Main menu:

amphibians baking birding birds books Canada canning challenge 2007 concert cookie date 2007 cookies cooking CSA Dark Days eejits farmers' market film flowers freezer fruit goals health improving insects Kennedy Center killing Lake Artemesia lifelist mammals meta mosaic my art painting Patuxent NWR Pearl performance plants reptiles shopping Simply In Season sociology tribute University Hills pond veg yard

search the blog

topics

archive

garden : where oh where will the little shrubs go?

Red hot poker in front of the pyramid trellis. Lamb’s ear from a neighbor, planted just ahead of a rare rain. An unforeseen benefit of having a toddler who likes to be outdoors has been an increase in evening gardening. In the past I’ve been pretty much fed up with working in the yard by [...]

beautiful year for a spring garden

Our hand-me-down tulips in full bloom. This spring has been an amazing one for the garden! I’m trying to put aside concerns about extreme weather, greater pests and allergies, and a brutally hot summer and just enjoy having all the spring flowers in bloom at once. Even the flowers in our shady foundation bed benefited [...]

is it spring yet?

First bloom of the year, on the new hellebore. Since I’m now a parent and find myself saying dorky things like “Lead on, MacDuff!” and “it’s a doggie-dog world” on a regular basis, I am going to just come out with it: is this thing on? I think I may have hit a record length [...]

garden : pleasant surprise!

It appears that our pieris plant may actually be a native! I had just assumed that it was the Japanese variety and hadn’t even really registered that there is a regional alternative. The other day when we were sitting on the porch I noticed that it was covered in bees of all sorts. So we [...]

garden : going native

I have vowed that this will be the year we make progress on converting the yard and garden to native plants. This means saying goodbye to the orange daylilies, forsythia, dwarf almond, lilac, and crape myrtle sprout (the large one can stay for now). Wait wait, you might be saying: most of these are popular, [...]