2018 in Review This has been quite a year. Many, many changes including a familydeath, some personal health issues (under control), a stretch of nearly 3 months dealing with the consequences of major poison ivy reaction, retirement as a hospice RN and, as a result, an opportunity to fully consider the garden, its present needs and … Read more

Quercus acutissima (sawtooth oak) – note the trellis on the right, partly covered by downed branches: it is over 6′ tall!

WHEN THE BEAUTIFUL CAN BE HORRIFYING – How often we have heard the phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. I’m afraid I don’t recall where I saw this nor the author but I will never forget the rejoinder: “so is ugly.” Well, sometimes the same thing can be both. Some of our … Read more

The garden has been open for viewing since late spring, but has hardly been in a condition I would condone! Between the near-total absence of spring, some surgery, some family illness and death, much in-the-garden work time has been lost.  However, with help from some friends and a lot of grunting and sweat over the … Read more

*Bodacious Herbaceous Border Well, what else would you call it (keep it clean now); it’s nearly 140′ long and started out about 6′ deep, now 8′. It has been a dream for years; 2017 saw the first steps to reality. The area was cleared of weeds and grass during the fall and winter of 2016 … Read more

Say what? Bedtime for the garden? It’s the end of November, there have been several frosts (temps into mid-low 20s) and there are still things in bloom in the garden. I’ve had roses in bloom in December in a garden in the middle of Columbus, but never anything close to that out here in the … Read more

Day Lilies Hemerocallis – the genus for day lilies – are in their glory right now. The earliest bloomers started nearly three weeks ago, most are going great blazes as I type and some have yet to begin. Carefully selected for blooming time, they can give a garden up to 2 full months, perhaps a … Read more

A wet, warm spring – gotta be great for the plants, right. Right, including the weeds. Wow! What a crop! If the area was properly mulched last fall or early in the season, no problem. An old lesson, learned annually; one of these days it may stick. Then, three weeks and four days and nary … Read more

17 April 2017 In his poem “The Waste Land”, T. S. Eliot used the phrase, ‘April is the cruelest month’. While the meaning of poem has no ostensible gardening connections (and, like all good poetry, could be intrepreted in more than one way) and I don’t think he was referring to tax time, I have … Read more

Not wishing to do ‘yet another commentary about screw-ball weather’, I searched through some photos taken earlier in the year for a topic but then realized that I could not avoid the issue! Here are two photos from January 17.  The one that is least out-of-focus is a wonderful conifer of the genus Pinus, species … Read more