Acquisitions

In part 3 I showed how to put the finishing touches on a spreadsheet that calculated the potential cost of a plant order in progress. But because of its tabular format, a spreadsheet is often used in situations where a lot of information needs to be organized, even if no calculations are made. Below are [...]

In our last part we had finished entering data and were getting ready to sum up. Actually it's best to create this autosumming Subtotal before you enter much data. That way, you have a good idea how much your wishlist is costing you as you go along. The first thing you need to do is [...]

Have you ever gotten ready to order from a mail order seed or plant merchant, only to discover if you'd ordered a few days sooner you could have gotten a discount or a freebie? I have. It's more than annoying--it makes me feel like I'm losing my penny-pinching touch. So I decided that this year [...]

Thumbs, toes, and baby toes up, Hawthorn Hill Farm daylily nursery is a winner. The setting is bucolic, the grounds are beautiful, the plants are well grown, and the pricing is good. Beth and I planned our trip for a Saturday and wouldn't you know it, rain again. But the sky water was mostly light [...]

It's been a long time since I last published an entry. It was painful to be gone, and I'm glad to be back. Perhaps I'll devote an entry to my excuses, but for now I thought I'd share a few of my favorite things, culled from images taken while I was "gone."This is the bird [...]

When we last left our gardener, she had just received her Fedco shrub order, shortly after removing one and a half pounds of dock root from the spot where she wanted to plant her Hydrangea 'Endless Summer.' Have you ever had a gardening project turn into a Project? Heh. If you've been gardening any length [...]

I've wanted a birdbath for a long time, but most birdbaths I've seen just didn't appeal to me. They either seemed too crude or too faddish, and every single one that didn't look shoddy was too expensive. I really liked the classical good looks of this one, but it was $375 in an upscale catalog, [...]

This is a continuation of the post started on May 4th. Over the past couple of days it's dawned on me that my plant acquiring habits have changed. When I started out gardening, I drew a map of my first bed to scale and decided on a color scheme. Then I looked through the catalogs [...]

Okay, it wasn't really Santa Claus. It was just the mail lady and the UPS man, bringing my two plant orders of the season on the same day. But I felt the same excitement I had felt as a kid on Christmas morning as I made my way down the stairs, wondering if Santa had [...]