Our Garden

Lots of new flowers this summer

The flowers I grew from seed have done pretty well so far, and I added a few extras to the mix. I love how gaillardia grandiflora will flower the first year from seed. As I mentioned in another post today (about Crimean lavatera), that is a rare trait for a perennial flower. I like the […]

The crisis in Crimea and our garden (yes, they’re related!)

I’ve blogged about this amazing flower before, and now I’m finally growing it at our new place. Lavatera tauricensis is a very uncommon perennial found in the mountains of Crimea. At some point, someone collected seeds and sold them to Thompson & Morgan, and I bought them way back in the 1990s. The flower’s name […]

Blue Atlas Cedar winter burn – probably OK

We’ve only had this house since 2012, so we’ve seen two full winters here. We have two lovely Blue Atlas Cedars – one a tall, wispy tree in the front yard and one a small, weeping variety in the back. I was alarmed last year when many of the needles were brown at the end […]

Any hope for veggies in deer country?

It’s the time of year when peas, spinach, lettuce, brocolli, and other cool-season vegetables can be planted. They can handle some spring freezes. But my worry since moving up on the ridge here at our Utah house is that that deer will feast on our garden bounty. There are a lot of articles on what […]

This is what forsythia should look like… and not

I love forsythia! It’s always the cheery harbinger of warm days, and it’s one of those shrubs that in my mind is best left to look wild. It should be allowed to send its long branches out, covered with beautiful blooms, sometimes arching under the weight of those awesome blossoms. The example above is in […]

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

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 […]

Finally getting a new garden (and house!)

After two+ years of renting a townhouse, my wife and I are buying a sweet house in a short sale. Closing at the end of January. The new house is in the Suncrest area of Draper, Utah. This is up on a ridge, 1,700 feet above the valley floor (same area where we’ve been renting […]

A Valentine’s Rose Garden

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 […]