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
21 February 2017 I cannot tell a lie – I am not dead. Sorry to swipe our first President’s mythical utterance on the eve of his birthday; can’t help myself. (How many of you are old enough to remember when there was no ‘Presidents’ Day’ but the two separate holidays of Lincoln’s birthday on the … Read more
6 February 2017 New projects for the year: wow, what a list. But first let me explain that you may have seen some of these items before; they were probably thoughts for development this last year which got lost in the flurry of non-gardening work I found myself doing from about early July on. Little … Read more
24 January 2017 The workshop schedule for 2017 is now available. Just click on the ‘2017 Workshops’ label above for complete details. We have chosen to continue with the workshops which we started last year for a very simple reason: they were very well received. I don’t think folks were just being polite when they … Read more
16 January 2017 Change – inevitable? When you have an infestation of Emerald Ash Borer and the border of your garden with the highway is lined with 18 large (50-70′) ash trees, then the answer is “yes”. Such has been the case here. Three summers of late summer drought had weakened the trees such that … Read more
7 January 2017 HAPPY NEW YEAR! On December 24, I happened to notice a dandelion hugging the ground at about 1/8” and proudly displaying one large, incredibly yellow bloom as if to say, “So there!” Last night, the low was 1 and there will be no more blooms for at least a week now. “La … Read more
What a year! Except for the two abnormally weeks (one in March, on in May), this has been an amazing spring. Flowers are lasting and lasting with many of the flowering shrubs holding onto blossoms two to three times longer than would normally be expected and many have produced their finest ever display. The roses … Read more
The sun is shining, there is a light breeze, the temperature is 71 degrees F and the birds are singing. And I have a headcold, which is why this post (overdue, I know) is being written in the middle of such a wonderful day. In one of the last posts, I counseled against buying trees … Read more