Of the Fiskars family of garden helpers, the PowerGear® tools are my favorites. When Fiskars gave me the opportunity to give away anything I wanted from the PowerGear® line, I chose the following: Item: 377363-1002, UltraBlade® PowerGear® Bypass Pruner; I don't have these, but I'd enjoy them. Hint, hint Fiskars! Item 7937, PowerGear® Bypass Pruner; I use a pair of these everyday; Item 9619, PowerGear® 17 Inch Bypass Loppers; okay, this is my best tool for getting into those tricky rose pruning jobs. They are just the right size, and I don't get scratched as often. For bigger jobs, I like Item 9632, the 27-inch,PowerGear® Bypass loppers; and Finally, Item 9619,PowerGear® Hedge Shears, which are new to me this year, but I use them for trimming decorative grasses and cutting back perennial herbs among other things. At retail, this prize package is worth approximately $178.00. To win these cool tools,...

Once, I saved dish towels and aprons in a hope chest and fantasized about my future home. Nothing fancy. Instead, it was always a cottage adorned by fragrant, climbing roses. Not very original I know . . . . How many girls who read Regency romances don't dream of a rose-covered cottage and picket fence with two cats in the yard. Books have been written, and songs composed about such. So many that some girlish fantasies come with a heady aroma tinged in rosey hue. Mine did anyway. In Oklahoma, the land of prairie and sun, this dream of mine was not very practical, and my personal exterior displays a very practical girl usually clad in blue jeans, t-shirt and tennis shoes. If you met me, you would wonder where the dreamy artist is, but my inner life is full of fanciful notions. On an ill-fated vacation in Missouri when...

If my garden could talk, she'd probably say, "Don't hate me because I'm English cottage garden style." Unlike the woman at the center of the recent outrage in the press, my lovely English cottage style garden, isn't being coy. She is always lovely, but the weather has conspired to give us great temperatures and just the right amount of rain. When I started thinking about this post, I was actually remembering an old Pantene commercial from the 1980s not recent headlines. I was out planting a few new perennials, and I thought back to a conversation I had the other day with a garden designer/friend. He's elderly and can't visit my garden. He'd asked me about it before, and since the club had some copies of Oklahoma Gardener magazine from last year that featured my garden, I showed them to him before the meeting. He gave them a passing glance...

In between rain showers and sky-pounding thunder, I went out to explore and take some photographs. There is nothing prettier than a plant with raindrops etched across its surface. While walking around, the gravel crunching under my feet, I considered what to write about this morning. I'm in the midst of my fifth year of writing Red Dirt Ramblings. Plus, I already write regularly for Fiskars, Lowe's, Oklahoma Gardener magazine and Proven Winners so there's a lot of "me" out there. I don't want to bore you. One difference between writing this blog and writing for other publications and companies is that they have specified parameters, categories and content. There are also schedules, so I may be writing about vines and tools in the middle of winter. RDR, on the other hand, is all about the "now." The present, or indeed, what's happening at any given moment. Today, the lilacs...