being not doing

This autumn found us with a number of refugee plants on our porch that required a permanent spot in the yard. The sad demise of the hydrangea and the clethra twigs at the end of the summer left some space open, and we expanded the planted areas to include spaces in front of and [...]

It has finally begun to rain again, which means that the plants are less brown and the rain barrel is filled up again. I was surprised to empty it, and it definitely came in handy during the dry spell. We have yet to set up the second one, although we could have used [...]

After one of the coldest and wettest months of June in a decade, we’ve had a cold dry month of July thus far. As a result, I traveled a sine wave of worry and stress about the weeds. They took off in the month of June, creeping into the side beds that I’d [...]

When I talk with neighbors about our yard, they are uniformly positive about the way it looks. Which I can understand: we eradicated the pokeweed orchard in the back corner; we cut the vines back out of the trees; we’ve pruned deadwood and limbed up the border hollies; and we’ve managed to create relatively [...]

As a general rule, I don’t like to spread poisons around. Not inside the house, not on the lawn, not to kill bugs, and not on any of the plants I’ve planted. There are, of course, exceptions. For the first couple of years we lived here, we sprayed poison in a perimeter [...]