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Create lists of plants you’ve grown or garden to do lists on Meosphere

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I just joined an interesting site called Meosphere. The site is a collection of lists, and links that site members have created. Each member can create their own Meosphere.

As the sites about page says we all have our Meosphere. You could even say this blog has it’s own meosphere, a gardening meosphere perhaps.

The best way to explain this site to you is to show you.

I went looking for gardening related items and I found a Meosphere list had had already been started. It’s called “Flowers You’ve grown”. I went through the list and ticked off all the flowers on the list that I’ve grown at some point in my life or that are currently growing in my garden. Then I saved a list of the flowers I’ve grown as my own list. I can’t find an embed list link for my own list though so I’ll just paste the first list here to show you:

Now we all know that even more flowers could be added to that list but that’s the beauty of the meosphere lists. You can place a check mark beside all the flowers on this list that you grow and save your own copy of the list. Then you can add even more flowers to it if you’d like. You can even edit your saved list to add descriptions and photos of each item.

Can you see the possibilities?

I think I may spend a bit of time on Meosphere later today. I might create some gardening to do lists. You know, specific spring, summer, and autumn gardening tasks for Zone 5b gardeners. Others on the site can find my lists and make their own copies adding tasks specific to their own gardening zones. You could also make lists of your gardening books, favorite garden tools, and so on. I love it.

You could make lists of just about anything in this manner and since we’re bloggers it could be yet another way to interact with our readers.

Please do feel free to check off the flowers that you grow on this list and make your own list out of it. I’d love to visit your meospheres to see what you’ve created and see lists of what you’ve been growing.






Does your garden contain medicinal plants and herbs?

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I’ve always found it fascinating how most herbs and a number of plants have been used throughout history to cure what ails us.

I actually have a number of books about herbs and their medicinal uses. I should dig them out and write about some of the more commonly found herbs from time to time. As I said, I’ve always had an interest in this, just as when I find that plants that we’ve always thought of as being ornamental turn out to actually be edible too.

Well, until I begin writing some articles about herbs you might be interested in visiting a site that I found that’s called Natural Herbalism. This site has articles that discuss various herbs, their uses, chemistry, the history of herbs, how to grow them, how to prepare them, herbal recipes and herbs that have specific uses for men, women, children and even pets.

It’s quite an informative site.

Take for example the article about Bayberry. Most of us think of Bayberry as an ornamental shrub, but it actually has medicinal properties. Did you know that you can make a tea by boiling the bark and root and that when the tea is drank it has stimulant properties that are effective against diarrhea. The root bark also contains a natural antibiotic and can be used to treat skin wounds or even used in a mouthwash to freshen breath and fight gum disorders such as gingivitis.

Many of us grow celery in the garden, and if we don’t grow it we often buy it in the grocery store. Did you know that celery is a diuretic and that oils from the seeds were thought in the past to relive the pain of arthritis and rheumatism. Celery has also been used to treat anxiety disorders and insomnia.

If you are curious about the medicinal uses of some of the other plants that you might grow in your garden visit Natural Herbalism and look them up. I found the articles quite interesting.

I finally caught up with most of my garden chores

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The other day, Monday I believe, Chris and I finally finished all the work in the garden that I’d been putting off for months. Ok well not all of it. I still have a few annuals to plant and some of the roses need pruning, but otherwise the garden is ship shape.

It feels good to have it all done!

We should have put mulch on the garden beds by the end of June. That duty was finished on Monday, along with a nice layer of homemade compost. Our plants should be very happy in this heat now that they have a nice layer of mulch to help hold in moisture around the plants and to keep their roots cool.

We pulled out all our solar lights – some still hadn’t charged yet this year! – and I placed them around the plants where they’d get some sun during the day to charge, but would highlight the plants at night.

Chris also pulled out all our torches. You know just like the ones on survivor. We place a few of those in the garden and add a mix of kerosene and citronella oil to the torches. The combo lights the garden and keeps mosquitoes at bay.

We’re having guests from Chicago this weekend and as long as the weather co-operates I expect that we’ll be out in the garden quite often over the weekend. We’ll probably have a barbecue or two, and if it’s nice spend the evening sitting outside at the patio table talking.

I’m so happy that the garden is done. Now I can finally sit back and enjoy it – this weekend.

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