We recently ripped out the foundation plantings around the front of our house and replaced them with a tiered area with a 8-foot circular brick patio surrounded by shrubs, grasses, and small trees. This is an idea that had been percolating in my head for a couple of years as a result of a sense that the best place to…
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With a couple of inches of snow falling and temperatures consistently under 35 the past few days, I’ve been contemplating this question: Will my plants survive? All of my established perennials, trees and shrubs will shrug off this little October blast of Arctic air as a mild inconvenience, of course, but we put in about 20 brand new shrubs and…
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I have to admit that I feel like I have finally escaped after processing about 20 pounds of grapes from my neighbor’s vines. My neighbors moved and so were not able to do the harvest themselves this year, and I asked if I could step in, having enjoyed some of their fabulous grape preserves last year. With their permission, I…
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While many gardens fade after mid-August, mine is a September garden that looks better as fall approaches than it does at other times of the year. It’s not something I’ve planned, but a happy accident of having a few fall bloomers, annuals that don’t take off in Minnesota until mid to late summer, and early bloomers that make an encore…
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The berries just keep on coming! Friday, my husband and I picked about 20 cups of raspberries from the canes in our backyard. That’s on top of several cups each of the past few days, some of which we’ve munched and some we’ve given to others. A basket sent to my mother led to a new recipe for using raspberries:…
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