I admire the knowledge of plant biologists, especially that group of expert botanists who make me feel like a novice in comparison…those are the people I love to hang around with at any given opportunity to improve my own skills and knowledge. Every time I look up a plant description, a little...
When you collect plants, it is rather useful to label and record everything added to the garden. I wish I had started sooner. I did not do this the first few years of starting my current garden, so many of my oldest plants are unknown down to cultivar and remain unlabeled. After a few years, I...
Watching how plants grow is just fascinating. Like when a terminal bud begins growing in the spring after being dormant, it leaves behind a bud scale scar that encircles the entire twig or branch and is visible to the naked eye. Since each twig makes only one terminal bud per year, you can use...
How perfect for Punxsutawney Phil to predict six more weeks of winter on the day when snow was falling heavily in the St Louis Metropolitan. School would have been cancelled when and where I grew up in Indiana on a day like that. But because of COVID-19, snow days for students are coming to be a...
One of my many pleasures from gardening is watching the garden develop and change over the course of a season. It never ceases to amaze me how stark, yet beautiful the landscape is in its winter rest. With the leaves gone, the beautiful bark and limb structure of the trees and shrubs is completely...
The impact of nature upon our well-being is truly amazing. The morning before Thanksgiving, I stepped outside to walk the dog and was met by the most glorious sky. Immediately I thought of the old saying “pink sky in morning, sailor’s warning,” but I shrugged that off immediately because I already...
Chipmunk or squirrel, it doesn’t matter, cuteness only goes so far! Most especially after the little fiends have dug up several of the spring-blooming flower bulbs and garlic I had just planted the day before.
My normal practice of firming the soil over the bulbs, watering, and covering with...
Hard to believe but the median date for the first frost is just around the corner, and I still have lots to do in the garden. Last year the first freeze occurred on October 5, so I know it can happen any time now.
Number one on my mind is the overwintering of tender plants I plan to protect and...
I’m pretty sure I know where writers get a lot of their ideas for monster movies…from the insect world.
Case in point. One minute I’m happy the monarch butterfly and eastern black swallowtail larvae are munching away on the larval food plants I especially planted for them, then next they are part...
This is the second time of the year when the jungle needs the most weeding…the first being early spring. But unlike spring, it’s now hot and the mosquitoes are in abundance, not to mention the humidity makes the simplest task a chore. The weeding needs to continue though or the undesirables will...
