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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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An overgrown garden

Hmm, coming home to the Piedmont, I just want to run directly into the house.  The garden, front and back, is overgrown.The front meadow is overridden with common milkweed and river oats (and needs a good bushwacking), there are weedy edges everywhere, and my "main" vegetable garden is full of weedy summer annuals, happy for a respite from the gardener, I guess.I hardly want to venture forth. ...

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