As the Garden Grows

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Tips on how to learn more about the plants growing in your garden

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I often receive questions that ask me to explain in detail how to care for specific perennials. While I am working on having a very large index of care information for specific plants it does take time to create this information.

Now, even though I grew up in a family that gardened, I still found myself somewhat bewildered when I moved into my current home and started a garden of my own. I was growing a number of new plants – perennial and annual that I’d never worked with in the past. I too, had tons of questions.

What did I do in order to brush up on my knowledge?

Well, I went searching on the internet to find information on specific plants and gardening techniques. This was a wonderful method of getting information and my list of gardening related bookmark is huge! Unfortunately I also came across information that contradicted other information that I’d found.

That’s when I began buying gardening books. I bought a few good general gardening books, one or two about perennials and annuals, and a few that discussed gardening in my particular area, or at least in my Country. That was one of the best moves that I could have made. Now I’ve got 10+ very helpful gardening books at hand whenever I need to look something up.

Practice, experimentation, talking to other gardeners, and joining garden forums such as the Garden Web also helped quite a bit.

I observed my plants carefully in the first year on my own, taking notes occasionally as to the various plants bloom time, how often it bloomed, when it first started to grow in the spring and so on. I learned a lot just by observing my plants and caring for them as best I could.

Of course nothing pleased me more than when my mother, visiting from our home town and staying with us for a week or so, remarked as she gazed at our garden, “It’s so nice to know that one of our children inherited my green thumb”. What higher compliment could one gardener give another?

If you are just starting your garden, or still in the process of learning about new plants you might want to pick up one or all of the following books:

Perennials for Dummies by Marcia Tatroe ISBN 0764550306;

Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Perennials: 10th Anniversary Revised and Expanded Edition by Ellen Phillips and C. Colston Burrell ISBN: 0875965709;

The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques by Tracy Disabato-Aust, Steven M. Still ISBN: 0881924148.

Enjoy your garden!






Floral arrangement in Oil by Ashely Cecil

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of being contacted by a talented artist. Her website is located at AshleyCecil.com. She’d just finished a stunning floral arrangement oil painting and had posted a photo of it on her website and thought that I, and my readers, might be interested in viewing her work.

Here’s a copy of the floral painting:

centerforwomenfamiliesgala-small.jpg

Isn’t that just gorgeous? If you’d like to take a better look at the painting and watch a time lapse video of it’s creation please feel free to visit her site “The Painting Journalist”.

She created this painting after attending a gala celebrating 20 years of “Service and Survival” for The Center for Women and Families. Approximately 1000 guests attended the gala and the ballroom was filled with lovely white floral arrangements. It was the floral arrangements which inspired her to create the lovely oil painting.

Ashley sells her paintings to raise money for non-profit organizations. The painting that I’ve shown you today is for sale, and a portion of the sale price will be donated to the Center for Women and Families.

The Center for Women and Families has been serving the Louisville area since 1912. Originally a YWCA, The Center is now a private non-profit agency serving fourteen counties in Kentucky and Indiana. Last year, The Center served over 30,000 people through three main programs: the Domestic Violence Program, the Rape Crisis Program, and the Family and Community Support Programs.

Purchasing this painting will support a great cause and assist in helping women in need of assistance get back on their feet again.

Ashley describes herself and her work:

Welcome to the marriage of painting and social activism. I’ve been creating art ever since discovering that my mom’s Chanel lipstick made a great oil pastel. Through formal art education and years of professional experience, the adult version of this vocation has evolved into my own job title, “painting journalist.” I’m addressing philanthropic issues utilizing painting as my medium of communication. Much like a photojournalist, I travel to locations/events of cultural interest and capture them, only with my brush.

Please do visit Ashley’s site. She’s a very talented artist and her paintings cover a wide range of “Life and Living” related genres.

Thunder and snow

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Early Thursday afternoon I was sitting at my computer working on a post for one of my blogs and I noticed that the snow storm that had been supposed to start Wednesday night had finally started.

The snow was coming down like it was making up for lost time. There was easily half a foot or more within 30 minutes.

It was still below freezing at the time – -1 Celsius (which is just below 32 F), but we’d been expecting freezing rain so I knew that it might warm up a little. Conditions outside would be pretty hazardous if we got freezing rain.

Then, at about 1:30 pm guess what I heard? Thunder? Yeah, it thundered on and off for about ten minutes. I didn’t see any lightning but there might have been some somewhere.

I had heard that we’d had thunder and lightning a few days ago too, but I’d missed that.

Considering that I live in the great white north it’s pretty strange to experience thunder in the winter time. Especially if there’s snow on the ground or even more surprisingly if it happens to be snowing when the thunder is heard.

That was strange enough, but worse was yet to happen.

I think it was around 5:30 pm when I realized that my internet connection was down. I’d just sent an email and as far as I know it got sent off ok, but all of a sudden I couldn’t reach websites I’d been trying to get to and my email program was just spinning and not collecting mail.

So I thought to myself … ok, it’ll probably be down for just a little while. I’ll turn on the TV and select whatever I’m going to record on the DVR.

Oh oh … Can’t do that either. The cable box came on, and so did the TV, but the television just has a blank screen. Well .. a black screen. That worried me because I thought maybe our DLP TV had failed again … but when I tried to change the channels I could see the channel info box come up on the TV so I knew it was working. It was just the cable that wasn’t.

I called the cable company and yes, the connections were down in my area. When I was speaking to them they were just sending a truck out to fix the problem so they didn’t know if it was weather related, a simple problem or if perhaps a car had crashed into their equipment. The latter would result in quite a delay in repairs. I was told it usually takes about four hours when they have to fix connections for an area, but depending upon whatever caused the problem I might not have had a connection for a long time.

I filled my time writing up a few posts in Notepad and reading a book. I’m so used to sitting at the computer and working on my sites during the day and often early evening that it felt really strange to not be able to do that.

I got my internet and cable TV connections sometime late in the evening. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that both services don’t go out at the same time again!

Now if you’ve come here for PHOTO HUNTERS perhaps I’ll take a photo of the melting snow on the slushy streets later today. I think during heavy snow and ice storms they still do use some salt in the mix of what they put on your streets to melt the snow .. and that’s the only way I’m going to be able to get anything for the Salty theme on this blog today. LOL

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