"My personal endeavour is so to choose and combine my plants that at no time from early March to November shall the garden be without a number of lovely pictures, each complete in itself, and that such sections of the borders are as temporarily out of bloom shall be so constructed that their fullness and freshness shall be maintained by luxuriant and beautiful foliage." from Color in My Garden: An American Gardener's Palette, by Louise Beebe Wilder I'm still working on it, but I love the idea.  Garden Bloggers Muse Day is brought to us each month by Carolyn Gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago.  Thanks Carolyn.

Well, the sun is now shining, but earlier this week, we had winter moisture in nearly all of its frozen forms.  On Monday, while I was driving to pickup children all over metropolitan OKC, we got a lot of sleet and fog which then turned into black ice.  Driving was simply a nightmare, and I saw many cars crashed on the side of the highway.  In fact, I slid through an intersection myself.  It was that dangerous.  Monday night we had snow which made my youngest child, Miss Bear, overjoyed.  Her siblings were also doing the happy dance because their schools were closed. In central Oklahoma, we don't get many snow and ice opportunities.  Some years, we get three or four snow events.  Other years, no snow at all.   It is even more rare for us to have enough snow to sled.  When Bear woke Tuesday morning, she opened the...

It's 31F here, and starting tonight, we're supposed to have ice showers, sleet and other slippery stuff for the next two days; so, my Sunday Stroll will be an indoor edition. While ironing pillowcases for my newly changed bed, I reflected on how many of them incorporate flowers and how much I love to iron them.  Each week, I get to pick out a new set of embroidered flowers and smell freshly pressed cotton and lemon scented starch.  As a child, I ironed pillowcases for my mother for the princely sum of  five cents a case.  I thought I was making the big money back then. They remind me, too, of sleeping at Grandma Nita's house on clean, starched sheets so slick I slipped right into them after my bath. My favorites are the oldest ones because they were stitched on really good, thick, cotton material, and it shows.  I...

Today, I'm digging up most of my bulbs in the front yard. I've hired a landscape designer to help me with the gardens.  Are you surprised?.  Well, the photo on the left is my  home's front view taken early last spring.  This looks good. The photo, below, is of another bed to the right of my front door.  It doesn't look so great and breaks lots of landscaping rules.  See that long, straight line of rusty brown cutting in the middle of the bed in half? Garden designers will tell you that isn't good.  Straight lines say "formal," and in some settings (like Buckingham Palace) formal is good.  However, in front of a log house out in the woods, it's a no, no. It's a little like Mr. McGregor's Daughter's famous green mustache, which she fixed last summer. I've looked at that straight line for six years and always wondered how to...