July 2010
15 posts
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Monthly Garden Report for July
Again, the reminder for the Monthly Garden Report: all photos that accompany this post are in the following photoset.
June was a bit of a downer, due to poor planning last fall, so it shouldn’t be much of surprise that I went on a gardening spending spree a bit this month. In the wake of my bulb stupor and relative apathy towards my current plantings, I resolved to buy mostly rare or...
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Rock and Restlessness
Mid-summer is a difficult time for this gardening busy-body. I can’t do much planting, so I’m left with landscaping. I really wish I had the money to pay someone else to do it.
We’ve planned on remodeling our house in the next few years, provided our jobs and the bank permit. Part of that remodel would require us to demolish our crappy deck, which would leave our outside dining...
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Plug for Poetry
When I first looked at starting a blog, one of the blogs I looked to for inspiration was Benjamin Voigt’s blog, Deep Middle. Benjamin, for those who don’t read his blog, is a poet and has published several chapbooks. I have a soft spot for poets and feel that as a society, we’ve become a bit alienated from poetry. Most people see it as belonging solely to a celestial sphere of...
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“[W]e should learn to alter our definition of a good gardener from one who has...”
– “The combination of drought-tolerance, relative fredom from disease, ease of garden culture, and beautiful flowers may sound suspect to gardneere used to the death struggles and perpetual horrors that characterize some western gardening, but we should learn to alter our definition of a good...
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I'm A Nice Garden Neighbor
My next door neighbor doesn’t really take care of his yard. Really, at this point, it’s more of an anti-garden. I don’t hold it against him; he’s had a lot of challenges in his life and he’s a nice guy. He also knows his yard is a bit scruffy and apologies about it. Life is too short to be tetchy.
I also know he is a quality individual because he admires my garden,...
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Why I Don't Use Round-up
Originally, I posted this in the comment section of my last post on Bindweed, in which I stated that I was a bit spooked to use pesticides like glyphosates like Round-up and others, so I try to garden organically. Ginkgograss questioned me on this, and after posting a too-lengthy reply in comments, I found that it probably merited its own post.
Pesticides are taboo for me. I’m not saying...
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The Beautiful Bane of Bindweed
Check it out! I have a variegated sport of Bindweed! It must have been jealous of the variegated Bishop’s Weed, aka Goutweed.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Field Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis), it is the king of weeds in the west. It is a long lived, tenacious perennial with a root system that can grow up to 30 feet long and seed that is viable for up to 50 years. Once...
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Bulb Stupor
They’ve arrived and I can’t bring myself to order.
I think the heat of July addles my mind so much that I can’t seem to bring myself to actually place an order for the spring bulb garden. I’m also so focused on what I need to remediate needs of the summer garden now, who can think about next spring already? My eyes glaze over as I keep flipping through the bulb catalogs...
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