Now is the time I have to steel myself against the autumn gardener’s worst enemy: complacency. We’re having lovely weather at the beginning of October, with clear blue skies, low humidity and days in the upper 70s or low 80s. Though most flowers except the toad lilies, the last anemones, turtlehead and a few unwary […]
Summer’s ending. Tomatoes are still on the vine, but they take longer to ripen now, as the days grow shorter. I’ve pinched off the blossoms so my plants can concentrate on ripening the fruits they already have and not setting new ones. Basil still puts on new leaves but not with the abundance of July […]
I just got back from a week in southwestern Michigan, which is to Chicago what Cape Cod is to Boston. Sandy beaches with freshwater waves to splash in and spectacular sunsets are the main attractions, but they come with all the accessories of beach towns everywhere: ice cream stands, art galleries, antique shops. There are […]
Last year in July, the upper Midwest was in the grip of a historic drought. What a difference a year makes: So far this year, we’ve had about 10 inches more rain than normal. The spring that came with the cool, wet weather was glorious (at least, for those of us whose yards and basements […]
The lush rains this spring have invited every last weed seed in my yard to sprout, right when I’d rather be planting. But this is also the most important time for weeding. At least weeds are easier to pull from moist soil. The key to garden sanity is to win the early battles. It’s essential […]
I’m being forced out of my comfort zone this year. Like many shade gardeners, I’ve been over-dependent on impatiens for color, and I’ve been planting the same arrangement of white, pink, lavender-blue and violet impatiens in a bed at the end of a long walkway in my shady garden for a decade or more. But […]
Ah, what a difference a year makes. Last year, during a freakishly warm spring, flowering trees and shrubs all over the Midwest were in bloom by the end of March. This year, only witch hazels are blooming, all the other trees and shrubs are still dormant. The average temperature in Illinois for March 2012 was […]
On the last night of January it was 3 degrees below zero. Just 24 hours earlier, we had a soaking rainstorm, fog and flooding. The day before that it was 60 degrees. This sort of thing is more or less normal for Chicago; the only thing that would be abnormal in a Midwestern winter would […]
There were more catalogs than Christmas cards in the mailbox this year, starting back in November. I could have spent all my cookie-baking time dreaming of next year’s garden, but that is a treat for January. So I dutifully let the catalogs pile up until the right time, when the tree has been ground up […]
With the pots and pruners and weeders and spades hauled down to the basement, the question arises: Now or later? Cleaning, that is. Do I clean this stuff while I’m putting it away for the winter, or just jumble it all into the tool room and promise myself I’ll get around to the washing and […]
The leaves that have been swirling to the ground these last few weeks may be trash to some, but they are treasure to me. In our neighborhood, everybody but me rakes their leaves to the curb to be sucked up by giant vacuum vehicles and carted off to a commercial composting facility. I’m the crazy […]
One of the ways I knew this wasn’t going to be an ordinary summer in my garden was when I noticed a chrysanthemum trying to bloom in May. Chrysanthemums are fall flowers! Well, sort of. In their native Asia they’re actually long-blooming late-summer flowers, which is how they came to be symbolically associated with longevity […]
