First, plant a tree and wait for ten or twelve years. Stick with sour or tart cherry varieties like 'Montmorency' because Oklahoma is no place for a sweet cherry tree. 'Bing' will go bang the first time we have a drought. Believe me, I know because I tried it. Sweet cherries like wetter and cooler places than the southern plains. Then, sometimes, life is a bowl of cherries, and when it happens (only twice in 15 years due to late freezes), what do you do with all this sour cherry goodness? You make a magnificent cherry pie. Mine is gluten and dairy free too, but feel free to make your own pie crust. I adapted my recipe from The Black Family Reunion Cookbook: Recipes and Food Memories, put out by the National Council of Negro Women. I picked up my copy in 1991, and it is simply one of the...

When I tweeted about returning from St. Louis's Region 11 meeting, Snarky Vegan said "Sounds like they were racing daylilies! The Daylily Regional. ;-P" Don't know the cultivar, but doesn't it look great next to the rooster? In a way, they were, or at least we were racing to see them all. AHS Region 11 comprises Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, and the regional is held annually in one of the locales. I've helped with ours in Oklahoma City, and it was a relief to go somewhere else and enjoy their volunteers' hard work. H. 'White Magician' Gossard 2007 Hemnuts from all three states converged, visited beautiful gardens, and bought PLANTS! H. 'Catfish Bob' Schulz (1993) with a visiting honeybee I bought a few new daylilies and a couple of flats of other things myself. We're a month ahead of St. Louis, and they had lots of beautiful offerings left over...

Dear Carol, Mary Ann and all of our friends, I waited to post my letter after I had a chance to get out to the potager and see what was ready. The squash bugs ate all but one group of squash plants because I wasn't here to watch and squish them everyday. There's only so much one can ask of her husband. I planted the last group of squash later than the others, and in a different bed. I think the squash don't know where it is. Sssh, don't tell them. Then, yesterday, Bear hurt her foot on a rusty nail while swimming in the lake behind our house. Needless to say, she's had a tetanus shot and is on an antibiotic. That took half the afternoon and evening. Summer in the country, it's not for sissies. As to everything else, here's the harvest. I picked five cups of green...

Orange plants aren't very popular at flower shows. For that matter, the brightest blooms are often shunned by the best of gardeners and landscape designers. Like Rodney Dangerfield, they get no respect. Pick up any garden book, and you'll probably read words like "garish," "too bright," "taudry" and "overstimulating." Often, I've wondered why? You know I love England, probably the Britannia of 1890, but still . . . . The gardens, the tea, the scones, and since I'm really sore from moving a huge daylily clump and planting a tree, let's be honest, the servants. What I could do with a small staff, but I digress. Although I adore English cottage style, I can't fathom using only pastel plants. Christopher Lloyd did champion hot colors in many of his books and part of his garden, but I don't see much emulation of it in English gardening magazines other than an...