As many of you know, I often profess my extreme dislike for rabbits which manifests itself in many ways. Verbally ("little bastard" is a go-to), physically with many a shoe launched out the door at all hours of the day and, when my dog Stella was still with me, the frequently snarled "Get that rabbit." She was a keen huntress. I'm sharing this in an effort to purge myself of the guilt I suddenly carry after what I witnessed last weekend. Let me preface this by writing that my garden is crawling with rabbits as a result of the raised deck in my neighbor's yard that serves as a sort of flop house for all the horny rabbits who pop in, scratch an itch or two or twelve, and leave me to deal with the darling little critters that result from their promiscuity. It's a problem. We've had ...
Search Results for: dahlias
Add Butterfly Host Plants to Support Caterpillars
May and June have been for working in the garden, not writing about it. At least until now. Quite frankly, I'm exhausted and despite feeling overwhelmed at times with all the plants that need homes and the general maintenance (weeding, watering and plain 'ole fussing), there's been one thing that's slowed me down. Caterpillars. My daughter and I planted fernleaf dill and cucumbers from seed in May. Since toddlerhood, cucumbers have been my youngest daughter's favorite veg and so it's been her job to plant it every year. Only this year we added fernleaf dill nearby with the hope that the black swallowtail butterfly will find it. With this in mind, we planted enough for us and enough for them. It's been a sort of plant it and forget it thing. With so many other things to tend to like the ...
May in the Garden: A Mix of Beauty and Brawn
May has been a blur with all the clean-up and gear changing that comes with extreme temperature fluctuations, torrential rain, and the relentless march of weeds through every bed. It seems like the moment I pull a weed, three more grow in its place. Kinda like when you pull a grey hair. So I stop pulling altogether, the hairs not the weeds, and I can only imagine what that would look like if I did the same in the garden. Nonetheless, the garden is shaping up and plenty of plants are having their moment. I often imagine how beautiful it would be if it all just popped at once and remained so all season long. But then if it did, the novelty would wear off and there would be nothing to anticipate. I like knowing that no matter what, something in my garden on any given day is going to grab ...
A New Year, TONS of New Plants and a Growing Wish List
The new plant wish list is getting longer in my garden notebook. I also keep an updated one in the notes section of my phone just in case I happen to pass a garden center this spring. Who am I kidding? I write of it as though it's a possibility when the reality is I will visit MANY garden centers and road-side farm stands. It's an obsession and one my kids have learned to accept. I've gathered images of all the new for 2020 or new-to-me plants I'll be on the lookout for this year. It's a motley list of veggies, annuals, shade perennials, sun perennials, and a drop-dead gorgeous new grass. Perhaps you'll find one (or several) here that you can't live without. In which case, we're kindred spirits and you can tell your significant other that Heather made you do it. Here ...
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 ...
