Garden Journal

Garden log 11/20/24. With the freezing temps tonight, I knew I had to get going on finally getting my remaining bulbs in the ground. You can still plant bulbs after temps hit freezing, but at some point, the ground becomes too frozen to work, and then you’re just stuck, and have to go with the […]

Garden log 11/20/24. Well, it’s finally supposed to drop below freezing tonight, so I’ve collected what’s probably my last floral bouquet from the garden for the year. Later than usual, although I did have one year where I had lots of dahlias this late — didn’t get around to planting dahlias this year. A friend

I love the feel of a secret garden.

Garden log 6/1/24. This combination amuses me — firecracker flower (right) and allium schubertii (which looks like fireworks). 🙂 The former is a perennial, the latter isn’t hardy in my zone, so I plant a few of them as bulbs every fall.

Garden log 5/23/24. So, drying peonies in dessicant turned out pretty successful. It’s not exactly like a fresh peony — in the first two photos below, the bottom left flower is fresh, the rest are desiccated. But overall, happy with the results, and feel like it’s something I can work with. I like the air-dried

Garden log 5/14/24. When you accidentally pull an allium (I think this is “Millennium”) while weeding, that just means it really wants to be a cut flower for the house. Graced with a few sprigs of Russian sage. Per usual, I’m happy to thin my Russian sage if anyone local would like some — let

Garden log 5/6/24. I’m slowly digging out the large European lily-of-the-valley patch I inherited; they’re lovely, but invasive in Illinois, sadly. It spread by both seeds and rhizomes, so if you grow them in a home garden here, birds transplant the seeds to woodland areas, where it forms dense colonies that choke out native plants.

Garden log 5/6/24. Yesterday, I started work on the most labor-intensive part of gardening for me — the annual weeding + laying down of mulch. I enlisted Kevin and the kids into doing the long paths, telling them just to pull up anything big / easy between and around the stones, and then lay down

Whiskey sour with the last of my friend Nara’s homemade rhubarb syrup, reading a silly but charming romance novel on the porch under a cozy blanket, listening to old favorite music and the sound of neighbors chatting as they walk their dogs. Garden FB group perennial exchange here tomorrow morning, so I thought I’d best

Last daffodil bouquet of the season, I think. Spring goes so fast!