea, and read that it bloomed in zone 4, I thought I’d finally be able to grow the same kind of hydrangeas my grandmother did. As you’ll read below, the truth is somewhat more complicated. The same year I got the ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangea (2006), I also received some Forever & Ever hydrangeas to trial, including this one on the left. “Trial” means it came to me straight from the grower, already forced into precocious growth, a good month before my last frost, so its behavior in my garden that first year could hardly be considered typical. My garden notebook doesn’t state when this bloomed that first year, but it was still blooming the first week in September. I fell in love with it. [Read more →]

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Have you ever been out with a friend, and another person joins you, who is a good friend of your friend, but you don’t know them? And the two of them start talking about people you don’t know, and even though the conversation is mildly interesting (this one had a baby, that one has a new job), after a while you feel bored and a little left out.

I’m sorry to say that’s how I felt reading Beautiful at All Seasons by Elizabeth Lawrence, the April/May selection of the Garden Bloggers Book Club. It kind of surprised me, as I believe I’d already read all her other books, including Two Gardeners (her correspondence with Katharine White), and No One Gardens Alone (her biography)–and enjoyed them all. [Read more →]

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I just upgraded my version of WordPress. Because I had code in my theme (design) that would no longer work with the new version of WordPress, I needed to edit the theme before I could upgrade the software. I figured while I was at it, I’d expand the width by adding another sidebar, since just about everyone has wider screens. And I tested it out on a local server, and it looked fine.

I have been using a utility in my text editor to compare files, trying to see what file is different between the theme that works on my test machine and the theme that doesn’t on my “real” site. So far I haven’t found it, and I’m beginning to think I should look at other things that are different, like plugins.

But I’m way too tired tonight. So bear with me. It’s ugly, but it’s all there and more or less legible. If anyone can point me to a solution, I’d be very grateful.

And if you can’t point me to a solution, well, a bit of sympathy would be nice.

Update

I re-uploaded the files to the theme, this time getting them from the test website instead of from my hard drive. Who knows where I screwed up? Thanks for your patience. I would be interested in knowing who else besides Bill finds the layout too big for their screen.

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