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Native Plant Rescue and the Return of Fire Pink
A year ago, I was on a native plant rescue along a greenway trail. We were tasked with digging up desirable plants from an area where the trail was being rerouted farther away from the unstable stream banks. The site was thick with Christmas ferns, mosses, trout lilies, and sedges. The rescued plants could be replanted in our own gardens or donated to public and private native gardens accepting contributions, but the goal was to save plants that would otherwise…
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Summer Garden Recap
My food growing was a disaster this summer. At least that’s how it felt as I surveyed the mass of weedy overgrowth this evening. I put all my energy into the new pond and quail keeping, and I let the weeds run amok and didn’t feed the plants or top off compost as I should have. For my future self, I’m documenting the season and will start with the positives because no one likes a whiner. Wins One apple tree…
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Conversations with Nature
This fire pit garden has absolutely blown up with green growth. I was listening to Urban Farm Podcast the other night, and an ex-reality TV personality turned geeked-out gardener (his words, not mine) kept referring to his garden as preppy. I took out fresh eyes to gaze on this space decided this mess is definitely not preppy. It nearly took my breath away, not because of its beauty or anything like that but simply the boldness of its existence. In the…
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Duke Gardens with Friends
At the end of March, the kids had a day off school for a teacher workday. After seeing an Instagram post about a “Bloom Walk” in Duke Gardens, I gave the boys a heads up that we would be making a trip, and I tagged my friend Erika on the post, hoping she would see it and hadn’t already booked her day. Friday morning she messaged me and we made plans to pack snacks and hit the road at about…
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An Evolving Rock Garden
We have a little tradition in our family of bringing home rocks from camping trips or special times in the mountains. We don’t always remember to do it, but the times we have it usually involves picking one out and seeing if Joe is able to lift it and get it into the car. We also regularly dig up rocks in the yard. Nearly every time we have planted a tree, we’ve unearthed rocks of varying sizes. This has resulted…
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Worker Bees
Sometimes I envy bees because they know what to do and they know how to do it.
