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It is early December here in New Hampshire and the ground should be frozen, but it is not. Gardening for this year should be done, but it is not. Is it climate change or my stubborn nature to still be attending to those last few gardening chores of the season? Well, whatever, I am pleased to be able to catch up on things that should have been done earlier if I hadn’t been on safari in Kenya, a trip of a lifetime! These ornamental grasses surrounding the forsythia bush are hanging in there to provide some Fall color. Last year I made the mistake of leaving our carrots in the ground for mid wint ..read more

I have been remiss in not writing a garden blog for quite some time so today I am going to give an update of what the gardens look like this September. The flower boxes have given us very nice color this summer but they do require daily watering considering how dry it has been. The best of the three boxes has been the red geraniums so I may consider filling all three with geraniums next year. It may be difficult to make out the stewartia tree in the foreground with the splashy limelight hydrangea and Rose of Sharon bush in the back ground. In a few years though the tree will grow much larger ..read more

Today is November 23rd and I am still gardening! There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that Patty and I took eight days to attend a destination wedding in Aruba in the middle of the Fall season. That delayed my gardening schedule. But don’t think for a moment that I am sorry about that. The trip was awesome! The second reason is that the ground is still unfrozen and the construction of the new long perennial border is not complete. Global climate change is mostly bad for most people, but in this case it is helping me out. There has been a whole lot of planting going on. The long bord ..read more

A hole in the ground Yes, that is a picture of a hole in the ground. More specifically, a hole in soil that has been amended with peat moss, loam/compost 50/50 mix, a Garden way cart full of my own compost all mixed together by my rototiller doing doughnuts in the soil. But there was a glitch. The hole wasn’t deep enough. The intended future resident of this hole was a fringe tree purchased from Country Brook Nursery (at 25% off!) Fifty percent of the root ball was deep within the mulch that was supporting it so I miscalculated the depth of the hole in the ground. Am I lifting this? No way! It ..read more

This is about how I feel right now. To say that this has been a full day would be an understatement. By yesterday I could see the end of removing poison ivy, quack grass, evening primrose and other assorted, unwanted weeds from the garden renovation spot. So I scheduled a delivery of ten yards of a 50/50 mix of compost and loam for this afternoon. So bright and early this morning, after doing the grocery shopping for the week (senior hours at Market Basket), I was out digging, digging, digging. By early afternoon I was done and ready for a much needed shower. After a quick lunch our delivery t ..read more

It’s ugly and it’s all mine! This has been the site of my perennial garden for the past thirty years or so. Obviously I let it get away from me. Believe it or not there are still good perennial plants mixed in with the poison ivy, evening primrose, quack grass and other aggressive perennial weeds. I have been thinking about reclaiming this garden for the last five years or so. But the job is so daunting that it has ben easier to procrastinate. Not now. Now I am finally committed to getting this job done. A new perennial border will grow in this six foot wide bed. First I needed a place to heal ..read more

In 1977 we moved into our little cottage nestled into an apple orchard. By 1978 we were ready to diversify the fruit tree plantings and began with a Reliance peach tree. Through the years we harvested many more peaches than I could ever count. But alas, peach trees don’t last forever and so last year it finally died after declining health and I had to cut it down. This year I finally got around to renovating the daylilly/hosta garden surrounding the base of the peach tree stump. (Note: If you click on the arrow between the pictures below you can then drag the arrow to the right and to the left ..read more

It seems that I have ben away from the blogosphere for a while but I am back with thoughts about flowers, with different reproductive strategies. We think of flowers in so many different ways but in fact, to the plant they are a means to an end. That end being the continuation of their species. As I ventured out into the gardens this morning I found myself sharing space with the birds and bees. More specifically, hummingbirds and a multitude of bumblebees, solitary bees and honeybees. A pair of hummingbirds decided that they preferred the red salvia flowers to the sugar water in our fee ..read more

This will be a rather eclectic post that meanders from one topic to another. It is sunny, hot and humid this morning, so after snapping a few pictures I have retreated indoors to the AC to write this blog. The younger me would have stayed out working in the sun, getting overheated and dizzy. I am older and wiser now though so I will wait for the cooler weather predicted for Wednesday. We have had a couple of meals of corn from the garden so far with another one or two from the mature plants. The younger plants will give us an early September harvest. Succession planting helps to keep the g ..read more