Before I knew about blogs, I subscribed to a lot of gardening magazines. In fact, I pretty much subscribed to every gardening magazine I came across – including some that consisted mainly of photos sent in by readers (often of their grandchildren, not that there’s anything wrong with that).
In these rather dismal days it was nice to see an article in The Washington Post that inspires a bit of optimism about human ingenuity and the future. The article, which actually ran a couple of months ago (Judy sent me a link, which I lost and then found again) is about the development of perennial grain crops.
I was in need of a morale boost a couple of weeks ago, and soon the answer came to me: Amaryllis bulbs. Something I could order immediately, plant indoors, and enjoy while the garden was still a frozen wasteland. It was a little late to order Amaryllis – most varieties were sold out – but I was still happy with the selections I made.
An important point of clarification here: these are not Amaryllis Amaryllis. These are Hippeastrum Amaryllis. As with Geranium/Pelargonium, this is an instance where the taxonomists couldn’t make up their minds for decades but in the end us ordinary gardeners have to live with the confusion and fear of using the wrong name, as if it were out fault.
So of all the gardens we saw in the Minneapolis area, this one was absolutely my favorite. It is nestled among the fields and woods of rural northwest Wisconsin, about 40 minutes from the Twin Cities. Here plants and sculpture are combined so bewitchingly that you feel you have entered into a sort of dream.
You know that book, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe? How the child heroes open the door of the wardrobe and find an entire world inside? The garden of Lee and Jerry Shannon is kind of like that. From the street, their place doesn’t look too unusual. The house they bought nearly 50 years ago seems like a fairly typical single family home in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The Midtown Greenway is a 5 mile biking and walking trail in south Minneapolis. It first opened about 15 years ago, converted from an old railroad corridor. Not too long after, the patrons of Vera’s Cafe decided to turn a nearby patch of weeds along the Greenway into a garden. Happily, we were able to visit this garden as part of the 2016 Garden Bloggers Fling in Minneapolis.
So another Minneapolis-area spot that we discovered thanks to the Garden Bloggers Fling is the Noerenberg Memorial Garden.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was very nice. We came up to Minneapolis, where my younger son and older brother both live, and had Thanksgiving at my brother’s house. There was a fine feast, including three kinds of homemade pie: apple, pumpkin, and pecan.
There’s snow on the ground in Minneapolis, which means no one is outside using their leaf blowers. For this I am grateful.
This past weekend it finally started to feel like November, with a sort of raw gray cold settling in. I realized that the available time for winter preparations was slipping away.
gardeninacity 