Things go awry sometimes that maybe you could have prevented, but not always.
I was so excited because we managed to get the rain barrel out before the heavy rains set in here, and when I checked it this morning it was full. Time to pat myself on the back, right?
Alas, what I didn’t yet know… Continue reading “It works, until it doesn’t.”
So far, so good with the tomatoes. *knocks on wood* Continue reading “They’re bouncing back! *whew*”
I never did call the Territorial Seed Company to change the delivery date of the two tomato starters. I sure meant to, but nope…slipped through the ol’ brain sieve. Guess what arrived today? Yep. Continue reading “I am April’s Fool”
We recently had what’s known as a “red flag” warning in MA due to high winds and lack of recent ongoing precipitation, and there’s at least one brush fire that happened around then, and then another recently, and then yet another made the news. So it looks like we’re not out of the woods yet despite milder winds. Now it may seem odd to get such when there’s still snow on the ground in many places, but here we are. I remember noticing last year how many evergreens around our neighborhood looked or outright were dying. After the last major windy spell, I found myself picking up yet again more deadfall from the trees on or bordering our property, and that’s when I noticed the die back wasn’t just in other places in the neighborhood.
Continue reading “Long term drought, burning permits, and brush fires”
Hullo, there! Whether you’re wondering why this site looks familiar, or you’ve never been to my old site, welcome!
The Short Story to folks from my old site: I’m still dealing with the results of a sorry excuse for an export/import tool set. Continue reading “Please pardon the mess”
One of the lesser favored plants we “inherited” with the property was burdock. We spot it–along with other non-native invasives–all over when we amble about the neighborhood. I took the image below on May 9, 2017 when I was starting to document what plants we had inherited along with the house. Some I thought I knew, some I had no idea. The caption is exactly what I labeled it then.
For newbie gardeners, some hard lessons can be learned when you work on your garden sooner than was wise due to your local climate. In the three years we’ve been here, we’ve had some spectacular wishful thinking failures. This was due to a combination of things, but one prevalent factor was our last frost date. Continue reading “Last Frost Date Lessons, Part One”
There is ongoing controversy as to what constitutes a “native” plant. There are oodles of factors (wind, Pangaea, migration, et al.) that can go into the determination of such, which I will not get into here in length nor detail because the same info can be found elsewhere.
Having said that, instead I am hoping that this will be the first in a series where I highlight a given plant that can be found in the U.S.A., and how I came to find out if it was a good choice or not for my aim to foster habitat that will encourage and support local wildlife to visit our yard. Continue reading “Why latin plant names matter #1, lupine”
…we realized we’d never turned the outdoor spigot cutoff on because we hadn’t needed it. That was yesterday, the 15th of August. Because of how the rain barrel’s spigot isn’t at the dead bottom of the barrel, we did try tipping it to get at more inside, but there’s only so far you can push that to get at the last bits left–plus then there’s the sediment issue from what ever’s gathered over the season thus far.
