the year of the spotted salamander? egg masses galore

It’s well known that the housing market is so competitive right now, but prospective home buyers aren’t the only ones hurting—renters are, too. According to personal finance website WalletHub, inflation has impacted rental prices, and 2022 saw the second-highest price growth in decades with a 6.2% year-over-year increase. 

For those who are looking to buy a home for the first time, the feat can seem like quite the hurdle. With housing prices and interest rates still high, and a competitive market, it’s tough out there! And the number of first-time home buyers are dropping, too, because of those high prices—according to personal finance site WalletHub, 26% off home purchases were made by first-time home buyers in 2022, down from 34% the previous year.

With TikTok continuing to rise in popularity, and short-form video becoming the end-all, be-all of information sharing, it seems like our attention spans are getting shorter and trends are coming and going faster than ever before. 

I was tempted to cut the leaves from my hellebore a bit early this year but have decided to wait a bit longer. Here is a selection of 2018 flowers from RHS and my garden.

I have previously posted about snapdragons in 2011, 2016 and  2015

It’s a glorious July Saturday. The sun is showering this corner of the world with warmth and optimism. The earth’s bounty and human toil, and some craic, surrounds us, and you can hear the stream nearby and the birds in the trees. There is abundance and productivity and nature and community and generosity.

In case you hadn’t noticed, weeds are having a bit of a moment, and have been for some time. They were stars of the show at Chelsea this year and are increasingly being appreciated for their up-until-now-overlooked ornamental value. They are also living proof that our attitudes to gardens – who they are for and how they should look — are shifting. Gardens have always been a mirror to society, and now more than ever we see the pressing issues of our time reflected in how we think about them. We are no longer creating gardens solely for our enjoyment, but for the birds and the bees too. We are also being much more mindful about resource management, selecting plants and materials which will have the lightest footprint, requiring the least intervention. Weeds (whatever that term means) are the perfect solution. Incredibly well adapted to their environment, they will need little or no nurture to get established and thrive. And because they’re native, they support a huge range of insects and invertebrates who have evolved alongside them.

Are you frustrated because there are dandelions and other weeds in your lawn? Did you know that dandelion flowers provide one of the first springtime sources of pollen for bees, butterflies, and other pollinating insects?

If I had a dollar for every time a client called this year about a wet spot in their lawn, I’d probably be able to adopt another dog. Fortunately for our clients, there are several ways to address this common issue!

The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) (SLF) is the latest non-native species to take hold in the U.S. This planthopper is large (about a half-inch long) and originally from several countries in the Far East. It was first found in Pennsylvania in 2014, and active infestations are now established in Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and as of just last week, North Carolina. SLF has not been detected in South Carolina, but it is an insect for which we need to be on the lookout.

Turfgrass… Blah. Amiright!? Kidding, but I have a confession to make. Once upon a time, I got a degree in Horticulture… Turfgrass. A golf course summer internship quickly determined that maintaining the same 18 holes of turfgrass and dodging golf balls was not for me!

Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.– Christian Lous Lange (Nobel Peace Prize winner, 1921)