Garden Journal

Blooming this week, tree edition. Names and notes on photos.

It’s a little chilly for working in the garden this weekend, but if you bundle up and start moving, you quickly warm up, and may find yourself stripping off a layer or two after a bit. A nice hot drink first helps too, or in my case today, a cup of chicken-and-stars soup. Yesterday I

It was drizzly and relatively warm yesterday, perfect weather for transplanting. I do a lot of moving plants around in my garden to better create the effects I want — I have friends who are hesitant to do that, and it’s true that the plant suffers a little for the move, but if you’re assiduous

It’s always exciting when the garden boxes start arriving in spring. I mostly try to support local nurseries (and avoid shipping costs), but sometimes I’ve been searching for something specific. For example, this Amsonia “String Theory,” which I heard discussed on a gardening podcast, (I think it’s a native cultivar for our area), and it

I had to run out this morning to drop off Kavi at school (because she’d thought it was late-arrival Wednesday and it wasn’t — even her first-period math teacher had told them it was, which makes me wonder if that teacher missed their class today too…), and also pick up meds at Walgreens (my ADD

Remember the hellebores I floated in a bowl on April 16? Some of them had gotten waterlogged and were fading, so I cleared them out, but many are still going strong, now in a smaller bowl.

So a year-and-a-half ago, during a winter storm, our peach tree came almost entirely out of the ground. We thought we’d lost it, but Kevin and I tried wrangling it back into place, and then resorted to some very elegant orange bungee cords to try and hold it steady, and it seemed like it might

The only time our over-4500-member garden club FB group almost descended into a real flamewar in all the years of its existence, was when someone spoke disaparagingly about his neighbors’ not eradicating their dandelions. Don’t do that, folks. Would you walk into someone’s living room and comment on how dusty you found it? Dandelions are

More seedling transplanting. A few notes: – the reason why they set up grow light systems on chains is so you can keep the lights just above the plants, maximizing their light. You don’t want them actually touching the plants, though, so check regularly and raise as needed. – another alternative to self-watering trays are