• Flowers - Others' gardens - Utah gardening

    Thanksgiving Point Tulip Festival 2014

    May 4, 2014 - By 

    I took my three younger kids to the Thanksgiving Point Tulip Festival yesterday. What a beautiful treat on a beautiful day! I’ve attended once before, when I was a volunteer, working on my Master Gardener certification. If you haven’t been, you should give a try next year. But you might want to try a day other than the last day of the festival! It was pretty darn crowded, with a line far out the front door and plenty of crowds once we got in. Still, it’s something like 50 acres, so there’s plenty of room to spread out. One of…

  • Featured - Flowers - Garden maintenance - Our Garden - Propagation - Utah gardening

    It’s greenhouse time! And my winter-sowing experiment is working

    March 9, 2014 - By 

    It’s that wonderful time of the year again; the snow has melted (finally!), the perennial flowers are just starting to poke up through soil, and I’m feeling the urgency to get things started in the greenhouse. I decided to try winter sowing again to get some seeds sprouted, and then I’ll transfer seedlings into the 4″ pots in the greenhouse. I tried some little clear plastic clamshell containers this year for winter sowing, and I’m not sure it was the best decision. I think they’ll turn out to be a little too shallow, but I did what I did, and…

  • California gardening - Featured - Flowers - Our Garden

    A Valentine’s Rose Garden

    February 21, 2011 - By 

    There are many joys of being married the second time, and one of the biggest for me is having a partner who is a closer fit with some of the things that matter so much in my life. Obviously, a big thing in my life is gardening. Especially flower gardening. Santia and I knew each other as young adults 24 years ago, and who would have known that we’d both end up being garden nuts now? Neither of us had that interest back then, although it was surely lurking just under the surface with the experiences I had with my…

  • Featured - Flowers - Life in general

    Planting the seeds of a happy life

    November 4, 2010 - By 

    If you’ve followed this blog in the past year, you know that my gardening life (and my blog activity) has slowed considerably since all the changes in my life took me away from that piece of ground I cultivated and loved for eight years.  Well, on October 10th, 2010 (10.10.10!) my sweet Santia and I planted the seeds of a new, happy life together. One of the things I adore about my sweetheart is that she loves gardening, too! As you can see in the first few pictures below, we had a garden party on the day before our wedding.…

  • Flowers - Fruits & Veggies - Great plants - Our Garden - Trees

    Nectarines are ready!!!

    August 25, 2009 - By 

    Hey, hey, my friends! My nectarines are ripe now! Been sampling some over the past several days, and it now looks like harvest time has come! Come and get ’em! We don’t can them, so we really do like to share with friends. We’ll eat a big bowl full, make a cobbler or something, and that’s about it. I’m inviting friends to come over on Thursday evening this week to pick your own. Let me know if you’re coming. Also, I just wanted to show how enormous those Hibiscus moscheutos flowers really are. Here’s a photo with my hand in…

  • Flowers - Fruits & Veggies - Great plants - Our Garden - Plant problems - Trees

    A sad day for our elm tree

    August 17, 2009 - By 

    Early Saturday morning, before dawn, our Lacebark Elm (Ulmus parvifolia) suffered a major break from some heavy wind. We’ve had wind like this many times, but there was a weak crotch where two major scaffold branches were growing in too deep of a V-shape. When branches grow with narrow crotch angles, they end up with “included bark” which means a line of bark is sandwiched betwen the branches as they grow thicker and thicker. This line prevents the two branches from being knitted together, and it creates a major weakness that someday can turn into this kind of break. It’s…

  • Flowers - Fruits & Veggies - Great plants - Our Garden

    It’s Hibiscus time! And other photos from this evening

    August 6, 2009 - By 

      All the Hibiscus shrubs have burst into bloom this week. I love the one above — I think it’s Hibiscus syriacus ‘Aphrodite.’ I also have some double-flowered ones — they’re quite frilly and don’t really look like Hibscuses at all. Oh, and one more of the Aphrodite shrub, too: And I finally got my ‘Pink Simplicity’ rose hedge blooming well this week. I’ve written before about how some rose experts advised me to give them much more water and fertilize often with a high-nitrogen fertilizer. Well, I neglected to give them the extra care this spring, and so the…