A Little Garden Chat

Sit down over there on that garden bench while I continue to dig dandelions out of the lawn, and we can have a nice little garden chat.

Yes, that is saffron crocus blooming in a bed out in the front garden. Those orange stamens—that’s the saffron. It’s worth a fortune but only if you get a whole bunch of it. How many of those stamens are in an ounce and how much does an ounce cost?

My very quick search came up with about $73 an ounce and there are about 29 grams in an ounce . I don’t know exactly how many stamens are in an ounce. Let’s just say I probably don’t have an ounce in my few little flowers, but saffron is an expensive spice.

And there it is growing in my front garden right in front of all the neighbors who might walk by. Do they even know what it is? I doubt it, but come around to the back garden now and leave it be. I might harvest it later.

Did you see on Instagram where I posted that last week I was on the My Garden Question podcast with Craig McManus from Georgia. He let me talk about the Lost Ladies of Garden Writing and other fun topics. If you want to listen to me and Craig talk about gardening stuff, just click on that link.

Then on Sunday morning early, I was on the radio with Doug Oster of The Organic Gardening Show on KDKA in Pittsburgh. Finding the link for that little segment of his show… well, that took some doing, but here it is.

In between all of that, Dee Nash and I recorded a video to promote National Garden Bureau’s Authors Talk Gardening Virtual Book Party on November 14 at 7:00 PM. I don’t think it’s live yet, but watch for it over there on Instagram. Dee and I will ask four authors a whole bunch of questions about their books and it is all free. Register via this link. If you attend it live you’ll get a chance to win books.

Busy, busy, busy! But back to my garden…

I noticed that the alyssum I planted on the edges of the beds in the Vegetable Garden Cathedral way back in March has fully recovered from its summer slump and is blooming like crazy. If you want to see a picture of it, well, I might put it on Instagram, I haven’t decided. But it will definitely be in my weekly newsletter, In the Garden with Carol, if you want to subscribe to that in eager anticipation of seeing it next Sunday when I publish the next installment.

Oh, and something else I did. I changed my header on Facebook, a social media platform that I rarely use, but it seemed like something fun to do. Here it is:

It’s actually a secret message! Can you figure it out? If you do figure it out, let me know via a comment. I had fun doing it and will probably do another one for Christmas. In fact, I already made it and just need to be ever so patient before I slap it up on my Facebook profile.

Really, I’m not one to start decorating for Christmas before Thanksgiving, but I couldn’t resist buying some waxed Amaryllis bulbs at Costco. Three big fat red ones for $21.99 which is a fabulous price. They’ll be blooming by Christmas!

Anyway, while we’ve been chatting, I filled a container with a bunch of dandelions and other weeds, so I guess that’s the end of this little garden chat.

Now what would we chat about if I was in your garden watching you dig up dandelions today?

But, of course, I’m not there, but you can listen to the latest episode of The Gardenangelist podcast while you are weeding and talk back to me and Dee. I’ve heard that many gardeners do just that!