How special is it when the botanical art in your home comes from the flowers in your heirloom garden? Luckily, it can also be a simple process. Start by removing the flower heads from the plants. Pick the flowers in the late morning on a dry day. By 11 a.m., the dew on the plants will have evaporated, yet the afternoon sun won’t have had time to wilt the flowers. Pressing ...
Row by Row: Talking with Kentucky Gardeners(Swallow Press, 2015) by Katherine J. Black takes an intimate look at home vegetable gardeners from across Kentucky. Though they share a state, the gardener's profiled by Black have different stories and different ways of caring for their plots of land. This excerpt comes from the chapter "Raised to Work," which looks into the life and home ...
October is nearly over, and so is the growing season. We have yet to do a fall/winter garden.We do have plans to set up cold frames and have a go at it. But not this year. So, this last week, we began the 'bedding down' of many things around the farm.The last of the garden produce was harvested before frost. I had a few banana peppers left on the vines, a couple of fall squash, ...
I don't think much about modern equipment. I mean, I'm pretty much surrounded by modern stuff all day, every day. Given enough time, what I use today will be replaced with something more modern.At times I stop and think about how far we've all come. At some point, what is old was at one time the modern thing to use. I don't always think of that, especially when the item in question ...
“In the bleak mid-winter...” We sing that hymn in church every year around this time. And it can be pretty bleak. Colder temperatures. Blustery days. Too many layers. Less daylight. But there are these beautiful gifts that arrive like an extension of Christmas in my mailbox, first one, then another, then another. Seed catalogs! Pages and pages of color where ...
Dear friends!It was a Friday evening, and we were more than excited while waiting for our two grandchildren to come. Katie, 18, just graduated from high school; and Caleb, 16, will be a junior this fall. How brave of them to take a 10-hour trip with our country home as their destination. They were a little late, and we were afraid that if they didn't arrive soon, they might get ...
Armed with my trusty pruning shears and humming my little made-up ditty to the tune of that holiday classic "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,"my leaping, cavorting dogs and I make our way to our fruit trees. We have persimmons, nectarines and pomegranates. The trees need pruning and this is the time of year to do it. The trees are dormant and all the pesky leaves have ...
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