Zone 6b and dreaming of 9

The process of accepting and embracing my own growing zone is never made easier by visits to zones more temperate.  As a fairly serious gardener, I can only just manage to suppress my envious twitches should I glimpse a neighbor’s Philadelphus in full glorious flower, or a [...]

Wall O Water

Let’s talk tomatoes.  More specifically, let’s talk early tomatoes.  Let’s talk tomatoes that, against the odds and available advice, you plant far too early using every known frost-crutch known to man.  Wall O’ Water’s?  You got ‘em.  Agribon High Strength?  You’re using it. Mini-greenhouses made out of discarded milk cartons?  [...]

Glorious Color!

On a cold day in February, not so long ago, my daughter nudged me in the grocery store and pointed her gloved fingers at the profusion of color brightening up an otherwise quiet corner stocked with root vegetables and canned soup.  “Look Mom, tulips!” she cried, watching my face instinctively break [...]

No matter the size of one’s garden, it could always be bigger.  For those of us inhabiting small towns and cities, thoughts of spacious borders, never-ending vistas and cutting gardens to spare run deliciously through those late-night moments between consciousness and the dream state.  We can always envision ways to use more space, [...]

Most of us strive to be organized — whether we ever achieve it or not is another matter altogether.  In the garden, the fruits of good organizational skills can make a difficult job surprisingly straightforward, or an unbearable job bearable. Conversely, lacking these same skills will make a simple task complicated, and a [...]