I am admittedly not a big fan of autumn. I don’t dislike the season itself and in fact, some of my favorite garden plants flower as the days grow shorter, temperatures drop and summer begins to lose its grip. My problem with autumn is that it precedes winter, and of winter, I am not a fan. In…
In the states, we know this tough, cold-hardy cabbage cousin as “Dinosaur” kale, its name coming from the rough, leathery texture of its leaves. We use it primarily as an ornamental for the fall and winter garden, combining it with pansies, violas and other cold-hardy winter growers where it provides a textural, architectural accent for…
One of the fun things I had the pleasure of doing earlier this fall was taking a trip to Italy with a group of five other friends. We rented a fantastic house (http://www.priello.com/) up in the hills of the upper Tiber River Valley near the small town of Caprese Michelangelo in the far eastern reaches of…
I must admit, autumn is not my favorite season. You see, I don’t really care for winter much, so for me autumn is just sort of the precursor to what can be several months of cold, damp, drizzly weather that sometimes seems as though it may never end. But even though autumn means that winter…
Being a Kansas boy by birth, one of my favorite of all wildflowers is the sunflower. “Wildflowers?”, you may be asking yourself. Sure enough. Across the hills and plains of Kansas, at about this time of year, the wild sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) begin flowering. If you know where to look, you can find entire fields…
Never underestimate the creative mind! For those of you who thought that pumpkins were only good for carving and, perhaps, the occasional pie, I’d like to introduce you to the work of a good friend mine. Every autumn at the University of Tennessee’s West Tennessee Research Station in Jackson, TN, Jason Reeves and his staff…
I really thought that we were going to miss out on fall color in Tennessee this year. August and September were horribly dry and the trees all looked so stressed by the beginning of October that I really thought the leaves would just drop without turning. I was wrong. The color has been short-lived, but…
The smell of wood smoke hung heavy in the country air this weekend. In the mornings, especially, the sweet smoky fragrance drifted by on the gentle breeze, reminding everyone that it was time to stock up on firewood if we intend to keep warm this winter. Thirty-eight degrees at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning when…
Suddenly and without warning, the colchicum have popped and begun spreading their autumn cheer through the garden. They act sort of like the “surprise lilies” (Lycoris) in that one day there is no sign of them, the next day there are buds poking through the soil and within 3-4 days of announcing their arrival they…
(Originally Posted October 16, 2007 on MySpace)Hello everyone! We’ve returned from our brief weekend in Branson, MO with my family and had a wonderful time. We were able to see a couple of good shows, spent a day at Silver Dollar City (which was made all the more fun by having my 10-year-old cousin with…