I am old enough to have lived a history which includes remembering in a broader sense personal experiences from varieties of weather and seasons over the years. On two occasions around World War II time, it snowed heavy wet stuff on my birthday of mid September, and once later while watching a September Saturday football game at old Memorial Stadium. I like winter here in Gopherland, but it is so long. I have long...
Read More >>When, at what season, does, should, your landscape garden radiate its most inspiring beauty? The answer is simple......Whenever you enter your Garden of Eden. I have lived at my grounds for over 40 years, long enough to be able to do, genetically, mentally, physically, and culturally, what I was driven to do, planting and maintaining a beautiful landscape garden in some form or another. I have been very, very fortunate in life, and have many...
Read More >>Most homeowners in our Minnesota communities ignore landscape gardens. Lawn and a shade tree in the middle of the front lawn, mud in the shadier depths, and the foundation plantings habits fits their needs for the duration. Probably most homeowners are poorer now than they have been for more than a decade. They endure living in their sterile environment. More females mow lawns these days than ever. The American husband population from coast to coast...
Read More >>I was about to write an article at this post today that tomorrow, October 10th according to records, is the average date for the arrival of frost in these Twin City, America environs. However, when I stepped out onto my gardened grounds, I spied frost covering the here and there. This frost had not been predicted by the pundits. In the upper regions of my bit over a half acre gardened grounds, frost arrived for...
Read More >>This past winter, with the exception of the absence of a January thaw, was a typical winter of the first 25 years of my life. I am two months from being 80. Heavy snowfall in November. More in December. Melting snow and ice was always a feature on Easter Sunday in April before another snowfall would show up a week or so later. One of my college degrees was in Geography. Climate was a required...
Read More >>This past Twin City area winter was a winter of my childhood through teen age years. Cold and long. Normally a true "test winter', that is a killer winter in at its worst in our area occurs similar to this past cold and windy winter.....but without snow cover. We had snow cover this past season and it came before the bitter cold and winds. That which was covered was protected and therefore survived quite well....
Read More >>We should have shared this Onslaught of Winter article with readers a few weeks ago. However, the nature of this particular Twin City late autumn has been keeping our company busy until the real snow arrives. Each autumn in our area is unique in its appearance and character. No one seems to record each year's peculiarities and we usually remember only the extremes....especially the thirty inches one Halloween in the 1990s and a repeat the...
Read More >>We receive notices from city 'officials' in a monthly bulletin. City officials are politicians and want people to re-elect them. Here in Minnetonka where I live city officials are officials for life..... In our horticulture world they rail against wild mustard and buckthorn nearly every month during the growing season. A few years ago purple loosestrife was on the city officials hate list. Now that European insects which suck the life out of purple loosestrife...
Read More >>October 10th is the average date in Minnesota's Twin Cities and environs of winter's first frost. My landscape gardening experience reminds me that over the past 25 years this first frost date has been delayed to around October 14th. Thank God! Landscape Gardening is supposed to be an art form. One would never know that 'supposed to be' by looking at our Twin Cities' practice of the art. In our modern day one has to...
Read More >>Panic in autumn regarding Minnesota conifers is a condition of the human Minnesotan who notices yellowing of foliage among conifers and begins to worry about it. These Minnesota's conifers don't panic for they are doing their normal conifer thing....ridding themselves of yesteryears' leaves, foliage, needles, whichever you wish to call their stuff turning brown in the autumn....usually the leaves older than three to five years. Usually only the garden-aware Minnesotans pay attention to such environmental...
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