Dear Carol and Mary Ann (and all of our other friends), Sorry I'm late to the party.  Sunday night, two thunderstorms came through and knocked out my Internet again.  (I am planning to fix that problem for good this week.)  Speaking of Sunday, I returned from vacation to a garden not as weedy as I expected.  The mulch I laid beforehand definitely helped.  All of the turnips bolted while we were away, and much of the lettuce turned bitter in the heat.  I noticed, however, that the lettuce shielded from direct sunlight by nearby perennials tastes pretty good.  We had it for supper last night with grilled salmon and chicken. My nephew, Coleman, did a great job watching and watering my container plants.  However the garden is a bit dry.  I may need to set the irrigation system to water more deeply.  I will watch it this week and let...

Throughout our travels, there were three plants I saw in nearly every garden, public or private. Amsonia tabernaemontana, blue dogbane or blue star as it is known in my garden, is the first. Actually, I may grow Amsonia hubrichtii, but right now, I don't have access to my garden to look at the leaf shape. I know I'm bad, but I never paid attention before. Both are native wildflowers, and both grow beautifully in full sun. Mine has finished flowering, but the foliage is still lovely. I plan to divide it next year. The second is Baptisia. I saw several different varieities, but the most beautiful was again in the Lurie Garden, although the Chicago Botanic Garden had some beautiful examples too. I grow three different Baptisias in my garden, but they are young and take awhile to establish. I hope that someday they will be similar to the one...

I bet you thought this post was going to be about garden bloggers didn't you? Nah, it's not that simple. Although I'm having a great time seeing all of my garden blogger friends both old and new, I want to show you my other peeps, the prairie meadow plants of the Lurie Garden. Yesterday, we boarded the train to the Chicago Botanic Garden, and it was big and burly, reminding me of the men (I refuse to think of the women as either) who helped turn Chicago into a bustling commercial enterprise in the late 1800s. There was so much to see.  I walked much of it although I did miss the train garden.  Darn it.  So much to see and so little time. After riding the train back into the middle of the city, we hoofed it from the Ogilivie train station to Millennium Park. After all of that...

This is what I get to see every morning when I drive the Red Dirt kids to school. The road to and from my log house is a gray oil and chip ribbon running north and south. It was once gravel which was more asthetically pleasing, but my throat, tongue and eyes were always coated with red dust and now appreciate the asphalt. Alongside the road grow numerous flowers which change throughout the seasons. We're in late spring, and the spiderwort is blooming heavily now, with the most intense blue I've ever seen. I know it's called common, but it doesn't seem very common to me.  While coming home from church, even HH stopped the car to look. Later, I sweet talked him into taking me in the jeep on a photog safari. If a few of the photos look a little blurred, it's because he narrated my picture taking...