The Garden is beginning to wind down for me this year. Cucumbers are done, tomatoes are finishing, squash is going strong, beans are also winding down. But one would think that we are done for the year. Well kids, you would be wrong. Start your fall planting! In the midwest there are two major growing...

Read More

Pocket meadow and views

view through the front door I'm grateful today for the wonderful view out the doors in our small mountain house.pocket meadow- late August 2014We've certainly created the view out the front door, and the back -- well, the forest overstory was there, but it was my gardening companion's hard work...

Read More

Garlic chives, a bountiful evergreen crop

The evergreen garlic chives supplies plenty of fresh greens all year. At the top of the photo on the left, you can see how big the spaghetti squash plants are that I talked about last time and the okra just is going nuts. We are harvesting several each day, which is a good thing...Harvest with a sharp...

Read More

Sunflowers and morning light

I've just started walking along the path near the French Broad River in Biltmore Estate on a regular basis.  It's a magical place, and we've certainly enjoyed visiting the gardens and lagoon paths over the years, with Woody and our previous dogs, too.But the path that extends from Antler Hill Village...

Read More

A cleaned up vegetable bed

I may just be preparing food for woodchucks, but I was so happy this weekend to get my main vegetable garden bed cleaned up. I'd be too embarrassed to show what it looked like at its worst. But this image is evocative.A last block to be weededNow, I've sown beet, spinach, cress, arugula, turnip, and...

Read More

Gardening renovation and clean-up

Happily, a couple of days of spending quite a bit of time in our weedy and overgrown landscape (left alone all summer) is starting to feel like progress is being made.The main vegetable garden is almost free of its cloak of crabgrass and some sort of amaranth-like weed, my potting bench (which had been almost engulfed by the giant Florida Anise behind it) has been moved forward, with a nicely reordered...

Read More

Taking my own advice (re gardening)

I've found doing landscape consultations both fun and rewarding (interesting, too).What I love to do is help encourage people to consider all of their "needs" in their landscape (they're all SO different), but most importantly, I find, is to encourage them to focus on what kind of gardening they enjoy...

Read More