Good news: the season of Monday to Friday business travel is over for me, at least for this year. Free at last! After working late Friday night, I drove home Saturday morning. Once home, the first thing I did was inspect the garden. Overall, things looked pretty good. One thing I was sorry to see, …
It’s been a very long day so I am just going to post some photos of various parts of the garden at the end of May. These pictures were actually taken on Sunday, but close enough. First, the driveway raised bed. The foundation bed at the front of the house. View from behind the sidewalk bed. …
I’ve written before about the glorious display of crabapple blossoms at the Chicago Botanic Garden every spring. But getting to the garden at the right time to see the display is rather challenging. It is at its height for just a few days, a period that can be cut short or eliminated altogether by a …
Forsythia bushes bursting with bright yellow flowers is a common springtime sight in this part of the world, a sight that lifts the spirits of many. Yet not everyone loves forsythia. The anti-forsythia camp argues for an indictment of this shrub on the following counts: An exotic, it is of little wildlife value in North …
I learned something the other day about native dogwood trees. There are two types you are most likely to find in the Chicago area: flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) and pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia). Flowering dogwoods are not common in Chicago, but you will see one occasionally. They are very hard to find in area nurseries. …
Extreme weather dominates my thoughts about gardening for this past year. It started with extreme winter mildness. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it was unnerving for those of us accustomed to harsh Chicago winters. January was about 8 degrees warmer than normal on average. Snow melted, the snowdrops (Galanthus) came up …
Charleston was one of the first major towns in the American colonies. The historic district is full of well-preserved buildings from the early 19th and 18th Centuries. In fact, it seems every building in that part of town had a plaque attesting to its age and historic significance. I found Waterfront Park and the Battery …
So remember how in my last post I wrote about how I’d like to replace the Bridalwreath in the front yard? Well, Judy has agreed! This is important, because Judy doesn’t like change. But now we have to agree on what to replace it with. My first preference is a serviceberry (Amelanchier). Judy doesn’t like …
Every year there is a sort of tipping point reached some time in November that signals the coming end of fall and beginning of winter. Yesterday seems to have been one of those days. Following a week of very mild weather, almost shirtsleeve weather, a biting cold arrived riding in on strong winds. Suddenly the …
Let’s start in the backyard. Rosa ‘Sally Holmes’ still has a few blooms, and even some buds straining to open before the frost. Most of the asters have gone to seed … But the dwarf New England Aster, Symphyotrichum novae-angliae ‘Purple Dome’, is a very late bloomer – it’s just hitting its stride. Rosa ‘Darlow’s …
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