As the Garden Grows

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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.






Heuchera – Easy to grow and So lovely in the Garden

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Don’t you just love the look of Heuchera leaves?

Heuchera Purple Palace leaves

Heuchera Purple palace leaves

They’re so colorful. I have heuchera’s growing in shady places in my garden, even below other plants that are in otherwise sunny areas. For example I’ve got coral heuchera growing underneath our ornate Japanese maple tree. The branches drop down almost to the ground so they shade the heuchera from the sun. (the green behind the leaves is astilbe – not weeds!)

Heuchera also bloom. If you grow them you’ll have seen them in bloom in June or July. Flower stalks sprout up from the leave plant by the score. I’m certain some of my plants put out 50 to 100 flower stalks!

Heuchera Amethyst mist in flower

Heuchera Amethyst Mist in flower

I guess I grow three types of Heuchera. The Amethyst mist and Purple palace that I’ve shown above and the coral one that I can’t remember the full name of right now … it’s leaves are coral and gold, very pretty.

I think most heuchera are fairly hardy. I believe all of mine are hardy to zone 4. They are easy to grow as long as they have enough shade and if they are covered in mulch in the winter it must be removed early as they have a shallow root system and they can fail to come out of dormancy if they are buried too deep or left in very damp conditions. This last bit is knowledge gained from personal experience. In the winter the only plants of mine that have ever lifted from the ground when it thaws have been my heurchera’s, so watch for that too.

I also love to say the word Heuchera. LOL if you say it forcefully it kind of sounds like someone being sick. Huecccccccheeeeeerrahhhh! See what I mean? Yeah, I’m a nut – a gardening nut.

Submit your posts to Thoof and gain site visitors!

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a site called Thoof. Did you visit the site? I think Thoof is a great site. You can read the latest news on the site in the form of blog and website posts that have been submitted to the site, and the Thoof system remembers what you’ve clicked on in the past so when you visit the site articles that Thoof thinks will be of interest to you are shown on the front page. In this way Thoof can very easily become your very own personalized news website.

As I said when I posted about Thoof a couple of weeks ago, you can submit your own posts and articles to the site. It’s really easy to submit and when you do you’ll start to see new visitors coming to your site to read the full story. A number of bloggers that I know have been submitting their articles regularly and they’ve been quite happy at the traffic that they’ve been getting from Thoof.

The creators of Thoof have even created a new badge called the ThoofRank badge. When you submit one of your articles you’ll be given the code for the ThoofRank badge that you can then place in your post. The ThoofRank will let you and your visitors know how popular your story is on the Thoof site. Cool huh?

Speaking of Thoof. Ever since I heard of Thoof.com I’ve wondered how they came up with that name. I even searched the site to see if there was any info on how the name came to be Thoof but there isn’t.

I have an idea of how the site was named. I think that the creators of the site were sitting in a room talking about what they should name this current news community. On the table in front of them were bowls of peanuts, and various fruits to snack on. I can picture one of the site creators leaning forward and grabbing some cherries to eat, but when he bit down on one of the cherries one of his teeth cracked! In horrendous pain he said “Oh my thoof, my thoof!”.

The others deep in conversation about the name of the site didn’t understand what had happened and as he kept repeating Thoof and pointing to his cracked tooth they thought the name Thoof was a suggestion for the site name. Since the person with the cracked tooth was being so enthusiastic they took a vote right away and that’s how Thoof got it’s name.

What do you think? That’s the only way I can imagine how Thoof got it’s name.

Hey, don’t forget to submit your gardening posts to Thoof! They definitely need more garden related stories there.

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