not blooming, but (was) beautiful

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The green swards in front gardens throughout the UK are not as environmentally friendly as you may think.

Pamper your plants by all means but resist the urge to over feed.

A rose is not a rose when it is a Lenten or Christmas rose!

I thought this was meant to be a bird box but the wasps thought differently.

Yorkshire has suffered an exceptionally wet autumn culminating in disastrous floods at Fishlake and around the river Don. One plant that will thrive in these wet northerly conditions is our old friend Moss.  As this has been covered before I am just using this post to link you to other observations and tips about moss.

Fall brings that time of year when leaf color can be its most vibrant! However, as time marches on towards the winter season, leaves quickly begin to fall to the ground and create a blanket of opportunity. Opportunity, you say. Yes, indeed.

According to So Easy to Preserve, “When using two-piece lids, place the treated lid on the filled jar, center it, and hold it in place with fingers. Then screw down the band until it is fingertip tight. These lids should not be tightened further after processing.

There’s a spot beside my patio where Nicotiana and annual poppies like to propagate–don’t ask me why–and I’ve learned to let them do so, above, until they’re just big enough to move around where I want them. (This means we each get our way half the time, I guess you could say.) In the driveway gravel, wonderful sedums like ‘Matrona’ sow all the time, and I’m happy to have the freebies to add to the garden.If the colony of volunteers is in the right place but just too thickly sown, I edit (with repeated pinches of my fingers, removing enough to allow the survivors good spacing). If the colony isn’t where I want it at all, I scoop up trowelfuls (above, with Nicotiana) and move them, above, or sometimes even individual young plants.This is my system with not just the poppies and flowering tobacco, but with tall verbena (Verbena bonariensis), and would be with Nigella and larkspur and other things I no longer grow (though who knows why?).I know, I should neaten up my act–how messy to let the dill grow 6 inches high before weedi

My hero James Crockett of the original vintage 1970s “Victory Garden” PBS fame said he just left the carefully dug tubers out on top of the former row for a few hours to dry a bit, then put them in burlap or mesh bags in a cool, dark place at once. Even with a few days of light exposure, the potatoes would turn green and inedible.He didn’t bother with curing the crop, exactly, which is the more conventional advice today:Dig when the soil is dry, not wet, after the foliage has died down. I normally leave them right in the ground until I am ready for them in late fall, long after the plants have faded, to reduce indoor storage time, hoping for a dry spell later in the year. First, to gauge readiness, carefully dig a hill or two of potatoes, starting about a foot outside the hill itself and working inward, since po

SHE LOVES ME, SHE LOVES ME NOT.Andre Jordan seems to keep hoping for the best, despite a few well-documented cases of rejection (as in, loc. cit., The Girl I Love With All My Heart. Caveat emptor: Deliciously not PG!).

Martagon lilies (Lilium martagon), also referred to as Turk’s cap lilies, have been in cultivation since 1596, and hail originally from Eurasia (meaning in this case Portugal to Siberia, with lots of color and height variations along the route). The individual blooms aren’t gigantic like modern hybrids, but there are many of them on a stem: like 12 or 15 by my count today. Stems can rise up to head-height, though many varieties are just 4 or so feet high.The best thing about martagons is their adaptability: They are as good, both aesthetically and culturally, in a quite-sunny flower bed as in a woodsy-looking shade garden (not too dark, now; at least give them good filtered light so they bloom well). The worst thing is how hard it is to get your hands on some. Martagons aren’t fast to multiply, so bulb vendors can co