On Saturday the 29th, we got our first snow flurries in the valley. It was a cold, cold storm! We drove to Payson for a high school marching band competition, and it was 32° with snow coming down pretty hard and lots of wind. Our poor daughter had to march in that weather on a…
Yesterday was officially the first day of fall, and voila — we got snow on the mountains for the first time this season. I’m usually sad to see summer go and to know winter is on the way, but this year it isn’t so bad. With our baby last spring, this summer has not been…
The Deseret Morning News published an editorial on Sept. 15 calling on Salt Lakers to participate in planting one million trees by 2017. The county and a number of cities have endorsed the effort. I hope there is some plan in place. They need something like the Sacramento Tree Foundation, which did great work when…
Did you know apples need pollination from a different kind of apple tree? Or that crabapples are good pollen sources for apple trees? I knew cherries were particular like this, but I didn’t realize that apples had the same kind of issues. I planted two different kinds of apple trees right next to each other…
Last winter, I traded seeds with a guy from New York on Gardenweb.com’s perennial forum. He had seeds for these wonderful Hibiscus moscheutos ‘Blue River’ and I had to give them a try. I don’t usually go for large, gaudy flowers, but these were just too cool to pass up. I had about a dozen…
Check out these babies — three really big bowls like this, filled with Jonathan apples. I like these apples a lot; they taste more like green apples than red ones and they ripen a lot earlier than my Granny Smith apples. I believe we harvested these last Thursday, September 6th. That was even a little…
I just learned something new this week. It turns out petunias aren’t true annuals — they’re really tender perennials that die when they freeze. So, I can overwinter them in the basement and plant them out again next spring. And they grow well from cuttings. So, I plan to make some cuttings from my pink…
This little masked bandit had been eating my cats’ food in the garage lately. I had a hunch it was a raccoon since the water dish would be really dirty, and I know raccoons like to wash their hands in water when they eat. My neighbor has this live trap, and it worked like a…