January 2011
23 posts
The Plant of the Decade
This notion crossed my mind recently as I was thumbing through the new spring catalogs, surveying the latest in nascent plant fashions. As with all consumer products, plants follow trends, but these trends take longer to develop than, say, trends in clothing, or cars. If it’s a must-have plant, everyone needs to be growing it, regardless of region. Gardeners need to witness a particular...
Monthly Garden Report for January
I’ve been waiting in January. I’ve been staring out of windows, plotting my strategy of garden spring cleaning. I keep going back and forth on whether I should do more fall clean-up or keep on doing none at all. I’m lazy, so it always comes down on the side of none at all. I didn’t even bother to rake. I suspect it’s better not to. But all those leaves revealed by the...
Donald Davidson, Celebrating Wildflowers
Penstemon Comarrhenus. Dusty Penstemon, Scrophulariaceae Family. ©2011 Donald Davidson.
If you haven’t heard of Donald Davidson, he is an artist from the Traveling Artist Wildflowers Project through the National Park Service. For those who aren’t familiar with the project, here is their info from their main page:
The mission of this project has been to encourage public awareness...
A Call To Use Hordeum in the Landscape
Hordeum jubatum. Or “Foxtail Barley” as it’s commonly called.
I didn’t know its name until a few of months ago despite being able to recognize it instantly, like so many of our native plants. Its long tassels are easy to pick out of the scenery because they have an ability, like Muhlenbergia, to shimmer in the afternoon summer sun.
Foxtail barley is found mainly at low...
The Anti-Social Network
I’ve been mulling over whether I should jump into the swelling tide of garden bloggers connecting through Facebook. I’m a bit old school, and I like to compartmentalize my relationships, so I’m reluctant to converge my private and public lives. I suppose that I could create a separate account for the blog, but that would be on top of a Twitter feed, a tumble blog, Blotanical, and...
How To Make Soil Blocks
Since my last post on how to make your own soil blocker, many of you said that you haven’t heard of soil blocking, so I thought it best to write up an introductory primer—
Soil blocks are compacted blocks of potting soil into which you place seeds to germinate. As a seed grows, as you know, it sends out roots that head down and out. When it’s growing in a pot, the roots will...
A Brief History of Gardeners' Titles
I love the social history of gardening. Recently, I’ve been musing over a post on Master Gardeners, and I found an excerpt, ”On the different Conditions of Men engaged in the Practice or Pursuit of Gardening” From An Encyclopedia of Gardening written in 1822 by J.C. Loudon. It’s a fascinating look at the class system of garden workers in the U.K. prior to the industrial...
“There are recompenses, of course, for working with nature—the pleasures of...”
– George Handley, Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River. University of Utah Press. 2010. p. xiii.
Top 5 Posts of 2010
At least in my opinion, and in no particular order. The web traffic statistics may paint a different picture.
Hope Is The Thing With Feathers. Three dead birdies really got to me for some reason. It’s a bit ponderous at points, but there are some nice bits in there towards the end as I wrap it up. And I like the photo of the birdhouse. Well worth a revisit.
It Takes A Village To Raise...
