My daughters have been trained killers since the ages of three and four. Weapon of choice? Dish soap. It was fun and made mommy happy. I sound like Joan Crawford in the garden. But a few weeks ago, my oldest, Emma, who will be 18 in a few months, told me it wasn't until recently that she realized her childhood memories were slightly different from those of her friends. I cringed as I waited for her to elaborate, my mind Rolodexing for any moment that may have left a mark. The tale she shared with her friends involved death, roses and soap. Desperate Times, Desperate Measures It was late June and the roses were opening. At the time, I had three Frau Dagmar Hastrup rugosas planted beneath my family room windows. Their scent is heavenly. No sooner would a bud open then the Japanese ...
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Autumn Leaves are Lovely, But Acorns Fill My Heart
A few days ago, I was listening to a podcast and the conversation touched on the change of seasons and the way each is marked by the things we associate with them. Winter snow. Spring daffodils. Summer tans. Autumn leaves. While colorful leaves are the quintessential poster children of fall, it is the acorn that marks the arrival of autumn. Something about that little brown oak seed with the tan beret takes me to another season of my life, the one marked by the frenzy of small children. When my girls were small, keeping them occupied was challenging. Never one to plop them in front of the TV for hours, I looked to the outdoors for entertainment. That's not to say I wasn't grateful for the respite that a Disney movie offered from time to time. We played in the rain, built snowmen with ...
Perennial Hibiscus: Bridging the Gap Between Summer and Fall
I discovered perennial hibiscus almost two decades ago when I spotted Lady Baltimore's enormous pink blooms from across the parking lot of a local home improvement store. I wasn't looking for her, she just found me as most plants do. That happens a lot. At the time, I knew nothing about perennial hibiscus (Hibiscus moscheutos) other than I had to have this tropical looking beauty in my garden. She met her end that next spring when I assumed she was dead and dug her out, only to discover hibiscus is late to rise and often doesn't show signs of life until well into May here in my zone 5 garden. Oops. Perennial hibiscus resumes growth in the spring when soil temperatures reach 70 degrees F and is hardy in zones 4-9. For gardeners in colder climates, this might mean that your plant doesn't ...
Easy Plant Tag Organization for the Not-So-Organized
Plant tags have a way of accumulating like laundry, Japanese beetles and chin hair. All must be dealt with, but I'd rather deal with the tag thing. Winter is the time of year I attempt to organize the chaos I created indoors while creating last year's garden. There's nothing else garden-related to do besides organize and dream of the plethora of plants that will find their way into the garden. They will inevitably come with more tags which I'll deal with next year. So for now, I'm working on plant tags from 2019. It's during the growing season that these end up everywhere. My workbench, coat pockets, kitchen countertop, bathroom vanity. You name it, it probably has a tag on it. For the longest time, before I finally decided to corral the plant tags into some kind of order, they simply ...
Grateful for Goodbye and the Occasional Good Riddance
The title sounds rough and you may be wondering why the heck I go to the trouble of writing this blog, or gardening at all for that matter, when I look forward to saying goodbye to it. Sometimes sooner than later. The short answer is it's exhausting. But the longer answer, and the one I hope you'll relate to, is that saying goodbye for several months makes it all the sweeter when I return to it come Spring. Even on the days when I declare I'm DONE! I'm not really. Until I'm actually DONE DONE and everything goes to hell. It's the same with chocolate cake. By September, I'm feeling the itch to wind down. I've gone full steam since March and tucking the garden in for winter is pretty alluring. The anticipation of putting the garden to bed is the same feeling I got when my girls were ...
Weeding is a Cinch with the Hula-Ho
*I was not compensated for this product review. All opinions are my own.* The thought of weeding bugs me. It's like dishes, laundry and dog poop. My garden is rarely without weeds. Yours is probably that way too so we should feel better since misery loves company. Once the urge comes over me to get in there and weed though, I'm like a woman possessed. Putting a dent in the weed population is an incredibly satisfying, albeit fleeting, feeling. Sorta like the one I get from drowning hundreds of Japanese beetles. A weed free garden is a pipe dream, as they return as certainly as the dog will poop, the sink will fill and the kids will load their laundry baskets in a day or two. At least with weeding, I get a break in the winter. This August, I attended the Independent Garden Center ...
