Garden Journal

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!

Creeping phlox.

Dogwood Cherokee Chief. I only planted this tree a few years ago — this is the first year when it’s bloomed really nicely. Love it!