• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Carol J. Michel

Award winner author of gardening humor books

  • Home
  • About
    • Contact
  • Books
    • Shop
    • Creatures and Critters
    • Potted & Pruned
    • Homegrown & Handpicked
    • Seeded & Sodded
    • The Christmas Cottontail
  • Speaking
    • Upcoming Speaking Engagements
  • May Dreams Gardens
  • Social
    • YouTube
  • Gardening Humor
  • Children’s
  • All Books

family

Revealing birds, fairies, and letters

November 26, 2011 By Carol Michel 6 Comments

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

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: birds, fairies, family, shrubs

Happy Thanksgiving

November 24, 2011 By Carol Michel 11 Comments

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

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: fall, family, holidays

Memory Gardens

November 1, 2011 By Carol Michel 23 Comments

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

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: family, gardening

How’s your garden doing?

August 12, 2011 By Carol Michel 15 Comments

"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?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: family, vegetable garden

I love to plant the little bulbs…

November 7, 2010 By Carol Michel 16 Comments

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…

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: bulbs, family, gardening

Dear Friends and Gardeners August 30, 2010

August 30, 2010 By Carol Michel 10 Comments

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

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: family, letters to gardening friends

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Go to page 5
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 13
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Updates from Carol Michel

* indicates required
Email Preferences

Categories

  • Blog (3,012)
  • Internal (2)

Blog Tags

annuals Blogging books bulbs dr. hortfreud embrace fairies fall family flowers fruits garden bloggers bloom day garden bloggers book club garden design gardeners gardening gardening geek gardens hoes holidays hortense hoelove houseplants humor indoor gardening insects lawn letters to gardening friends perennials rabbits reviews Secrets seeds shrubs spring tools trees vegetable garden vegetable gardening vegetables weather weeding weeds when a gardener wildflower wednesday winter

The Gardenangelists Podcast with Dee Nash

Gardenangelists Podcast

Footer

Gardenangelists Podcast with Dee Nash

Gardenangelists Podcast

Connect

  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • maydreams icon

Quick Links

  • Home
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Books
  • May Dreams Gardens
  • Podcast

Updates from Carol Michel

* indicates required
Email Preferences

Newsletter Archive

Copyright © 2022 · CarolJMichel.com · Sitemap · Privacy Policy

Book purchase links are affiliate links and Carol earns a small commission if you make a purchase.