As much of a Marvel Universe fan as I am, that doesn’t mean I’m necessarily prepared for a strange mutant to pop up unexpectedly in my planting bed. The next logical question is, what – if anything – should I do about it? Among the plants I ordered from Bluestone Perennials in May 2020 were…
I almost wrote ‘baby tree peonies’ for the title, but of course they aren’t babies anymore! It’s been four years since the seeds that were sown in 2016 germinated the following year; I wonder what age that is in Tree Peony Years? Last year of high school/freshman in college?? At the end of August 2020…
I don’t know if Robert Burns – he of “the best-made plans…” fame – was a gardener, but sometimes I feel as if more things are “going agley” than usual. That is how I recently came to have three baby-size dwarf Lagerstroemias rather than the teenagers I’d originally planned on. It occurred to me that…
Today we’re all too familiar with PPE: face masks, plastic shields, disposable gloves, hand sanitizer, etc. Hopefully, we’re all stocked up on those – but what about the other kind of PPE? I’m talking about Plant Protective Equipment, which is something else I never needed until that fateful year, 2020. In this case, my enemy…
This year’s progress in The Great Garden Renovation (a/k/a/ TGGR) can be summed up in only two words: “not much.” You’d think that the pandemic-enforced stay-at-homeness would have resulted in a windfall of weeding work, a torrent of tidiness, and an overall “Let’s get this done” attitude. Somehow, that’s not what happened. Part of the…
Have you ever made such a stunningly stupid, colossally clueless and yet breathtakingly basic planting-plan error that the only thing you can do is keep repeating to yourself “How in the world could I have ever failed to…????!?!?!?” I’m not talking about deciding to take a gamble on something that the left side of your…
Never let it be said that nature allows us to get bored or complacent when it comes to gardening! In addition to ‘surprises’ like alphabet-busting hurricanes and ravenous rabbits (more about those in an upcoming post), there are also those seemingly innocuous things that she sneaks in on us and dares us to try to…
“I’m going to be as big as you, someday!” says little Picea pungens ‘Ruby Teardrops’ to ‘big bro’ across the way. (Actually not, of course: ‘Ruby Teardrops’ only attains a size of about 3′ x 3′, but a conifer can dream, can’t it?)
The Chatsworth Lady 