Backyard bouquets

Backyard bouquets

For the past few weeks I’ve been watching flowers bloom my yard with what can only be described as sheer delight. We haven’t lived here for quite a year, we moved in after the azaleas had faded; the daffodils were a distant memory. Because of the foliage I knew to expect irises (but I didn’t know

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The peak of blackberry season

The peak of blackberry season

We planted blackberries four years ago, and every year we watch the plant bloom,  grow berries, and then every year birds, squirrels, chipmunks, or some other form of evil gets to them before we can. This year, just like every year before it, we watched the plant bloom, grow glossy red berries, and then, we watched in amazement as

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Bumper crop

See those two tomatoes? You’re looking at our entire tomato harvest. I planted five tomato plants in the spring. Most of them died after squirrels climbed up the stalks and the branches broke under their weight. Vine borers demolished my squash, my basil is dry, and I have no idea what happened to my jalapeno

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Spring

Spring

SPRING IS HERE! Let’s all pop a Claritin and go roll around in a bunch of pollen because it’s not going to snow again FOR AT LEAST SIX MONTHS! The transition seasons are wonderful — capricious, but wonderful. And while the chill of fall if foreboding, the warmth of spring is exciting. The only thing

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A gutter garden upgrade

Two years ago, Tom and I planted a vertical gutter garden on the side of our shed, and we love it. You can read about more about how we did it here, and see them growing here. Last year we didn’t plan them because last spring I was really pregnant, and at that stage in my

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This happens every year

This happens every year

Every year, as spring approaches, I start to get excited about gardening. I plant a lot of seedlings inside, try to figure out how to jam as many veggies in our small garden plot, and count down the days until the last frost. It happened last spring. The spring before. (The spring before that we

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Also getting bigger every day

Also getting bigger every day

I took these photos and wrote this post two weeks ago. In that time the garden looks totally different, we’ve already made a batch of peppers and my butternut squash plants are so big they’re growing over the fence and into the neighbor’s yard. By now this is more of a look back than an

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