I have the good fortune of working at home most days, and it’s great. But one downside is that many of my neighbors are fairly well-off retirees who hire professional gardeners to care for their lawns, and the noise is distracting! Mowers, weedeaters, lawn edgers, and leaf blowers — they all seem to use gasoline-powered […]
I’ve wanted to build raised beds for some time, and we decided this was the year to go big for our veggie garden! I came up with my own design idea, but I’ll tell you what I’d do differently in a minute. We had to make some decisions on lumber, placement, hardware, and irrigation, which […]
We’ve been starting seeds for the past couple of weeks. Isn’t is exciting to watch them sprout and develop? I find myself checking on them five times a day or more, waiting for the surprise arrival when those first seedlings pop out of the soil. The paper towel-baggie trick One of the tricks I’ve used […]
We’ve been in this house for almost two years now, and we love our orange and lemon trees! It’s so refreshing to be back in California and to be able to grow our own citrus. The orange tree is some navel variety, and the fruit is huge. By the size of the trunk, I’m guessing […]
Did you know you can grow bananas in northern California Zone 9? I started seeing a few here and there around Fair Oaks, and at first I thought they were giant bird of paradise. But a little googling, and I found a website about a guy in West Sacramento who sells banana plants and kind […]
After a few years, I’m starting to write about our garden again. And it’s a new garden! Last summer, we moved to Fair Oaks, a sweet, older suburb of Sacramento. This house is a little over 50 years old, a nice rambler in a solid neighborhood. We’re enjoying discovering its garden secrets as they unfold. […]
Spring always comes early to California, but it seems a bit earlier than usual this year. Up at 2,500 feet, the camellias don’t bloom as early as down in Sacramento, but ours are already on the waning end of bloom season. Here are a few sweet shots of them, plus the lovely forsythias. Both of […]
We’re experiencing our first major storm of fall this weekend. No snow is falling here at our Utah home, but I can see fleeting views of Lone Peak and Box Elder Peak through the clouds, each with a little crown of white at the very top. Soon, it will freeze down here, too, and we’ll […]