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When it Rains
Last night it rained and rained and rained. As the boys were working on their highly processed veggie straws for breakfast (I didn’t give it to them… Scooby snuck the back off the counter), I snuck outside with the camera. To my delight, there was no flooding. The new French tile drain is working like a charm, and this was a serious rainfall. Just look how the mulch on the path was washed downstream: A week ago these mystery seedlings…
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Changing Seasons in the Garden
This morning we visited Roanoke Park, a sliver of a playground between two roads in a quiet neighborhood. At one point my son Scooby exclaimed, “The leaves are falling!” We have been referencing the coming fall often, and if the seasons were left up to him, we’d skip right to winter and snow. It has been a long summer. I’m not sure what made it such. It could have been all the days that were pushing the 100 degree mark…
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Drainage – My garden Cesspool Part Two
Living in the city on 1/3 an acre of land in clay country, finding the ideal spot for a vegetable can be problematic at best. When we moved to our house back in 2007, our lot was covered in pines. Over the past three summers, our garden has been relocated and rebuilt no less than three times. Finally, this summer was THE summer when my gardening stars were to align. We’d removed 19 pines from our yard (don’t worry, there…
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A Little Color for the Coming Fall
Bee and butterfly garden Sunflower Knockout rose Coreopsis Butterfly on brick Butterfly on garlic chive blossom French Marigolds
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Bee and Butterfly Garden Revamp
Our fenced kitchen garden was designed with pollinators in mind. In the southeastern corner, there is a bee and butterfly garden planted with Liatra Spicata, purple Echinacea, red gladiolas and daffodils (primarily for me), and several other potted perennial flowers I picked up during the summer. The Kniphofia (Traffic Lights) didn’t blossom this summer, but I think they did at least grow plants. The real problem with the bee and butterfly garden is that its location in the corner makes…
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How Captain Duct Tape Single-sidedly Took Down a Cell of Squash Bugs
Warning: What you are about to see here may be visually disturbing. Let the pictures do the talking.
