Some gardeners are afraid to plant large shrubs that grow wide and tall. I'm not. This Snowball Viburnum is a mass of branches and has many suckers around its base. But I leave it in its natural form because it provides cover for the birds in all seasons. In winter, the lack of leaves reveals just how many birds enjoy the cover of this shrub. When I'm not standing nearby trying to take a picture, they are all over it, prancing from one limb to another, darting from it to the nearby feeders … [Read more...] about Revealing birds, fairies, and letters
family
Happy Thanksgiving
Dad's turkey picture circa 1930's Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. On this special holiday, I am grateful for family and for my siblings who have graciously bestowed upon me all of our parents' old papers, pictures, and mementos for safekeeping. I went through some of them yesterday and found this picture of a turkey that my Dad made sometime in the 1930's. He made it by cutting out pieces of construction paper for the bird's body and head and for the pumpkins. Then he added the … [Read more...] about Happy Thanksgiving
Memory Gardens
The last violet of the season I spent some time cleaning up the vegetable garden earlier today. A slight breeze rustled through the last of the corn stalks as fallen leaves from the nearby grape vine danced across the garden. The remnants of tomatoes I never picked hung from the frost-blackened vines. I worked crop by crop, pulling out the spent plants and piling them on to the compost pile. The sky was blue and I marveled about how nice a day it was, a good day to spend in the garden, … [Read more...] about Memory Gardens
How’s your garden doing?
"How's your garden doing?" That's usually the first thing I hear when I see my aunt and uncle from the southern part of the state. I don't have to ask "which garden" because I know they are asking about my vegetable garden. They also have a vegetable garden. We compare notes. They plant their garden earlier, usually by several weeks. Then they often use a hotbed to get a jump on the season with lettuce. Their okra, pictured above, is always taller than my okra and they have more of … [Read more...] about How’s your garden doing?
I love to plant the little bulbs…
I love to plant the little bulbs, especially now that I’ve realized how useful my rockery trowel is for planting them. I plunge the trowel into the ground, push it forward a bit and then as I pull it out, I drop a little bulb in behind it, pull it the rest of the way out and then scrape any dirt off the trowel back into the hole. The rhythm of planting starts slowly. Plunge, push, pull, drop, pull, scrape. Plunge, push, pull, drop, pull, scrape, Plunge, push, pull, drop, pull, scrape. Repeat … [Read more...] about I love to plant the little bulbs…
Dear Friends and Gardeners August 30, 2010
Diervilla lonicera Dear Dee and Mary Ann and Gardening Friends Everywhere, In 48 hours, give or take, August will be over and it is on to September. Here in Indianapolis, we will remember this as a record setting August – the driest ever with just .37 inches of rain. This beats the record set in 1897 when they measured .47 inches of rain. This is a far different summer than I thought we would have back in June, which was the third wettest June in Indianapolis history. That whole month, one of … [Read more...] about Dear Friends and Gardeners August 30, 2010
