Our neighbors came over this weekend for a holiday gift exchange. After some wild and gleeful gift opening, we were separating the trash from the recyclables from the reusable stuff when my friend expressed surprise that the cardboard boxes were being sent to the recycling center instead of the compost pile. I often compost cardboard, [...]
I have recently had several people ask me about starting a compost pile. What can they put in the pile? Do they need to locate the pile in full sun? Is it a lot of work, with lots of rules to remember? Actually, composting is such a simple concept: throw stuff in a pile, where it [...]
I’m very good at reducing, re-using and recycling in the garden. Every bit of plant material goes back into the soil as mulch or compost. This includes kitchen scraps, dead trees and Christmas greens – even our holiday wrapping paper is recycled. I recycle my neighbor’s leaves, used potting soil and woody plant clippings, too. [...]
A cold front with gale-force winds descended upon the Cincinnati area last Saturday – making for a really COLD soccer game. . . But that was no excuse to stay out of the garden, since my husband came through and delivered several pickup loads of the free mulch, mentioned in a former post, as a [...]
I’ve been planting a lot this week. I’ve also been moving a lot of plants around – some that I think would look better in another spot, a few that require dividing, and others that must be moved to make room for new plant treasures. Most of my planting beds are mixed beds – with [...]
We’ve had an inch or so of snow this past week, which makes everything look beautiful, but is not enough to be too hazardous. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! I like to check out the tracks in the snow to see what creatures have visited the garden. In the past few days, [...]
Last year at this time, my daughter decided that she had outgrown her swing set. We listed the swing set on Craig’s list, and a young family came out, dismantled the set and took it away. I was ecstatic – a new place to plant stuff! I decided to use the space to grow things [...]
After a week spent on other pursuits, I finally got out into the garden this weekend. Perfect, gorgeous weather! Not too cold, not too hot, sunny and dry – with emphasis on the dry. It’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve had rain in the greater Cincinnati area. The plants that I added or [...]
I spent some time last week mowing my neighbor’s lawns – and plan to do some more this week. It’s not that I don’t have enough to keep me busy in my own landscape. But I don’t have any really big trees in my yard, and they do. All those fallen leaves are a virtual [...]