Not many of us can garden in the fashion of impressionist Claude Monet. Lacking the 5-acre garden, help from a full-time gardener and (most importantly) artistic genius, we instead look at Monet’s paintings, and sigh. There was a lot of sighing, and gasping, and general oohing and aahing at the Minneapolis Institute of Art this morning during photographer Derek Fell’s…
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Unlike so many condos for people, I am hoping my just completed condo project for orchard mason bees will soon be abuzz with activity. I’ve been meaning to build one of these since I read an article in Fine Gardening about raising raspberries and the importance of orchard mason bees as pollinators. Last fall, we had an article in Northern…
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Now that the snow has melted, I can see where my dog, Lily, (looking guilty, at left) has been. Certain sections of our front yard are covered with “dog spots,” those brown circular marks created by dog urine. Solutions to dog spots are all over the web and range from having your dog drink tomato juice (I’m not sure Lily…
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For the last week or so, in between sleet storms, I’ve been watching robins pecking at the fruit on the three big sumacs at the edge of our property. (The robin is on the third sumac fruit from the left.) That’s what I love about sumac. It fits with our property and the environment around us. It supplies structure in…
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It’s still too early to be tromping around in the garden, so the great weather on Saturday seemed like an invitation to finish some garden building projects. So, after picking up some deck screws and 2-by-2 posts at the local lumberyard, I started work on my new raised bed. (I bought the cedar for the sides last fall.) This bed…
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